WHAT'S THE BEST DRILL TO LEARN A PROPER TAKEAWAY IN YOUR FULL SWING? 

One of the very best drills for learning a proper takeaway in your full swing is done with a golf club and two alignment sticks. The first alignment stick is placed on the ground as your aim or target line and the second is gripped in your hands on the left side of your golf club. You'll use the alignment stick in your hands as a tool to help guide your hands in your takeaway. 

A poor takeaway can be the main culprit to poor positions throughout the golf swing and many errant shots. Slices, hooks, and poor strikes can be traced back to the first movement of the golf swing. This drill from Ross McArthur at Al Hamra Golf Club will help you improve and bring consistency to your takeaway and subsequent swing positions and swing plane.

Alignment Stick Takeaway Drill

If your takeaway is off plane in your golf swing, many problems can emerge in the impact zone. We don't want that. For this takeaway drill, you'll need a golf club and two alignment sticks. You'll place one alignment stick on the ground for your target line. You will hold the second alignment stick right along the shaft and grip of your golf club. The alignment stick will extend out past the side of your body on the target side. Take your normal setup position. You want to initiate your takeaway slowly being mindful of the position of the clubhead and your hands. You want to see the club head in front of your hands, and your right palm is a little bit more on top of the golf club. The club head should be just inside the target line when you arrive at the eight o'clock position. You will be on the proper plane and connected through the takeaway.

Many players tend to get into a disconnection where the golf club gets a little bit too far behind the hands. If this happens, the alignment stick will be pointing way right of the target line. You can get in all sorts of bad positions from there.

Now that we've got a good takeaway and are in the proper position, we will set the wrists. If you're on plane, the alignment stick coming out the top of your club should point directly towards that target line alignment stick. If it's pointing either inside of or outside of the target line, this can lead to many disconnections that we want to avoid.

Repeat the drill in a slow motion until it becomes automatic. Move the club away from the ball keeping the alignment stick on the left side of the body until we get the hands and arms and the club to about the eight o'clock position on the clock face. When we start to set the wrists, you'll see that the alignment stick points down towards your alignment stick on your target line.
Now with the wrists set and on plane we can then finish the swing and deliver the club back into the ball.

After doing a little bit of slow-motion training, we're going to recreate those critical checkpoint positions from your standard set up with a relaxed swing. As the golf club moves away, we're going to feel like it's still connected to the left side of the body. The club head stays outside of the hands the right palm is more on top. As we then set the golf club in the backswing, it's going to be on plane and then we should be able to return back through the impact zone for a clean ball strike.