Shoulder alignment trick

I stumbled upon something recently that I thought I'd share. I was watching some video of myself swinging and noticed that I started taking my hands to the outside slightly at the start of the backswing. This is something that I had fought before and thought I had gotten rid of. I was at the range just thinking about why I tend to do that and I realized the problem wasn't my hands at all, it was my shoulders. If my shoulders are aligned open to the target and I took my hands "straight back" relative to my shoulders, they would go outside. On the other hand, if my shoulders were closed, the straight back move would be to the inside. So now, before I swing, I just rehearse the takeaway, altering my shoulder alignment until my hands go straight back relative to my alignment line (or aid if you are practicing with one). It makes aligning the shoulders really athletic and dynamic, whereas before I had to kind of stand up, try to see where my shoulders were aligned by pulling my head back, get into my address and hope everything was still good.

As an added bonus, it also eliminated my shots off the toe. The reason is, in my attempt to return my shoulders to the address position at impact, I ended up at impact with open shoulders. This pulled the handle of the club left and presented the toe to the ball instead of the face. I'm continually amazed at how important alignment is to getting to impact properly.

it is

VERY important!