Clubface Square to the Plane

The revived thread on how I hate "release the club" for most average golfers prompted this thread

Oftentimes when watching television you'll hear that someone did a great job on their takeaway of getting the toe of the club pointing up towards the sky at what's called P2 - when the shaft is horizontal to the ground on the takeaway.

Or you'll hear it on the follow-through - again often when the club shaft is parallel to the ground or even before that point - how good a job the golfer did of getting the club's toe pointing straight up at the sky.

Thing is, those clubs are both too open and too closed at those points in time.

If you attach a club to something and rotate it about an axis, the proper position of the club's leading edge is not vertical in either of those positions, but rather perpendicular to the plane - i.e. roughly the same as your inclination to the ground ("spine angle" if you want to use the common but, IMHO, incorrect term).

If you hold a putter out straight in front of you so the shaft is horizontal to the ground and rotate it 90° back, it's vertical. If you hold a putter straight up and down and rotate it the same 90°, the putter is still flat, horizontal.

The only way to really get the club toe-up in either of these positions is to rotate the clubface open with your forearms and wrists on the backswing and closed on the follow-through. Now, virtually every good golfer has a little of this rotation on the backswing. There aren't many golfers with no #3 accumulator (rotation). Even more have it after impact on the follow-through.

But that's not "square to the plane," and it requires timing to rotate the club back to square at impact.

Again, I prefer to see a leading edge roughly perpendicular to the shaft angle at address in both of these positions. That'll look "closed" and then "open" to people expecting the toe to be up, but I think it's a "more correct" version of the swing. Decreasing the amount of #3 accumulator you have in your swing will lead to higher shots (more #3 = lower shots) and shots that more consistently start on-line because you don't need the timing.

Incidentally, this is why I - and 99% of PGA Tour pros, and Scotty Cameron, and Stan Utley, and virtually everyone except Dave Pelz - believe the only or best putting stroke is an inside-square-inside putting stroke. Same principles are at play here - the blade stays square to the inclined plane.

This thread isn't really about putting. It's about the full swing.

Well, that's kind of irrelevant. I'm not asking how people assess it, or if people can assess it, I'm asking what people think is "square to the plane." Plus, video or a mirror can be used to assess it, and the shaft angle is often close to perpendicular to the "spine angle" as well, so that's one way to assess it.

To clarify, I don't like "spine angle" because your spine has many angles at setup. Your neck is often bent a little and everyone's back has a natural curve to it anyway. So if I'm talking about the general "spine angle" and how the leading edge of the club should parallel the "spine angle," then I'm talking about the line drawn roughly from the tailbone to the neck. Better terminology would be your "inclination to the ground."

I'd disagree. I think that the thought of having the toe be "vertical" is one of the leading causes of people fanning the clubface open on the takeaway and rolling the forearms and wrists too much, too early, and that if they had instead been taught that the toe should kind of match the "spine angle," golfers would be better off.

We're looking at it in two dimensions, though. When the shaft is horizontal on the takeaway, a camera down-the-line can accurately show the leading edge in two dimensions. The third dimension, depth (i.e. further away from the camera at the heel, closer to the camera at the toe) is irrelevant - it's compressed and can't be measured in two dimensions.

The leading edge should also, ideally, remain square to the plane from horizontal to horizontal (and beyond that too - it's just that when one arm begins folding at the elbow the plane shifts).

It sounds like your backswing is technically what I'd deem "open" to the path (rolled open slightly, as I contend that toe-up is actually an open position) while on your follow-through you remain squarer. You seem to think the follow-through is open, even if it's slanted like / when viewed from down-the line.

Again, I'd contend that in both positions you want the club to be more like / than | .

I think troubleshooting your own swing is kind of off topic. I also think you could probably improve if you weren't | on the takeaway but were instead also /. Your takeaway should match your follow-through and both should be square to the plane, which is /. You have it right on the follow-through, it seems like, but wrong on the takeaway.

I think it does. It's a checkpoint in the swing.

I don't think that's "shut." I think that's "square." And that's what I'm hoping to discuss here.

Why that and not something earlier? You see, you think something else is important but not the point of this discussion. The same thing, but later? Why?

I disagree... at this point in the backswing the steep plane swing and the flatter swing is very similar. Plus, a flatter plane would be more likely to be more toe-up. Hold your putter out straight in front of you and swing it very flat - it's toe up. Now swing it purely vertically - it never gets to any position other than horizontal.

So perhaps that's a compensation the more upright swinger tends to make - more hand rotation to open up the clubface on the backswing. The player has made a move they'll have to compensate for later.

Yeah, the slash is just an indication to show the general look, it's not meant to be precise. But I think you knew that... / vs. |. Common thought is that you want to be | but I contend that | isn't square to the plane. / is.

That's the value of this discussion. Again, I contend that / is "square to the plane" and thus | would be open to the plane.