The WeekEnd Golfer

I've seen this approach to pre-setting the club in the 3/4 backswing position. It makes a lot of sense to me.

If pre-setting the bat is OK for baseball players why isn't it for golfers? I think it's because golfers think there is some magic in the path of the club going back - and so many golf teachers reinforce that (erroneous?) idea.

Obviously what matters is where the club ends up at the top of the swing and how you bring it down into the ball. As Jim Suttie explains, most swing problems actually originate in the way a golfer takes the club back. Since we seem to think it is one seamless motion from beginning to end, how we take it back is directly relevant to where we end up at the top and how we bring the club down to the ball.

The "no swing backswing" tries to get rid of the variables at the beginning of the swing and get you ready to swing from the common position that (almost) everybody agrees you should be in - the 9 o'clock position (to use Dave Pelz's terminology).

This "no swing" approach also shortens the total length of the backswing by encouraging you to hit from about a 10:30 position. "Just pump and hit" as Suttie tells his demo-guy Scott Sanderson.

The problem - and you can see it with Sanderson - is that until you're really used to doing this you're not quite sure how to get the swing going. You can see him hesitate as though he's trying to figure out how to start.

There was an article in Golf Digest by David Leadbetter about a year ago proposing a similar routine. But that seemed to get little response and seems to have been forgotten by Leadbetter.

You can see more articles and commentary about the "no backswing backswing" here.