Swinging on Plane

[mmills820105]

I have always struggled to keep the club, mainly the driver and woods, on plane. I tend to come too much inside which forces me to re-route the club in a sort of Jim Furyk-esque manuever. Anyone know any good practice drills to promote swinging on plane?

[BC MIST]

I have always struggled to keep the club, mainly the driver and woods, on plane. I tend to come too much inside which forces me to re-route the club in a sort of Jim Furyk-esque manuever. Anyone know any good practice drills to promote swinging on plane?

Furyk reroutes the club from too upright a plane to a flatter plane, so when you say that you come too much from the inside forcing you to reroute the club, do you now swing more upright?

Regardless, IMO you can almost never swing too much from the inside, but you can sure swing too much from the outside. There also needs to be some clarification of what ON PLANE really means. Having posed this question recently on a large American forum, there were dozens of replies and a lot of them conflicted. What on plane means is that when your clubhead/shaft is in a position where it is parallel to the ground and moving towards impact, that the shaft is pointing to the target line or the target line extended. If you tape a small laser pointer on the shaft just above the hosel, pointing to the ground, the beam will point to the target line from parallel to impact and then beyond until it is parallel again.

There are checkpoint positions in the back and downswing that indicate that you are going to be on plane. In the enclosed picture of a friend, I have drawn a line along the shaft and extended it. You can see that the line is pointing towards the ball but it is really pointing to the target line. One frame down from this picture the shaft will coincide or cover the right forearm. If you get into this position, you will not lose too many balls. He appears to have a flat downswing coming "too much from the inside." Not so. This friend, BTW, is one of the straightest hitters you will ever see. IMO the 4 best ball strikers ever are Ben Hogan, Moe Norman, Lee Trevino and George Knudson. They all pass through the position you see in the picture.

[mmills820105]

Furyk reroutes the club from too upright a plane to a flatter plane, so when you say that you come too much from the inside forcing you to reroute the club, do you now swing more upright?

I swing a lot upright, very similar to Furyk, and have battled with it since day 1. Picture this, at the top of my backswing, the club is over the back of my neck, not over my shoulder. I want to know some drills that I can practice to make a more "on-plane" takeaway and to put me in the right position at the top of my backswing. Even when I try to force the club on plane, it usually gets about halfway and sneaks back upright.