The Biggest Backswing Mistakes Golfers Make

There are 3 main backswing mistakes amateur and senior golfers make, and in this Live VLS Golf lesson from Todd Kolb, we are going to discuss how to set yourself up for success and make a better backswing!

All right welcome welcome everybody Todd Cole with us golf TV and BLS golf uh we are excited about this morning first of all hey if you’re in there right now if you’re with us can you do us a favor give us a little thumbs up in the chat

That you can hear me that the audio is good that the uh video is good just you know hey we’re we’re live so this is part of the beauty doing live so give us a thumbs up in the chat we got Nick behind the camera right here Nick give

Him a thumbs up let him know you’re here today we’re talking about really the three things that I see that the most are the most common mistakes that golfers make in the back swing and the truth of the matter is is in all the coaching that we do the vast

Majority of it okay the vast majority of it um the mistakes that are made happened in the first couple feet of the back swing so if we can get that correct if we can get that correct you’re going to be often R so I got three things um

That I really want to focus on here today that I think are going to really help you out so you know the favorite question we love to ask is where are you from put that in the chat right now where are you from we’ve got people from Australia I think Wayne is from

Australia okay Texas it is early in the morning okay it is like 3:30 in the morning we got Jean from Texas welcome to e jeene anybody else if you don’t mind throwing it in the chat where you’re from and what are some of the questions we’ve got topics we’re going

To talk about here today but this is your time this is your time to ask any question you want and we’re going to dive into that and get it going so all right give me some thumbs up can you hear me okay we rocking and rolling everybody okay Nick’s giving me the

Thumbs up we got Tennessee welcome to you John from Tennessee we got Vermont we got people logging in from all over all right hey let’s get rocking and rolling well let’s get rocking and rolling all right so first of all I’m gonna bust out here and do a little

Demonstration this is my handy dandy two iron how many of you out there have a two iron this here this is this two iron this is just for show folks I don’t know if I could hit this thing if I tried to hitting the two iron

Is really difficult maybe off the te but I’m going to use it today to demonstrate I like to keep it on the office because it reminds me of how difficult and challenging this game can be at times to hit that darn ball in the center of the

Face so here we go the first thing I want to talk about the most common mistake the most common mistake that golfers make in the takeaway okay is to rotate the club face open so let’s go through that this is one of the corner stones of what we’ve got all right hey

Look Nick we got people coming from San Diego we got people froming from Scotland PA California all over all right so the first thing we want to talk about is when we take the club away from the golf ball this is one of the cornerstones of the vertical line swing

When they take the club away from the golf ball the most common mistake that I see golfers make is they rotate the club face open so let me first of all go through the different positions so this would be open and we’re talking about the face right here this Leading Edge

Right there okay rotates open now how might I know if I’m a golfer who rotates the club face open well if you struggle with distance with your irons you don’t hit them very far if you very seldom take a divot okay and for those of you who tend

To come over the top those would be some of the telltale signs that you might be rotating the club face open in the takeaway really high ball flight no real compression okay and some lack of distance right so that would be open closed okay would look like this where

The club face was rotated down this way this would be closed now we see this sometimes when people have a really strong grip how would you know if your Club face is prone to being too closed well really low ball flight generally it’ll take some bigger divots you probably like your nine iron

In your wedge more so than you like your four iron or your five iron or your six iron okay okay that would be some of the telltale signs now where do we want it to be well we talk about this in the book The Bad lie that we want the

Clubface to be what we would call neutral so this would be neutral right here this would be neutral this would be open this would be closed okay so this Leading Edge right here okay as a general guideline should be roughly around a 45 degree angle so this would

Be straight up and down okay this might be 90 let’s say this might zero closed open Square would be about halfway in between that about a 45 Dee angle make sense okay making a little bit of sense over there okay good I’m gonna go ahead and bear with me I’m just

Going to move this over here a little bit my man Nick there I can see because I got to be able see your comments over here so we can answer those all right okay so now let’s talk about how we get the club into that position how do we

Get the club in that position so here we go let me grab a golf glove we can do this a couple different ways how you can check this all right so on my golf glove of course I’ve got some Knuckles right here in the top one two three and four

Right so when I take that club away all right right now as I’m setting here a handy dandy two iron pretty much just for looks but when I look down on my hand right now on my lead hand which is my left hand right here okay I’m looking

Down my left hand now you know in the vertical line swing right we like a slightly stronger grip which is a little bit more this way this would be strong this would be weak and we we’re not here to talk about the grip although if you

Got questions put them in the chat we’ll answer them later but we like a slightly neutral to Stronger grip so when you look down at your hands let’s say you see two Knuckles okay two to two and a half Knuckles all right when you take the club away and your hands are about

Waist high you want to look down and you should see about the same number of Knuckles so when I’m set in here I see about two and a half knuckles when I take it where my hands are waste high and I look I see about two and a half Knuckles if I see

Four that club faces open see that if I saw Zero or one that club face is closed so that would be the first way that you could check that pretty simple right so let’s let’s talk about what we’ve learned all right and then we’re going to talk about the next thing and the

Third one we’re going to talk about here has to do with the pivot which is my favorite one of our favorite things to teach you right Nick come on Nick you like okay Nick loves editing videos on the it so that’s the first one Club face

Gets too far open so we’ve learned that if it’s open you probably hit a really high ball flight um don’t take much for divot you don’t really compress the golf ball if it’s too closed you probably hit a really low ball flight you may take big divots you really struggle with the

Five iron and the six iron but you might love your nine irons and wedges and then of course neutral is at about a 45 degree angle and we can swing it back with that we see the same number of knos there all right now let’s move move into

The second one the second common mistake that I see and believe it or not I know it sounds crazy but if you can teach the first three four feet of the gos sing right here you could give probably 90% of the lessons that we give here the

Second thing that I see is when the club face or the club drags too far inside when the club or Club face drags too far inside so let’s talk about that all right let’s talk about what that looks like so here we go I’m going to

Grab one of my BLS alignment rods I’m just going to put her down right here everybody can kind of see that there right okay like I said earlier don’t be afraid to ask any questions there’s no dumb questions here one of the things that we really believe a lot here at Us

Golf TV and vs golf is is that um mostly traditional instruction albeit good instruction is probably not geared for the average person and some of the questions that you’re thinking about right now I guarantee somebody else here is also thinking about so don’t be afraid to put those in there all right

So here we go when we’re set in there when we sing the club watch the club head again if the club head the most common mistake one of the common mistakes that we see is the club head drags too far inside see that boom in here now what happens is is that when

The club head goes too far inside all right we’re very prone to hitting too far behind the golf ball okay not all the time it’s it’s very evident in chipping we’ve done a ton of videos on chipping when you drag the club too far and side you definitely start hitting

Behind it but when you’re set in here you want to feel like the club head stays outside your hands now what do I mean by that well when I take this club head away I want you to watch the relationship between the club head and my hands okay watch the relationship

Between my club head and my hands all right so here we go when we swing it back notice how my hands and the my hands are in in and the club head is out everybody see that hands in club head out if I roll the club face too far

Inside now the club is in and my hands are out this is disastrous okay for most golfers there’s always exceptions there’s always Exceptions there wasn’t one guy who w a couple us opens he did that you might have heard of him okay we’ll talk about

His name in just a little bit later here okay but he did that we’re not doing that okay so here we go one we’re set in there I want the club head to stay outside the hands everybody see that okay now how can you do that how can you

Guarantee it’s going to happen well let’s go back to the glove remember we talked about seeing those couple Knuckles okay so when I’m set in here if I take the logo like this logo right here what’s one okay this is from one of the courses we had down in Arizona

Anyhow doesn’t matter let’s say it says Titleist on it whatever glove you use doesn’t matter if I take that titlist logo and I keep that logo looking at the Target line which is the wall there the club head stays out in front everybody see that let me do it from face on so

When I keep the logo looking at the wall see that the club head stays in a good position if the logo rotates Towards the Sky see that see the logo rotate the sky then the club’s going to drag inside this is what it looks like down the line this would

Be correct logo stays looking at the wall in front of me logo search rotating towards the guy Club drags inside what also happens to the club face there can anybody see that rotates open doesn’t it all right so let’s talk about this because this is I can’t emphasize it enough if you get

This first move away from the golf ball dialed in and correct and you can practice this at home in your living room at the office in the garage you don’t need even to make a full swing but if you get this part right man you got a

Good chance of hitting good golf shots so when we’re set in there we’re going to keep the club face Square 45 degree angle see that and we’re going to keep the club head outside the hand slightly these are all Concepts we talk about in the book The Bad lie all the stuff

That’s already in there all right now let’s move on to the third thing now the third most common mistake I see is what we call the reverse pivot and we talk a lot about the pivot here at vs golf right we talk a lot about the

Pivot matter of fact it’s one of the one of the things we’re going to talk about even tonight we do these Academy lives we do YouTube live right now this is awesome it’s a favorite part of our job is interacting with you and hearing the questions and the feedback so we can

Understand what it is we want to talk about but also on Tuesday nights we do an academy live for those people who are part of our Academy where you get all of our content and all of our stuff it’s a smaller intimate group and we really engage people we ask all types of

Questions we got that going on tonight Nick can probably put some stuff in there if you’re interested but the reverse pivot the pivot the reverse pivot is the third thing that I see what is a reverse pivot first of all because we get a lot of

Questions about the pivot so here we go I got my alignment right I’m just going to put it right here in the middle of my stance okay all right a reverse pivot is when the club and the arms go One Direction and the weight or the pressure goes the other

Direction let me say that again a reverse pivot is when the arms Club go One Direction and the weight goes the other direction so this is the most common one arms and clubs start going back weight starts going forward see that this would be reverse pivot arms and clubs back

Weight forward down the line we look like this arms and club going towards you towards the camera weight going towards the wall see that and you can see what happens to my head too right so what happens is is when we reverse pivot in in the takeaway now my weight’s too

Far forward and the club’s here okay the only way now to get that club back is to then reverse that cycle which is arms go forward weight goes back how many of you seen this huh how many have you ever done this come on we’ve all done that at

Some point right you hit the shot your weight’s on your back foot people will say you know geez Mark or John or whoever you’re you’re not getting through the golf ball well the reason you’re not getting to the golf ball is because you never got behind the golf

Ball you got to get behind the golf ball and you know in the vertical line swing one of the most important things is proper weight shift it’s one of the components to creating power and speed it’s one of the assets that are available to us no matter how young or old we

Are okay and I don’t at some point um Nick maybe we should talk about maybe not today we can talk about later I don’t know but talk about the power sources like how do we create clubhead speed you know there’s three ways to create Club head speed sorry I’m going

Off a little bit of a tangent here but there’s rotation okay there’s vertical up and down and then there’s pivot side to side and the pivot the side to side is one of the most important Concepts to learn and understand as we get older because it’s

A power source Force so when the weight goes forward and the arms go back then I’m going to reverse that on the forward swing okay so that’s why we teach the 6040 right how many of you you’ve heard of the 6040 right probably nauseum Nick’s like oh my God are you going to

Talk about the damn 6040 again come on Cole that’s that’s enough so but we teach the 6040 60% weight on the Lead Foot 40% on the trail precisely for that reason so that early in the takeway as the arms and Club are going the away from the target your weight is also

Going into your Trail foot I’m going to give you a drill for this it’s a drill I give this drill all the time you once I start talking about it you’re gonna be like oh my God here he goes with this drill real again right so 60 40 and as

The club Works away from the target the weight goes towards the trail foot okay and one of the things that you want to understand is that the vast majority of the time the weight on your feet should be moving in the same direction as the club

Does let me say that again one of the things you need to understand is that the movement of the club should mirror the movement of the weight on your feet so when the club moves to your Trail foot the weight goes to your Trail foot see that and when the club goes towards

The target your weight should go towards the Target or towards your lead foot okay so the reverse pivot is the third thing that we have so we’ve talked about an open Club face rotating it open not good we can fix that though by I see two knuckles I see two Knuckles we’ve talked

About the club Dragon Inside not a good thing so we can talk about the logo stays looking at the Target or at the wall we’ve talked about the reverse pivot when the arms and Club go away from the Target and the weight goes towards a Target this is a problem

So how do I do that I get the arms and club going away I get my weight going towards my trail foot now what’s the drill what do you think the drill is our right left drill we talked about it last week when we went live we talked about it last week

We’re talking about it again why because when the club is in continuous motion the body naturally synchronizes with the golf club I don’t think in my 30 years of coaching golf when I’ve done the right left drill I’ve ever seen somebody do this I don’t even know if I can do it

Okay okay that does that how well first of all I’m gonna get dizzy I’m gonna fall over okay Nick’s laughing at me over there right so the right left drill which is simply for those of you’ve never heard it or seen it when we send the club to the right or right-handed

Golfer and the club to the right weight goes to the right foot when I swing it to the left weight goes to the left foot and I just do continuous motion three of them not fast but continuous and I just say to myself right left right left

Right left and when I do that my body gets moving in synchronizes with the gck okay hey that’s enough chatter out of me for a while there that’s a little bit talking about some different stuff let’s get into some questions I really appreciate you throwing those questions in there

Nick give me a question what do we got a few of them but Paul ask how does he stop looking at up at impact okay so the question is thank you Paul for that where Paul where you from my friend put it in the chat we love hearing where

You’re from we appreciate you um the question that Paul asked which is a lot of people strugg how do I quit pulling up or looking up at impact okay now generally what happens at impact is a byproduct of something that happened before now obviously impact is the people would say it’s the most

Important position in golf I mean I there’s some argument to that of course because that’s when we strike the golf ball but generally at that moment of time that’s all the impact position is a result of other things that have already happened so one of the things that I

Would look at all right would be the direction of your swing lots of times when people stand up that’s kind of what Paul’s saying is like how could I keep my head you know my body from standing up I think that’s what you’re saying there Paul if not let us know but you’re

Saying how do I quit from doing this well if the club is too far low and around okay it’ll tend to bottom out behind the see where it wants to bottom out when I’m really low around it wants to hit the ground back here well the ball’s over here Ball’s over here

Right so that’s not going to work so what do we start to do well we try to get the club to hit down where the ball’s at so by standing up that helps kick the club out so the first place that I would start Paul would be I would

Look at the direction of your lead arm when you swing the club back okay one of the cornerstones of the vertical line swing is that the lead arm Works back and the lead arm works up the lead arm Works back and the lead arm works up matter of

Fact there’s eight words that describe the golf swing we talked about them last week in the live session if you know those and you put those in the chat eight words you put those in the chat we’re gonna get Nick we’ll give them something for free right we’ll we’ll get

A hold of you you I don’t know if anybody’s gonna get that we’ll talk about it later if you don’t get it but we used we described the golf swing in eight words last week in the live session all right what else we got uh Colin asks one of our favorite

Questions uh how do you shift the weight to the back foot without swaying okay I love this question colum thank you for asking this I don’t know where you’re from colum but I appreciate you asking that question all right is how do I shift my weight to my trail foot without

Swaying we get this all the time okay I love this question this is a sway a sway is when the weight goes to one foot it could go to either foot you could sway both directions okay but wash my feet this is a sway it’s a sway not because

I’m shifting weight it’s a sway because the weight is going to the outside of my foot outside of my left foot outside of my right foot that’s a sway this if I take my toes and point them out one of the things we teach okay this is not a

Sway because the weight is staying on the inside of my foot see that okay so the question is is first of all that’s what a sway is is so how do I do that well I think a lot of it has to do with with flexibility all right people who are

Really flexible can probably keep their toes pretty straight ahead and can maybe even keep their knees flexed and turn and rotate and not sway okay but if you don’t have a lot of flexibility and your toes are straight ahead and you keep your knees bent what’s going to happen

Is the momentum just going to take you to the outside of the foot so what we teach and what we believe is to take the toes and flare them we also believe that as you rotate you should straighten the trail leg a little bit which allows the

Hips to turn and allows you to keep the weight on the inside of the foot so when I turn see I turn right there the weight’s easier to stand the inside of the foot so what I would suggest you do is flare your toes a little bit and also

Make sure as you swing back as your lead arm your lead arm is tracking towards the top you’re changing knee Flex where your Trail leg is starting to straighten a little bit and your left knee or your lead knee is starting to bend a little bit and that will help you keep the

Pressure and the weight on the inside of the foot really good question really good question all right Nick what else we got we got a couple other questions we want to get to here yeah soic no more I believe we’ll see him tonight actually uh he’s asking when does stack and tilt

Become a reverse pivot okay who asked this one nomadic no more part of our coaching for all right hey this is a great question I’m glad you this okay stack and tilt stack and tilt is a very popular system in the golf swing and let me start by saying this these guys okay

Who came up with this revolutionized golf instruct I have a lot of respect for These Guys these are two smart dudes and they taught us as instructors a lot of things all of us as instructors we learn from each other right I mean David lead better and Jim mclan and Hank Haney

And Butch Harmon and the stack and til guys they taught us all a lot now I will say this there are some Concepts in the stack and tilt that are really good okay they’re really good all right and I don’t want to describe stack and tilt

For them they should describe it on your own you can look it up online and find it out but in essence what it is is that the weight stays pretty much forward throughout the motion now I think this is is a good system and can work for

People who have a lot of rotation are pretty strong and pretty athletic there’s there’s some validity to that especially with the irons I’m not real sold on it personally for the driver but I’m also not sold on it okay for a golfer who lacks flexibility uh maybe

Doesn’t have a lot of strength okay because what it does is it limits that ability to move the weight from front from front foot to Trail foot and backwards so um I think the stock and tilt becomes a reverse pivot when too much stays forward and the head goes

Down and forward okay if you can stay relatively centered and still pivot and turn I think that’s okay so I don’t know if I answered your question there but what I’d like you to take away from that is the stack and tilt has validity to it

But one of the questions we all have to ask ourselves is do I have the physical capability to do that and hit a gol shot and for some people the answer is yes and for some people the answer is no okay hope that makes sense all right

What else we got let’s do one or two more questions and then we’re going to go ahead and wrap her up this has been a lot of fun yeah John says that he’s got a flatter back swing and draws his driver like to be able to have a okay so

The question is is that John says hey I got a flatter back sling that’s okay it works if it works for you John that’s great um but he hits a draw flatter back swings can cause more of a draw ball flight not a bad thing but that can

Happen all right but he’d like to a little bit of fade so a couple things you could do I’m going to give you two tips all right number one is and I haven’t really shared this a lot so this a good question everybody else pay attention you haven’t read this in the

Book you probably never seen it in any of our videos but I picked up this uh tip from John up in Fargo great instructor and he taught me this one this is probably 20 years ago but basically take the last three fingers of your lead hand so for me that’s my left

Hand my pinky my ring finger and my middle finger take those three fingers okay and just grip the club as tight as you can throughout the whole motion okay and by gripping the club as tight as you can with your pinky your ring finger and your middle finger okay that will create

Some pressure some tension in your forearm and will help keep the club face a little bit more open all right so that would be tip number one tip number two would be to give it what we call the Arie Palmer finish we all love Arnold Palmer a legend okay a legend All right

But we all know when Arie had that finish he kind of had a slashing finish right and he would finish and he kind of had that club kind of up here like this right we’ve all seen that those famous shots where he hits it and he kind of

Holds it up like that okay that would be the second tip I would give you is give it the Arnold Palmer finish instead of rotating the club this way see the club shaft there give it more Arie Palmer finish where the shaft is more here versus there and that will help it

Out all right let’s do one more question then we got to go ahead and wrap her up well mentioned eight words oh yeah did we G do we I I haven’t had it so one we touched on it before okay we don’t have okay so let me touch on that right now

So this is how we describe the GOL swing in eight words okay let’s go through it you can even write this down we want to simplify this move all right the arms okay arms take it up arms take it up body takes it around arms take it up that’s four body

Takes it around so in its most simplest form if my arms swing the club up and my body pivots that looks like a pretty good spot so here we go arms take it up body takes it around boom I like that spot what do you think look pretty good

To you guys and gals out there Nick gives a thumbs up he likes that all right so that’s how we describe the golf race hey now next week we’re going to talk about the three keys to consistent contact today we’ve talked about the three most common mistakes that golfers

Make in the takeaway next week we’re going to talk about the three keys to consistent contact so hey we appreciate you logging in we appreciate we’re g to do this again next week live session all right we’re going live again next week we got tonight we got the academy live

For those of you are interested I think I don’t know Nick did you put some information in there okay just put some information right there if you’re interested in that you get access to all of our content the vertical line swing tour draw short game I mean I mean I

Don’t know how how much stuff is in there Nick I mean a lot Nick just said a lot I agree there’s a lot of good stuff in there so hey we appreciate you be sure to check us out at USG gool tv.com we’re on social media VLS golf you got

It we appreciate every one of you and we’ll see you everybody next week