The Slot, is simply the optimum angle of the left arm and club coming down into impact.
The idea is to keep the club head behind the hands for as long as you can. This is really what Width means in the golf swing.
If the club head gets outside the hands to soon coming down, the club head moves closer to the ball sooner, which equals a lack of width.
What we tend to see with the Tour Professionals is a distinct change of direction (flattening) with the club during the transition, and in my experience this is very difficult to achieve without the club going back on a steeper angle.
This means the club head has a job of going upwards during the takeaway, through the cocking (radial deviation) of the left wrist. Combine this with the left shoulder moving downwards and you’re well on your way to a centered backswing that involves a 3D movement of the spine – Tilting, Turning and Extending.
Click on the video below, where I explain how many of the top players in the world take club back steeper and shallow it out during the transition and into the downswing.
As always, as long as it’s on point – please feel free to leave a comment afterwards and share it with your friends by clicking on the links below.
hi james, ive been doing this at work tonight, then come home and saw it on ya blog.i like what you said about reconnecting right shoulder on the way down,because i was scared of coming over the top. i also like the hands coming more on the inside on the way back. i really like this new way of swinging it.its funny how things change over the years because you would never tell people to pick it up steep. keep up the good work
Hi coop. Thank you. Agreed, I wish I could go back and give my first 1000 lessons again sometimes because I certainly wasn’t talking about this stuff. But although the shaft plane is steeper going back, the hands are moving inwards to start (deep) keeping the arms connected and allowing the left shoulder to move downwards.
In my experience it’s very difficult to feel the club head ‘drop’ at the top to shallow out the plane, unless you can feel the loop. So thinking about steeper going back, and flatter coming down makes sense to me – and that’s what so many guys on tour do if you watch them closely. This may help also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7mGFNXILKE
Great article – informative and insightful. Jim Furyk might also be a good example (perhaps a more extreme example) of the looping action. I would appreciate your further insights on the motion of the right wrist. Here is my attempt to put into words what I think is happening. If you take the club back fairly steeply the right wrist would cock in a more vertical manner in relation to your forearm. When you initiate the downswing, I think that the right wrist has a looping action much like a sidearm throwing motion of a shortstop in baseball or like skipping a rock on a pond. And as you pointed out, the position of the right wrist must be maintained at impact (“flying wedge”?) The throwing motion is then completed through the impact area with the extension of the right arm through the ball – driven by the pivot.
Hi Jim, yes I agree with your description of the right wrist. The guys that take the club head a little more inside would naturally bend their right wrist more. They key is building up the #3 PP during the transition (first joint/pad of the right hand trigger finger). The club then feels much heavier compared to when it went back. That’s why I generally tell people to try and feel the club steeper/lighter going back, and flatter/heavier coming down.