Keep your right elbow behind your right hip and your hands as close to your fight pants leg as you possibly can (inner circle) while turning your upper body as hard as you can in your spine angle. The more you stay bent over and turn your upper body, the tighter your hands must be to your right leg. If your right elbow leads (a mistake in Hogan's book) the right arm and in front of the right hip, one of three things will happen. You will either straighten up your spine angle and hit with a club stuck behind you, or you will hit in the heel, or you will slap the ball left. None of these are acceptable alternatives. KEEP THE SPINE ANGLE BENT OVER...AGGRESSIVELY TURN YOUR UPPER BODY AROUND A BENT OVER SPINE ANGLE...KEEP YOUR RIGHT ELBOW UP AND BEHIND YOUR RIGHT HIP AND YOUR HANDS AS LOW AND AS CLOSE TO YOUR RIGHT LEG AS POSSIBLE.
Best wishes,
Jim Hardy





Allow me to address the arms issue once more in two regards. First, the drill does slightly exaggerate what is absolutely orthodox. It makes your right elbow slightly higher and more behind you and your left arm slightly tighter and lower on your chest. If someone ever got there, they would still be very correct and one hell of a player. It would not be wrong by any stretch of the imagination. I state repeatedly in the book that it is ok if your right elbow gets too high and too far behind you, even to the point that it might "fly". There are a large number of great players that have/had "flying right elbows". It is a diaster to not get the elbow far ENOUGH, behind you. It is no harm if it is too far behind you. The same with the left arm getting a little too low and tight to your chest. If such a thing was bad for a golfer, then Hogan, who had a very low and very tight left arm, needs to appologize and return a bunch of trophies. His left arm was often below his shoulder plane.

The real issue here is acceptance. Good players and most teachers have been brain washed to believe that ALL SWINGS must keep the arms IN FRONT OF THE BODY. To consider anything else is heresy. But as I point out in great detail in the book, doing so destroys one-plane swings. But that is a very bitter pill for many in golf today to swallow because they have been touting arms in front for a long time. If there was any one issue that got me back into teaching golf it was this exact piece of such bad instruction. Getting the club amd arms behind you is just what a one-planer must try to do. Watch any old film of Hogan, Snead, Knudsen, Palmer, etc and you will see the arms go so abruptly inside and behind them that you will think they are taking them between their legs. The key is what you do from there. If you turn the hips and not the shoulders also on the downswing, or tilt the shoulders on the downswing or force the right elbow back out in front of your right side in the downwing, then a CLUB STUCK BEHIND YOU WILL RESULT. The answer to a club stuck behind you is not to keep it in front of you!!! The answer is to learn how to turn your upper body correctly around a bent over spine, while keeping your right elbow up and behind you and your hands close on the inner circle. For a one-planer to keep his arms in front requires him to then slow down his body and time the arm swing with the body turn....JUST LIKE A TWO-PLANER...which is exactly what has been happening to all one-plane instruction in the last few years.

Brandle Chamblee did a analysis of Peter's swing on Golf Central last Sunday just after his win at the Ford Players Championship. He showed and talked about this very thing. About how all great players take their arems to the inside and behind them and then turn them back out on the downswing, just slightly above the plane they were on in the backswing. He was so right on this and it is the reason that I chirped in on this thread in the first place. The show was in fact the genisus of this thread. I would recommend every one-planer to watch that swing analysis

Jim Hardy

that's a great point. look at what tiger has done with his swing since he started working with hank haney. the most notable thing is how he now is much flatter in his backswing, and how the back of his left hand is flat as well. he does this by getting and keeping his right elbow behind him early in his backswing. tiger is not ready to be called a one-planer, but the move he incorporates into his backswing has sure helped him a lot.

Unfortunately, I'm a guy who reads and sees a LOT of instruction in books and videos.  I have had four instructional pros in the past 8 years.  I do this, of course, because I think it will help somehow.  I'm not totally paralyzed with conflicting info or info overload, I'm just not very good, even though I keep telling myself, "I'm getting better" and "I'm on the verge."  It is obvious to anyone who has seen the 200 lbs of golf literature in my book shelves, tossed under my bed, stacked in my closets, spread around the coffee table, that my real issue is a disease of non-commitment.  I have read JH's book and at the time, I wanted to be a one plane swinger.  But, of course, I've read and seen a lot of other stuff since then.  Yesterday, I played with a guy who brings the club back, I believe exactly the way JH recommends for the one planer.  And, wow he was consistent.  If that consistency wasn't so impressive, it would be really boring golf.  Well, this isn't a commitment you understand, but I'm going try to groove these things into my swing.  I'm going to dust off the JH book too...and that is a commitment.  I doubt I'm going to toss the other 199.6 lbs of books and videos even though it would help me a lot - that would require a special 12 step program.