Trouble with your takeaway? Use this go-to guide for an easy fix
If you’re struggling with your golf takeaway

GOLF Top 100 Teacher Jason Baile has an easy drill to finally master it for better results

You can’t improve your contact until you perfect your takeaway. Here’s how to do it!

Image via Instagram/Titleist

Welcome to Shaving Strokes, a GOLF.com series in which we’re sharing improvements, learnings and takeaways from amateur golfers just like you — including some of the speed bumps and challenges they faced along the way.

If you asked me how I was hitting the ball about a month ago, I’d tell you I was still quite the inconsistent ball-striker, often leaving the clubhead way too open and pushing everything to the right.

When this happened off the tee, I would produce a major slice. With irons, it would cost me distance, while also carrying the ball from center-to-right — which is no way to go through a round of golf.

Frustrated, I talked to a few different folks about what I needed to do in order to improve. Almost immediately, everyone said the same thing: Work on your takeaway!

In the past month, not only am I hitting more irons pure; I’ve been crushing my drives, consistently traveling the farthest I’ve ever seen as a golfer. But could it really all be due to a simple adjustment in the first little moves of starting my golf swing? Indeed.

Improving my takeaway means consciously thinking about rotating all the way back, getting my arms in the right positions, keeping the clubhead on plane, and using my upper body to act as a pendulum as I come back through impact. The results now speak for themselves; I’m starting to hit more fairways and greens in regulation.

How to master the perfect golf takeaway
Since the takeaway is such an important step in the swing sequence, GOLF Top 100 Teacher Jason Baile shares a drill that feels good and has helped me hit better shots. The video above (courtesy of Titleist’s YouTube channel) shows how it works.

Baile says it’s important to get the feeling of a good takeaway, which is why he uses a simple hardware store product (gear tie) to give instant feedback while using this drill.

“[This drill will] you an understanding of some feelings to get that golf club working back in the takeaway in the first three feet in a much better fashion,” he says. “[I then wrap the gear tie] around the shaft a couple of times, and make it look like airplane wings.”

Baile then walks through two common takeaway mistakes, an open golf takeaway and a shut takeaway, sharing ways to correct each.

Open takeaway
“When I set up to the golf ball, my tendency is to roll my airplane wings flat to the ground, getting the clubhead a little too far behind my hands with the handle a little too far out. This causes me to pick it up and get it across the line too much,” he says.