One plane swing and two plane swing

I do understand what you are saying, Vj's shaft looks under/inside that plane in picture 2

Neil18 - not MY definition but THE definition by Jim Hardy - the main who made popular the One Plane Swing and Two Plane Swing talk - below is a quote taken from his article in golf digest

"If your arms swing up from address to around your body on about the same plane as your shoulders turn, I call that the one-plane technique. If your arms swing up more vertically, not in the same plane as your shoulders turn, but on a steeper plane, I call that the two-plane technique. It's that simple."

Now the reason i dont like the the theory is because like you said its nearly impossible to find someone who swings with the shoulders and arms EXACTLY on the same plane - however as Hardy states above - the One Plane Swing sees the arms and shoulders in ABOUT the same plane. I dont like the word about - i like exacts in my world!

Anyway i understand what you were saying about a One Plane Swing - that the club never moves from its plane - however in EVERY swing the club has to move out of the shaft plane or you would swing so flat you'd hurt yourself. Perhaps you meant parallel to the original shaft plane?

Lastly - there is no way jack Nicklaus is a One Plane Swing by the way!

No offence meant in any of the above - just discussion

cheers

nick

I have a One Plane Swing in terms of setup and backswing and I use this move to. I feel as if I pull my hands straight down from the top whilst keeping my back to the target (ringing the bell). This also moves the lower body forward. After a short time your if you have kept connection between your arms/chest on the backswing *this is key* then this connected upper body core has to turn through together. You MUST keep your arms and wrists soft though, else they wont release passively through impact

You then just have to experiment and feel the angle and the speed to make this upper body/arm swing. If you swing too far to the right you will cut the ball, too quick to the left and you will pull. You want to come from the inside just enough to send the ball straight and feel like you are extending your hands and arms to the target

Golf is truly a game of feel and you have to spend time on the range 'feeling' these movements in order to ingrain them

Nick,

How I love cans of worms! Don't worry about what you write mate. You could write all sorts of things and I wouldn't get offended! If it's about golf, and doesn't involve swear words, I can't get offended!

Anyway, swing planes! Wehey! Isn't it? Hmm?

Point conceded on Mr Nicklaus. Just found a clearer vid of him swinging and OH MY GOD! How did he ever hit the ball straight?!! It's back on the one plane until his club is horizontal to the ground, then wooooooooosh! It goes straight up past his right ear! I dunno what you call that. Lets call it the Nps - the Nicklaus plane swing. That's a Two Plane Swing in the backswing alone! What a man.

This Hardy chap is the first person I've ever heard talk about the plane of the shoulders in the swing. The plane of the shoulders is set by your spine angle. Which is sorted out at address and maintained through the swing. I've heard about spine angle! Anything to do with plane I've always been told is to do with the imaginary arc that is drawn when the club and arms swing around your body. The Explanar is the best visualisation for the swing plane:

www.explanar.com/Home/2005design/Landing.htm

The ring formed by the Explanar is one swing plane and is adjustable dependent on a persons height (like a normal golf swing as mentioned long ago when we started this mess..............I mean thread!).

When using this device, it is cultivating a One Plane Swing. You can't bring it back down on a different plane to that on which it went up. It doesn't allow it. Hence why a Two Plane Swing is one plane on the way back, a different one on the way down.

Re the talk of the angle of arms and shafts vs the angle of the shoulders. Personally, that's not two different planes. That's just the arms swinging on a low plane (level with shoulders) or a high plane (above shoulders). But when it's plane of which we speak, its club and arms of which we talk!

N18

PS pnearn - thanks for the development of my point on "dropping" the club. A few good nuggets to be aware of there.

By the way, it's deadly wrong to use the "shoulder plane" in relation with the swing plane - don't matter who said it. The shoulder angle is determined by your spine angle, which is in turn detemined by your height. The taller you are, the more you bend - unless everybody customizes their club length exactly to their height, but how many of you do that?

Of course VJ has his shoulder in line with his club shaft at top, the guy's a tower. Hogan doesn't, check the cover of Five Lessons.

hardy realizes what you are saying, he just wanted to make an easy to understand reference point for the average golfer.

For a really lucid explanation of one plane swing log on to golftoday.co.uk,tuition series one, lesson 10, Leslie King should be recognised as the first to bring this concept to golfers, and, an added bonus it's for free.

I'd say you're sucking up to him if I didn't know better. I don't think Jim Hardy knows what he's talking about.

http://www.golfdigest.com/instructio...ingplane4.html

Look at the picture. He's bending over like a cocktail shrimp just to prove that a One Plane Swing goes on the "shoulder plane", so people can buy his theory. (Remember I said only tall people who had to bend over more would swing around on the shoulder plane.) Have you seen any real player do this? Bend 35-45 degrees at address? Shrimp posture, seriously. And he uses Hogan as an example, the dude's got nerve!

A real trait of a One Plane Swing (well just using the term for argument, not hardy's definition) is that the shaft angle to the ball doesn't change during the entire swing, and therefore the setup shaft angle is the same as that at impact. See Jim Mclean's Hogan video.

With hardy's One Plane Swing attempt in that picture the shaft is way low at address, where the toe of the clubhead is way up. There's no way he'd maintain that angle at impact. His hands would easily be 6 inches higher at impact.

Hardy's stuff is pretty much garbage.

"I'd say you're sucking up to him if I didn't know better"
on this one you dont know better. I just know his reasoning. dont care too much about his swing theories, I have read them, I saw him in person. His whole point is to simplify it, I dont really fault him for that.

Neil - i love the explanar thinking - i must try and get on one at some point!

Lukeworm - i agree - i do not like all this one plane 2 plane talk and think Hardy's writings are hopeless.

nick

About shaft angle in address and impact.
I think that nobody has the same angle.

I looked at videos of different players and compared there hands at address and impact. Everyone had hands higher on impact than on address. I think that the ball stays at the same place thus the angle changes?

What do you think? Does a player have a different swing One Plane Swing vs Two Plane Swing on woods and short irons? If you compare the posture on address, you notice that on short irons players are not standing as straight as with woods?
(This can mean that they swing differently in some way - would it be One Plane Swing to 2 ps). Or can 1 ps be just a coincidence - something that happens when? Sometimes you just are lined up?

Hannu

I was wondering about this 1Plane vs 2 plane. Thanks for pointing out the article in last Mays GD. Pulled it out and there it was. Guess I didn't read that issue cover to cover.

Most golfers stand with their hands too low at address. People are taught to let their arms hang free. A correct stance would make it easier to return to setup shaft angle at impact, and Ben Hogan always did. Of course you stand more upright with longer clubs, you just have a shallower plane that's all.

isnt another distinction of the 1p and 2p the difference as to how you start the down swing? 1p-turning of shoulders vrs 2p-beginning from the ground up?

it appears that both Toms and VJ have the left arm parallel to the swing plane at the top of the backswing. The difference I see is the Vj's arm is more over his left shoulder ( a flatter swing ) and Toms arm is closer to his left ear (more upright). Isn't this just a consequence of address? VJ has a bit more tilt than Toms at address.