The Rotary Swing Book

by Chuck Quinton

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Golfers learning the one plane swing who miss to the right are often more experienced, lower handicap golfers who have been taught to swing more from the inside. Most of these golfers come from a two plane swing background that teaches the golfer to drop the arms back down from their “high above the head” position at the top of the swing. In order to give the hands time to get back down on plane, their hips will slide laterally toward the target while delaying the rotation of the upper body back to the target. This move drops the club back to the inside and is unnecessary in a more rounded type golf swing.

Because the one plane swing is built around a rotational action of the body, sliding the hips toward the target causes the club to be delivered too much from the inside causing blocks or snap hooks. When the hips slide toward the target, the position and angle of the spine is changed. First, the upper spine tilts away from the target, which in turn, changes the plane angle of the shoulders. This change in the shoulder plane drops the right shoulder beneath the desired plane which, in turn, drops the club beneath the plane. From this position the golfer must rely on his hands to square the club and control the ball flight.

If the golfer does not have an overly strong grip and does not try and rotate the club face back to square with the hands, the ball will be blocked to the right. If he does try and “save” the shot by squaring the clubface with the hands, this will cause a snap hook. Somewhere in between these two extremes is a ball flight that starts right and draws back toward the center, but the timing required to execute this consistently is not something that can be repeated over the long haul by the average golfer.

To stop missing shots to the right, maintain your angles throughout the swing. Your hips should rotate, not slide and your shoulders must rotate on the same plane back and through with no dipping of the right shoulder.

Notice in the photo above that Chuck Quinton has rotated his body aggressively through the shot and is "swinging left" but the ball has come out perfectly straight and on line with the target. This is the ideal feeling of the Rotary Swing.