Fatal flaw                     Open-face take-away.
Awful results                 Slice, pull, smother, hook, scuff, or shank.
Magic move                 Early backward wrist break, with thumb press.
Check points                One knuckle of left hand visible, two of right hand, and none of club face when hands are hip high.

Now you are ready to start the golf backswing, to uncover the first fatal flaws that appear, with the horrible shots they produce, and to learn the first of the magic moves that will cut strokes from your score.

Ironically, these first flaws that creep into the average player's golf backswing produce an effect that is the exact opposite of what he wants. Just as you have, he has read and heard all his golfing life that certain things are essential. The first of these is that you must pivot, the second is that the club must be taken away from the ball inside the projected line of flight, the third is that the wrists should be broken late and upward.

We dealt with these three points individually in Chapter 2. Now let's see what happens when you put them into prac­tice. You twist your body as you start the take-away. This brings the club back on an inside line. Fine. It opens the face of the club too. Excellent, you say, for you know it should be open at the top of the golf backswing. You delay the wrist break as long as possible and then let the wrists break upward.

Then what happens? The very thing you wanted most to avoid. You hit the ball from the outside in, with an open face (usually), and you get an outlandish slice. If you close the face on the downswing you probably will get a pull, or a smother (if it's closed too much), or a hook. If the club is outside the line far enough, you will even get that most horrible of all shots, a shank.

You are then thoroughly crestfallen. You have done every­thing you'd been told to do and you still hit those awful shots. Why?

You hit them because your early movements got you into such a position at the top that you could hardly hit anything else.

Your early pivot, your attempt to "turn in a barrel," didn't permit you to transfer your weight to your right leg. You kept too much of it on your left leg.

Taking the club away inside (it was probably quite sharply inside) got it moving too flat, as well as opening the face.

Then, to get the golf backswing farther along, you had to bring the club up. At that point things began to get tight and un­comfortable. To ease them you stopped the turn that your shoulders were making and let your left wrist collapse, or bend back and go under the club. This let you raise the club and get what you felt was a full swing, without being uncomfortable. The face of the club, of course, was wide open at the top. (See Fig. 20.)

What happened next was inevitable. You started the down­swing by regripping with your left hand, which had loosened, which made you get the club head started moving too soon. Your weight, being mostly on your left leg, moved back to the right leg. You turned your hips and shoulders sharply, which threw the club onto the outside-in line you were trying to avoid. And you came down across the ball. Chances are that as you did, your left knee snapped back and locked and your right knee bent straight out in front of you. And your follow-through, what there was of it, carried the club around you instead of up and out after the ball.

You, however, see none of these things as the cause of your bad shots. You feel only that you haven't done well enough what you are trying to do, and in your efforts to meet the standards, you exaggerate the actions. You don't improve. You may easily get worse. And you finally end your practice session frustrated and dejected, or your round, if you are playing, with a shameful score.

The Magic Move

Fortunately, there is a cure for all this, a cure that is almost miraculous. The magic move that puts you on the right track immediately is simply this:
Start the golf backswing with an early backward wrist break.(

Of course this sounds too simple to be true. It violates every rule you ever heard about starting the golf backswing. Your first reaction is that Messers. Dante and Elliott have gone completely off their rockers. But it is true—and unless your golf backswing is now everything that you want it to be, you will find out how and why this magic move is made.

The wrist break itself is simple enough, actually, though if you have been breaking in the conventional way you may need a little time to convince yourself of what is to be done and to make yourself do it.

Since the backward break is one of the key points in our system, let's be absolutely certain you understand what it is.

First, hold your right hand in front of you, fingers to-gether and extended, thumb up and the palm squarely facing the left. From that position bend the hand to the right, trying to make the fingers, come back toward the outside of the wrist.. You can't get them anywhere near the wrist, of course, but a person with supple wrists can bend the hand back until hand and wrist form a right angle (Fig. 12).
 
This motion of the hand, straight back, is the backward wrist break.

Fig. 12. The way the right hand should move from the wrist in the early backward break—straight back toward the outside of the fore­arm, with no turning or rolling.

The standard wrist break is quite different. Hold your hand again as you held it before. Now, instead of bending it backward, bend it up, so that the thumb comes toward you. That is the orthodox, accepted wrist break. Forget it. You will get it eventually, but you don't want it now.

You will remember that the grip we stipulated was one which, at address, showed only two knuckles of the left hand and one of the right hand. You will also recall that the right hand was put on the club so that the left thumb lay right down the middle of the right palm. This brought the heel of the right hand against the big knuckle at the base of the left thumb.

The Thumb Press

To make the backward wrist break we merely push the heel of the right hand down against the big knuckle of the left thumb. This is a downward pressure of the heel on the thumb. When it is done, without moving the hands otherwise, the right hand breaks backward at the wrist and the left hand breaks forward or inward, the hack of the left hand going under and facing, in a general way, toward the ground (Fig. 13).


Fig. 13A. How the backward break is made, with the heel of the right hand pressing down on the knuckle of the left thumb. The back of the left hand begins to turn down and under.

Fig. 13B. How not to make the break. Wrists and hands have rolled, the back of the left hand has turned upward. The right hand is rolling too, instead of bending straight back.

At this point the club will have come back slightly inside the projected line of flight but the club face will not have opened. The face will be at about a 45-degree angle with the ground and, as you stand there, you will not be able to see any of it (Fig. 14A).

Fig. 14A. How the backward break looks from the side. Note the bend in the left wrist as the back of the hand turns down, and the position of the right wrist. Notice also that the face of the club has not opened.

To be certain you are making the break correctly there is a perfect check point at this stage. If you look at your hands you will see, if the break is right, one knuckle of your left hand and the first two knuckles of the right. The left hand will be broken in, at an angle with the wrist (Fig. 15).

If the break is completed here, without letting the hands move away from their address position, the club will have been brought back and up until it is almost parallel with the ground.

How near it approaches the parallel depends on how supple your wrists happen to be.

Following our description of how the break is made, try it ten times. If you don't soon get the feel of it, try it twenty or fifty times. But do it until you get the feel, checking yourself each time with the left-hand and right-hand knuckles and the angle of the face of the club.

This is a key move—the foundation of the golf backswing—and you must do it right, get the feel of doing it right, and do it so much that it becomes automatic. It is easy to practice, requiring very little room, and can be worked on indoors or out, winter as well as summer. Get it, and get it right.

We have not put this into the actual golf backswing yet, remember. We are still working on the mechanics of the wrist break. It is just possible that at this fundamental stage you will refuse to believe that you can hit the ball with such a break. So make this test:
Fig. 14B. The wrong break, with wrists rolled. Note the difference in the left-hand position here and in Fig. 14A, and observe also the dif­ferences in the club-face positions. Never do it like this.

Go to the practice tee, or to a range or an indoor net. Address the ball. Make the backward break and do nothing else. Don't shift your weight, move your hips, or turn your shoulders. Just make the backward break. Hold it a couple of seconds. Now simply turn your shoulders, letting the shoulders swing your arms and the club up to the top, and then go right on through with the golf backswing and hit the ball.

You will be amazed at what happens after you try this a few times. You will find, if you keep the wrist position, that you not only hit the ball, but that you hit it solidly, hit it straight, and hit it a surprising distance.

You will also discover that the more you permit the turning shoulders to swing the club up, the better you will hit the ball and the farther you will hit it. Make no effort to swings the. Arms just let the: shoulders  move them and the club. The more the arms are swung independently of the shoulders, the less likely you are to reach a good position at the top.

Fig. 15. Here is what you should see when you make the backward break per­fectly—only one knuckle of the left hand but two knuckles of the right.

So picture the shoulders as the motivating force, the "motor." [Chapter Incomplete]

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