I am curious to hear what you guys think of Hank Haney's swing model, which is perfectly demonstrated by Tiger Woods at this point and would be considered a two plane swing according to Jim Hardy. Interestingly, the club is always on the shaft plane or perpendicular to it in Haney's swing, which would more technically be termed a one plane swing but, but of course, his arms work back in front of his body during the downswing and his left arm is above his shoulder plane at the top.

Mark O'Meara remains Haney's truest student.

He is the perfect example that the "natural" golf swing results in a draw, which is Haney's contention.

Tiger's clearly altered it to make it suit him: he's not swinging now like he did even a year ago, ditching the flatter swing plane and going back to pretty much his old backswing. He was getting stuck with Haney's swing at first, though, because he dropped the club to the inside like he always had (ie, on plane going back, then under the plane coming down). Now he fires those hips like always, but rotates the right forearm, as he says, instead of dropping the hands to the inside and meets the ball with a square the clubface. The hands are definitely in front of him.

Is it a one plane swing? The greater question is, Does it matter?

All it shows is that you take a gifted player and there's nothing he can't do. For his next trick, Tiger's going to win the Masters playing left-handed.

Lefty

PS What is interesting to me is that after working on Hardy's "throw", I find that the forearm is pretty much where Tiger has it - facing the target - although Tiger's arm has moved in front of the hip. I think Haney took things from Hardy and played around with them and came up with his own ideas. Having said that, I still have a lot of trouble with a guy who had the driver "yips" for years.

I think one need to define the ops a little different than just looking at the shaft plane.  I think it shold be defined having connection with the arms to the body or not.  It is possible to have that throughout the swing, but it requires body athletism.  I think the main reason for consistency in the OPS is to have maximum control of where the arms are and get them correct at impact.  I believe that is what Hogan did different from others.

If the arms are not connected to  the body, they can get ahead of the body, they can get down too late, they can come to low and inside and they can be thrown out of the body.  If that happens, the ball will not go as intended.  That happens with Tigers driving...  But I guess having one shaft plane is much better than switching planes.

If both arms are connected to the body, they will come down with much better timing, not thrown out, not too inside, not to early and not too late.  It will be a totally body controlled release.  mechanically this makes sence.  But it must fit the golfer and his body and I do not know if it then is as easy.

Naturally the shaft plane will be flatter.  there is something with the term aligator arms...

Still Tiger has a beautiful finish with his irons, I guess since he fires the hips/body in the way he does.

Wow, great discussion! As you guys saw from the video I posted of Tiger working on his swing at Hank's ranch in the Members Vault this week, his swing is perfectly symmetrical, practically a perfect circle that shifts planes but is always parallel, a big difference from what he learned with Butch. It does rely on the hands to swing the club into positions, but after my own experimentation, the manipulation is less than what it may look like. The challenge comes in the move from the top which is a big difference between what separates a one and two plane swing when you forget about the arm/shoulder plane at the top. You must hold that right shoulder back while moving the hips laterally in Haney's model or you have very little chance of getting the club back down on the shaft plane as early as Tiger does in the downswing. Of course, having taught a two plane swing for several years and having been taught a two plane swing by my instructor at one point in my career, I know just how hard it can be to overcome the temptation to "blast off" from the top and rotate like mad. While there are numerous differences in the two swing models, this should also be something that is a determinant in choosing the model for you. Do you want to rotate like crazy from the top and be aggressive throughout the swing, or do you have the patience to hold that right shoulder back and start more with the hips while the arms drop a bit? The interesting thing is the one plane swing feels like you're always working hard, the two plane swing feels really slow and quiet until the club gets back down to parallel to the ground. I've noticed some really big differences in the way the shaft reacts on the way down. When going aggressive from the top, the shaft loads earlier and thus unloads earlier, requiring me to play very stiff shafts or the club will be completely bowed forward at impact adding a lot of loft. In a two plane swing, the shaft feels more quiet and actually is on the way down, loading much later in the swing and requires completely different shafts for me. This could be a completely personal observation, but the tendency should hold true for all since the key in the one plane swing from the top is to "rotate as hard as you can", as Hardy put it. Is the two plane swing right for anyone? Absolutely, but it depends on a lot of things. For instance, I had a guy come to me for lessons yesterday who was new to the concepts and was looking to try something "radically different because nothing else had worked." After a long series of questions, it was easy to determine that he wanted to go all out on every swing, hit hard and never feel like he had to hold back.  Needless to say, that's a pretty aggressive attitude which would kill a two plane swing. He used the word aggressive a dozen times and liked the feeling of rotation and hitting hard with his body. No brainer there. Others fall in the middle and like to have more feel and others don't possess the body speed, strength or flexibility to hit powerful shots with a one plane swing, or just don't want to be that aggressive.

"The challenge comes in the move from the top which is a big difference between what separates a one and two plane swing when you forget about the arm/shoulder plane at the top. You must hold that right shoulder back while moving the hips laterally in Haney's model or you have very little chance of getting the club back down on the shaft plane as early as Tiger does in the downswing. Of course, having taught a two plane swing for several years and having been taught a two plane swing by my instructor at one point in my career, I know just how hard it can be to overcome the temptation to "blast off" from the top and rotate like mad. While there are numerous differences in the two swing models, this should also be something that is a determinant in choosing the model for you. Do you want to rotate like crazy from the top and be aggressive throughout the swing, or do you have the patience to hold that right shoulder back and start more with the hips while the arms drop a bit? "

YES! Thats exactly what ive been trying to explain for the past 3 weeks about coming steep on it! But obviously you know all the best ways to explain the golf swing.

I have a natural 2 plane swing and did make a mistake trying to learn the one plane swing (mainly because I was so fustrated with my game this winter I thought I needed to do something totally different but I was wrong!).

So I think thats why im coming steep on it, because I had learned abit of the one plane swing about rotating from the top and then I thought "Dont go agaisnt your natural swing Rick" So then when I was doing 2 plane swing I was still rotating from the top and coming over the plane and hitting pulls and cuts!

I go at the ball very hard with my driver, mainly because it makes playing golf twice as fun even if im in the trees all day long (hehe strange things turn me on by the looks) I love just having short irons into the hole! But im going at the ball to early in the downswing instead of being patient from the top as you say!

So holding back my right shoulder till the club gets to parrelel to the ground should help me.

Good post Chuck, Thank you!

Rick

Willrob,

I think that is the perfect way to describe it, not extreme in either direction.

BTW, has anyone actually tried to make swings at the pace of Tiger in that video I posted? It looks insanely slow, like he's hitting a half shot, but the pace is very, very quick when I try to swing along with it. I have a pretty quick tempo and was falling behind. Amazing what sound technique and a simple plane and path can do to the look of a golf swing. That swing looks lazy and it's anything but!

Oh man, willrob, you opened up a HUGE can of worms with that question. Everyone and their brother has a way to define their version of a "two plane" swing, using that term rather loosely. You could read every single golf book ever written and just end up with a million different versions. I don't think you will find a cut and dry answer here, just opinion. I'm taking the time to study Haney right now more in depth but he's just one of probably a dozen I consider worth studying. Leadbetter, Lumpkin, Harmon, SLAP, Toski, Flick, the list could go on for eternity. Because the "two plane" swing has been envogue for so long, it has had it's share of interpreters and they all end up reading a lot like Golf Digest - one tip says this on page 85 and on page 86 this guy says the exact opposite. I'm afraid you're going to be swimming in a pool of muck for a while on this one. Part of the difficulty comes in the fact that most all of these instructors are just theorists who can't show a single golfer who swings EXACTLY the way they envision their model. That's where Haney is lucky because O'Meara doesn't even perfectly follow his model as well as Tiger and Tiger does it as perfectly as any human could possibly emulate. That's why I feel it is worth while, because I can see a full, real swing in action, not just a bunch of staged photos showing what they think is ideal. In truth, I started this two plane forum to help do exactly what you are asking. While it will be impossible to come to any consensus on a sound two plane swing, even working specifically with Hardy's model because he also doesn't have anyone to perfectly fit his theories, I think there can be a good flushing out of ideas, opinions, and hopefully even a couple facts. The two plane swing I was taught and learned how to teach I learned from Adrian Wadey who has a lot of Leadbetter and Robert Baker influence because that's who he worked with and learned it from. It fits a Hardy model pretty well, but I'm not overly fond of it and always open to new ways of thinking about it. Haney's model intrigues me because I can truly see it in action demonstrated by one of the best iron players the game has ever seen in perfect form. I'm actually working on it in my own swing to gain intimate, first hand knowledge of it and see what it feels like. There's no better way to learn it than from experience. Here are some screen shots from my session today:

Ok until I get to here where I get steeper than Woods, amazing how much left forearm rotation it will take to match the plane, but I also let my arms get too far behind me too early in the swing, a one plane hangover. My arms have to work up earlier and less around.

Little flat at the top, of course, because my hands got too deep. Tiger also has the club on the same plane, I would be somewhat "across" at this point which could be resolved by a better takeaway, more forearm rotation or less wrist cock, or a combination of the three.

I'm not sure if he has the club in this toe up position on the way down, I can't tell from the video, but I would guess it's close and he's starting to really rotate that right forearm down to get the club out and square.

Toe is still pretty open here, hands a little high because the club is late, arms not out in front early enough, my shoulders are just a touch too open.

Shaft is obviously above the plane. I've got to make some adjustments here in several places to get down on plane that will take some work, I've only been experimenting for the past two days.

right forearm is on plane during the followthrough, atleast I got that right! Club is pretty close but too high.

I have had to make a couple other changes, one was to strengthen my grip to add a steepening move in my swing to get the club working up more on plane earlier as I've always been such an "around" swinger of the club. Having the clubface work back more closed, or square to the plane line longer, helps steepen the plane and get the club working up. I spent some time studying Kevin Na's swing that I filmed in high def at Bayhill this year and his backswing is strikingly similar to Woods. I captured it at 1/10,000 shutter speed at 1440x1080 so you can see a ton of detail, way more than I could see in that video of Tiger at Haney's studio. I will post his swing in the Vault pretty soon so others can see it. Looking at the higher quality original version of Tiger's swing I believe his clubface was very square or even shut on the way back as well, take a look:

The area I circled is his clubhead, which is pretty closed at that point, but it's still sort of hard to tell for sure. Either way, it would definitely make sense that this is what he is doing and Kevin does the exact same thing and my grip was too weak to do this without a lot of manipulation, so I'm now getting used to a stronger grip as well.

rag, argue all you like about Ernie, video doesn't lie.

Skully, that's exactly what I'm referring to as far as Sergio's swing - narrow = one, wide = two. Hardy doesn't really focus much on swing plane, nothing compared to the degree of Haney, so comparing their two models in that sense is apples and oranges.