First off, allow me to say that I have a great deal of respect for Hank Haney’s ideas around swing plane. The idea of parallel planes is an original idea in my opinion that I had not heard before Haney, so I give him credit with the idea. That being said, his idea that he doesn’t care what the body does and he only cares about the club should now be shown for what it is – the complete wrong way to train an amateur golfer.

When working with tour pros the job is quite easy. They all already move their bodies so well, that you can focus more on the movements of the club. Amateurs on the other hand, move their body like Barkley. Barkley is SO club focused and focused on hitting the ball that he’ll NEVER get past his hitch with the way Haney is training him.

Honestly, we’ve dealt with swings like this a lot, Barkley’s steepening of the shaft move is far from uncommon in amateur golf. Charles’ is more severe than most, but it’s all related to the same thing. He needs to put his mind in rotating his left oblique to clear his hips on the downswing. That’s it. He needs to go through the exact same drills that we use during our lessons each day and during our clinics.

Take a quick look at his old swings and guess what he does – ROTATE. Now, his hips stop turning and he’s focused on hitting the ball. Haney has actually made his problem WORSE by only focusing on the club. Six months later and he’s still in the exact same boat with a problem that we could fix in a week.

Learn to move the muscles correctly, rotate the body and stop worrying about the club (for now) and Barkley would be fixed in 6 days, not 6 months – guaranteed.