How to Start the Golf Downswing Perfectly On Plane: Practical Tips for Powerful, Consistent Swings

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How to Start the Golf Downswing Perfectly On Plane: Practical Tips for Powerful, Consistent Swings

BY Adam Bazalgette

Posted On July 21, 2025

Every golfer wants to hit the ball farther and straighter—without having to completely overhaul their swing. The secret to both power and consistency often starts with one key move: getting the downswing started on the right plane. If you can hammer a nail with confidence, you can learn this skill.

Adam Bazalgette, PGA coach and founder of Scratch Golf Academy, explains simple steps to build a swing that delivers speed and accuracy from the start of your downswing. If you’re just getting started, beginner golf lessons in Naples FL can help you build swing fundamentals from the ground up.

Common Downswing Mistakes to Avoid

Many golfers share two habits that sabotage their downswing before it even starts.

1. Club Moves Out Toward the Ball This is where the club quickly gets away from the body as you begin the transition. Beginners and even seasoned players can fall into this habit when they’re eager to hit the ball hard. The result? Your club gets “over the top,” swinging more steeply than it should.

2. Coming Over the Top: Too Steep If you watch the swing from behind the target line, these golfers lose their ideal angles fast. Their wrists unhinge early, often because the club feels heavy at high speed. When the clubhead gets too far from your body and your wrists lose their set angle—what instructors call “lag”—you’re setting yourself up for mishits.

Why These Mistakes Hurt Your Game Losing wrist angle and letting the club move too far away from your body leads to:

Loss of clubhead speed and distance
Weak, glancing contact with the ball
A tendency to slice or pull shots
Struggles with consistency from shot to shot
Difficulty controlling impact position and swing path

This not only decreases the instant force that you can achieve at impact, but it also makes it really tough to hit the sweet spot all the time.
So, if you become aware of these mistakes and what is causing them, you can begin to reshape your downswing for better results.

What Pros Do Differently: Lessons from Billy Horschel and Charles Howell

Top golfers make the downswing look natural and repeatable. Adam Bazalgette highlights two PGA Tour pros—Billy Horschel and Charles Howell—to show what this looks like in real swings.

Visual Analysis of Pro Swings

Billy Horschel:

Swings with a long iron following a plane line
Arms rise slightly, but as he starts down, the club and hands don’t go straight down the plane line—instead, they descend gradually toward it before rounding out and into the ball
Avoids letting the club push out toward the ball at the start

Charles Howell:

Loads the shaft dynamically from the top, with noticeable wrist set
His right wrist points down toward the ground on the way down, helping the club reach the right position
Avoids a large drop of the right shoulder, unlike many amateurs

Together, these examples prove it’s not about keeping the club perfectly on the plane line at every moment, but about returning to it with the right sequence. The arms move down, wrists hold their angle, and the body supports the swing without getting in the way or overcompensating.

What Amateurs Can Learn from the Pros

Pros avoid “over the top” swings by:

Starting the arms downward instead of directly outward toward the ball
Maintaining wrist angles longer into the downswing
Blending arm movement and body turn, rather than rushing the transition
Using the body’s weight shift or “bump” to drive the motion

While practicing counterswing drills, an amateur aims to copy what he has seen in professional golf. Slight details such as how much the right shoulder drops or at what point the wrists unhinge can greatly affect both the power and the accuracy of the shot.

The Hammer Analogy: Visualizing the Perfect Downswing Start

Let’s bring the concept down to Earth. Imagine putting a plank of wood or a table in front of you, with a nail sticking up. How would you hammer it? You would raise your arm and then bring the hammer straight down with force- no fancy moves.

What Golfers Do Wrong (But Never Do Hammering)

Dipping the right side or keeping the arm too tucked: You wouldn’t keep your elbow pinned or your right side bent down just to bring the hammer down.
Throwing the hammer away from yourself: Hitting away from your body would feel awkward, and the strike would be weak.

This is the kind of motion the beginning of your downswing should have.

The trail (right) arm straightens, and the club drops into place.
Wrist angles hold longer to “spring” through impact.
Your weight shifts for additional power (try pressing into the ground as you swing).

The most crucial cue from this drill is that the wrists should feel like they’re going down toward the surface (either the ground or an imaginary table) at the start of the downswing, letting the club and arms follow in a natural and powerful motion.

Practical Tips for the Hammer Drill

Do:

At the start of the movement, make sure your trail arm goes completely straight. (If you are right-handed, this would be the right arm.)
Retain your wrist angle just a little while-release it through the point where you would hit the nail.
Begin with a little hip bump or shift towards the target.

Don’t:

Excessively rotating your shoulders or causing a dip in them right at the start.
Allow the club to move outward and away from you
Impose any force with the hands or club down on the ball in tension
Combine this arm and wrist motion with a body turn to feel this very strong popping feeling without trying to overthink it.

We are talking about learning how it feels to hammer at home or on the range. Set up a bench or any flat object about where your hips would be. Imagine hammering a nail into it. What do you notice?

For extra help, try golf swing drill videos in Naples, FL to visualize and reinforce these concepts.

Join 69,000+ golfers improving their swing— start your free 14-day training here and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDdPSUwIvyo for weekly tips from PGA pro Adam Bazalgette.

The Mechanics of the Downswing: How to Blend Arm and Body Movements

Mastering the transition is all about blending, straightening and rotation. If you separate arm and body motions too much, your timing falls apart.

Straightening the Trail Arm

Get the trail arm to start straightening as part of the early downswing. This will bring the club closer to you and drop it back into the correct plane.
If the arm stays bent for too long, the club stays behind, or you lose power.
If you speed up, it could create an over-the-top swing from the club.

As the trail arm is straightened, a slight bump of the hips toward the target is another important part of setting the bottom of the swing at a point just in front of the ball, where it belongs for a perfect solid impact.

Coordinating Body Rotation with Weight Shift

The turn of your body is actually what puts all these elements together. The weight shift, or bump, should lead the arms and club but never overpower them.

Be aware of certain mistakes:

Allowing your arms to swing too far right without starting your turn in time-so as to hit behind or miss the target line
Failing to straighten the arm sufficiently while turning often results in steep, glancing shots

Be aware of certain mistakes:

Start to straighten the lead arm as the first move in the down phase
Start moving the weight toward the target (but do not slide with the hips too much)
Start the body rotation once the club has dropped into position
Keep tension at a minimum, making the whole thing feel quite fluid.

Relax, experiment, and enjoy finding your natural timing. Getting these motions to blend will take your swing from tight and forced to smooth and rhythmic.

Troubleshooting Common Problems

Bottoming out early or swinging excessively to the right: The rotation of the body needs to commence a little earlier. Avoid holding back the unwinding of the chest and hips.
Rigorous practice will achieve a consistently steep or “over the top” swing: Try keeping that trail arm straighter, and initiate your downswing with a slight bump onto the lead foot.

Progress is gained through gentle trial and error. As Adam Bazalgette says, “Don’t get caught up in some mistakes; you can sort this out and get on to hitting powerful on-plane shots.”

Conclusion

Setting the downswing up perfectly on-plane is easier than one thinks if one knows what to avoid and focuses on a simple issue or feeling, like hammering a nail. Good coordination between the trail arm and the wrists, while the body is shifting and turning, is required.

A mate can totally pick up an unstoppable downswing alongside drilling. Get into the drills, watch the hammer analogy in action, and benefit from Scratch Golf Academy’s resources to gain further understanding. Your most consistent swing is within your grasp.

“I’ve been a Scratch Golf Academy member for 5 months and in that time I’ve lowered my handicap from a 25 all the way down to a 16. It’s a great program, and if anyone is thinking about trying it, I highly recommend it!”

-Fred Fowler