It is not uncommon to see the word square used in many different ways. You may read or hear that the ball should be square to your stance, that ball contact should be square, that the club should be square to the ball pathway, that your stance should be square to the line of flight and that the clubface should be square in different positions in the backswing and downswing.
I believe that most golfers may have a fairly good idea of what each usage of square means. But we should look more closely at how the term is used in execution of different drills.
For example, in a drill that is used by some pros to learn the feel of a square clubface, you grip an iron with only your left hand. You then swing it back until the shaft is parallel to the ground.
At this point the face should be square and the leading edge should point to about 12 o’clock. From this position you add the right hand to grip the club and then swing to the top.
However, they never spell what is meant by a square face when the club shaft is level to the ground. We can interpret this to mean that the clubface rotated 90° but will be square to the ball if we reversed the action back to the stance position.
But is it really necessary to do this drill? For some reason it is believed that by starting back without the club in the right hand and then rotating the clubface toe up, it increases your chances of delivering a square club face at impact.
But does this happen? It is not an automatic act. This drill may be good when first learning the backswing to get the feel of rotating the left arm so that the toe face points upward. But rotation of both arms takes place in the full swing to get into this position. The left arm is not solely responsible.
Because of this it is important to get the feel of both arms rotating to get the club into the square position with the toe pointed upward. Both arms should grip the club so that you get the feel of rotating both arms in the initial movements of the backswing. In fact, without the arm rotation it would be impossible to take a full backswing.
It is somehow assumed that when you hold a particular position that your body will automatically do the actions necessary to achieve this position. But this is not so. You must learn the actions that are involved, i.e., the arm rotation in order to achieve the position.
A great specialized strength exercise that you can use to learn the feel of the arm rotation is medial and lateral rotation with the Strength Bar. By doing this exercise you also strengthen the muscles that are involved in arm rotation. Both of these actions enhance your ability to rotate the arms properly on the backswing and downswing.
When the arm rotation action is learned it will occur automatically in the backswing. To ensure that it also occurs on the downswing entails a separate learning action. There is no guarantee that what you do in the backswing will automatically transfer or reverse itself on the downswing.
Most important to keep in mind is that the action of rotating the club with both arms so that it is “square” in the backswing, is necessary in order to take a full backswing. This is the main reason why the arms rotate to get the toe face up. It is not to ensure a square-to-the-ball contact!
Each action in the backswing and downswing requires separate and distinct exercises. The exercises are needed to not only develop the physical and technical abilities needed to execute the actions, but also to develop a feel for the actions.
When the movements are learned and practiced a sufficient number of times in the exact actions needed, the movements will then become automatic. At this time you will no longer have to think about them as they will then already be incorporated into the swing.
However, if you start playing too soon without having these movements mastered, then your technique will not be replicated on every stroke and you will experience increasing difficulties. This in turn will result in poor swings and resulting poor shots.
What you do on the backswing determines to a limited extent what takes place on the downswing. Perfectly positioning the clubface on the backswing does not ensure that it will be square to the ball on contact in the downswing. The key point here is that you must learn the feel of rotating the arms and/or forearms to have the clubface perpendicular at contact.
See Explosive Golf for more information on this and many other aspects of the swing.