Brian Jacobs runs the Brian Jacobs Golf Academy at Mill Creek and says you can check if your swing is on plane is at home.
"It needs to be practiced properly," Jacobs says. "You hear the old phrase 'practice makes perfect'? Well perfect practice (really) makes perfect. It's real important to understand how the golf club moves and show the positions on the takeaway and at the top and at impact. You can do that in front of a mirror."
Jacobs likes to physically move his students into the correct positions. A lot. "I'll continually keep moving them and moving them and moving them and moving them and moving them until I can get what I want," he says. "A great way to teach is to keep moving (students) properly and then move incorrectly and they can automatically feel the difference. That's how they can be empowered to help themselves when they practice."
"There isn't one plane, there's the plane," Jacobs says. "It's based on how (a golfer) sets the club up at address. It's based on the length their arms, the length of their back, their legs."
Learning the proper swing plane often comes with the sobering realization of how far off a player's current swing may be. However, that does not mean an extended period of poor scores while the new swing plane is being learned.
"I tell students to embrace the process more than the result of it," Jacobs says. "When they start thinking of the process of changing as opposed to the score, they'll actually loosen up and start playing a lot better."
Brian is a member of the Western New York PGA section.
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