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Is Your Takeaway Ruining Your Swing Before It Starts?
Is Your Takeaway Ruining Your Swing Before It Starts?
Authored by: Brady
Posted on: 5 May 2026

You've probably been told your whole golfing life that you need to keep moving before you swing. Waggle, forward press, rock the knee — whatever it takes, just don't stand still. Surge heard that too. He just never agreed with it.

His thing was this: if you're pressing forward to start a swing that needs to go backward, how do you make that feel exactly the same every time? With every club, every lie, every round? After a while, you start to realize — you can't. That little forward move changes just enough, just often enough, to mess with your timing without you ever knowing why.

What Surge taught instead was to come to a full stop before starting the swing. Feet planted, waggle done, one last look at the target — then still. From there, a simple three-count: squeeze the grip equal in both hands, press the knees out slightly, and go. The toe of the club moves first, the arms follow, and the club finds its way back up the plane. Nothing fancy, just quiet and controlled... Read More

Authored by: Don Trahan
Posted on: 15 October 2009
We start the play of every hole from the tee box. Sometimes these tee boxes are tucked up close to and tight against the side of the hole. These tee boxes make it very difficult for most... Read More
Authored by: Don Trahan
Posted on: 14 October 2009
I was reading some blogs after an article I wrote about alignment and a lady wrote in asking a question. She said that her husband, who is a really good player, constantly tells her that her... Read More
Authored by: Don Trahan
Posted on: 13 October 2009
After one of the recent articles on alignment, with a lot of references to the toe line (determined by setting the feet square to the aiming line and then the rest of the body to the feet), a... Read More
Authored by: Don Trahan
Posted on: 12 October 2009
Golf had a great week. The Olympics voted to put golf back into the 2016 and 2020 games and the Presidents Cup was a huge success at Harding Park GC in San Francisco. The day the vote for... Read More
Authored by: Don Trahan
Posted on: 11 October 2009
I have two Surgisms that I believe tell it all as to the importance of Alignment. The first is, '€œ90 to 95% of all swing problems arise out of Bad Alignment.'€ The second is, '€œAlignment'€¦... Read More
Authored by: Don Trahan
Posted on: 10 October 2009
I returned to yesterday'€™s article to re-read it in preparation for writing this one. After finishing the article, I scrolled down and saw a comment by Don Correia saying I had just made... Read More
Authored by: Don Trahan
Posted on: 9 October 2009
I can'€™t tell you how many times I have had student in a lesson tell me he is hitting a lot of blocks or pulls or both, or how many times I have read that in blogs, or when playing a round... Read More
Authored by: Don Trahan
Posted on: 8 October 2009
Let'€™s start with defining what a square back foot means in the setup. The toe line, which is parallel left of the aiming line, is called the toe line because the toes of both feet are to... Read More
Authored by: Don Trahan
Posted on: 7 October 2009
For all of you who are knowledgeable in PPGS terms and initials you know that my acronym, NOB, stands for '€œNose On the Ball'€ and that NBB stands for '€œNose Behind the Ball.'€ Both are... Read More
Authored by: Don Trahan
Posted on: 6 October 2009
Matt Kuchar won the PGA Tours first Fall Series event ,The Turning Stone Resort Championship, on the 6th hole of sudden death playoff with a par, beating Vaughn Taylor for the 1.08 million... Read More