Gary Alliss on Creating Backspin (Video)

This is the simplest demonstration of how to create backspin I've found. Gary Alliss from Golf Monthly really breaks it down here.



Note that you don't want to lean the shaft too far forward. Many players don't realize that if you deloft the club too much, the ball will fly too low and go nowhere.

Gary gives you two primary keys:

• Ball position
• Top of the shaft just on the inside of your lead leg

You can see a number of other things he's doing as well, like putting a bit more weight on his lead leg, opening his stance slightly and using a lot of wrist cock on this fairly short swing. (You'd need that wrist cock on a longer swing as well.)

But it's your setup that makes all of that work properly.

It's a bit difficult to tell exactly where the ball is positioned in Gary's stance because the camera angle seems to change partway through. But you can see that the ball is between the middle of his stance and his trailing foot -- to my eye, it looks to be closer to the middle of his stance. And Gary indicates that the position might change a bit, depending on the shot.

And the top of the shaft isn't in front of his lead thigh, but it would be just touching the inside of his thigh. The key thing you should notice here is that the shaft and his lead forearm do NOT form a straight line. That's because the ball is farther back in his stance, and creating that straight line would make the shaft lean forward too much.

From this position, you can create a lot of backspin with that wrist action.

This is something you can practice pretty easily because it doesn't take a lot of strength. It's all about setup and technique -- and it's a pretty simple technique, at that.

Now if the weather will just clear up long enough to get out to the range...