How to Fix an Inside Takeaway in Golf

Pulling the club immediately inside on the takeaway is one of the most destructive habits in golf, sabotaging your swing before it has a chance to develop power or consistency. This single error throws your club off-plane from the get-go, forcing a series of compensations that often lead to a nasty slice or a wild hook. This article will show you exactly what an inside takeaway is, why it happens, and give you three rock-solid drills you can use today to fix it for good.

What is an Inside Takeaway (And Why Is It So Bad)?

An inside takeaway happens in the first few feet of the backswing. Instead of moving the club, hands, and arms back as a cohesive unit, the golfer immediately pulls the clubhead behind their body. The hands roll a lot, the club face opens, and the club shaft gets extremely flat and deep, well inside the target line.

Here’s a simple way to picture it: Imagine an alignment stick on the ground extending straight back from your golf ball, along your target line. In a neutral takeaway, the clubhead would track parallel to or just inside this line. With an inside takeaway, the clubhead whips drastically to the inside of that line right away. You feel “stuck,” and your only options are to make an athletic lunge from the top to save the shot, which rarely works out.

The Chain Reaction of a Bad Takeaway

This first move isn’t an isolated problem. It triggers a cascade of issues. Since the club is trapped so far behind your body at the top of the swing, your brain knows it needs to redirect it back toward the ball. This leads to two major compensating moves:

• The Over-the-Top Slice: This is the most common result. To get the club back in front of you, you throw your right shoulder out and towards the ball, creating a steep, out-to-in swing path. This path cuts across the ball, imparting left-to-right spin and causing that weak, horrible slice that lands in the right-side trees.
• The Big Block or Hook: The other compensation is to keep the club on that inside path. This forces the golfer to flip their hands aggressively at impact trying to close the club face. If you time it wrong, the face stays open, and you push the ball way right (a block). If you overdo the flip, the face closes too fast, and you hit a snapping hook to the left.

Either way, consistency is out the window. You’re forced to rely on pure timing, and your power is drastically reduced because your swing sequence is completely out of sync.

How to Tell If Your Takeaway Is Too Far Inside

Before you start working on fixes, you need to confirm that you actually have this issue. It can be hard to feel, as your body has likely accepted this move as normal. Here are a few simple ways to diagnose your own takeaway.

The Alignment Stick Check

This is the classic checkpoint. Lay an alignment stick on the ground, pointing at your target, just on the outside of your golf ball. Address the ball as you normally would. Now, start your backswing slowly and pause when the club shaft is parallel to the ground. Look down. Where is your clubhead in relation to the stick?

• Good: Your hands should be roughly over the alignment stick, and the clubhead should be slightly outside your hands. Your hands have moved straight back, not in.
• Inside: Your hands, and especially the clubhead, have pulled well to the inside of the alignment stick. This is the tell-tale sign.

Check Your Clubface Position

When your club shaft gets parallel to the ground in the backswing, take a look at the toe of the club. In a good, neutral takeaway, the toe of your iron should be pointing mostly up towards the sky. If you see that the clubface has rolled open and the toe is pointing behind you, it’s a clear indication that your hands and forearms have rolled the club too far to the inside.

Film Yourself - The Ultimate Truth

The easiest and most definitive way to know for sure is to see it yourself. Prop your phone up on a golf bag or tripod and record your swing from a "down-the-line" view (directly behind you, looking at your target). Watching the playback in slow motion will make it obvious. You’ll be able to trace the path of your clubhead and see exactly where it goes in the first few feet, leaving no room for doubt.

The Common Causes of an Inside Takeaway

To fix the problem, it helps to understand why it happens in the first place. For most golfers, an inside takeaway is a symptom of one of these three root causes.

Cause #1: The Disconnected 'All-Arms' Takeaway

This is the big one. Many amateurs believe the backswing is started by pulling the club back with the arms and hands. This decouples the arms from the bigger, more powerful torso muscles. When the hands and arms are working independently, their natural tendency is to pull inwards, sucking the club immediately behind the body. The proper feeling is a "one-piece" takeaway, where the shoulders, chest, arms, and club move away from the ball together as a single, connected unit like we talked about in the swing summary, everything moves in a rotated fashion.

cause #2: Body Rotation is All Hips

The swing is a rotational action that needs your upper and lower half to work in combination with each other. If all of that initial movement and focus is from the hips, often the arms get dragged behind you making the swing more inside and flat. If invece, you focus on using the chest and shoulders more in the intial stages, the arms stay connected better stopping them dragging behind on that initial phase and staying slightly more inline but also higher.

Cause #3: A Misunderstanding of a "Shallow" Swing

Golfers hear a lot about the importance of 'shallowing the club' in the downswing for powerful, on-plane impact. This is true! However, many incorrectly try to create this shallow plane right at the start of the takeaway. They forcefully flatten their swing plane and pull the club inside, thinking they are pre-setting the perfect "in-to-out" path. In reality, the shallowing move should happen naturally during the transition from backswing to downswing, not on the way up.

Three Simple Drills to Fix Your Takeaway

Okay, enough theory. The only way to rebuild a fundamental movement pattern is through repetition with a purpose. These three drills provide excellent feedback and force you to feel the correct "one-piece" move.

Drill #1: The Headcover Blocker

This might be the most effective drill for this specific fault. It provides instant, undeniable feedback on your club path.

How to do it:

1. Take your normal setup.
2. Place your driver or wood headcover on the ground about one foot behind an on the inside of the golf ball. So if you were looking from behind there is a distinct path for you to try and avoid. Your goal is to swing back without hitting it.
3. Take slow, half-swings at first. To miss the headcover, you’ll be forced to move your arms and club away from your body, keeping them in front of your chest instead of sucking them inside.
4. This will feel wider, more extended, and possibly like your backswing is "steeper". that is fine for the moment as it will break any excessive shallowing habits

Start without a ball, just making practice swings. As you get the feel, you can start hitting soft wedge shots, gradually working your way up to full swings with your irons.

Drill #2: The One-handed Takeaway

This drill isolates the correct shoulder and torso movement, preventing any possibility using your trail arm to manipulate the an inside club path. It builds muscle memory to highlight what "one piece" truly feels like.

How to do it:

1. Grab a mid-iron and take your normal setup, but hold the club with just your left hand (or lead hand)
2. Rest your right hand (trail hand on your lead side) on the side of that shoulder to exaggerate the feeling you're trying to achieve
3. Making the initial feelings of turning the upper body without wanting your lower hips to dictate all of the direction.. Once you’ve done a few half swings like this making a conscience effort on feeling how much the upper body has to dictate the direction go into a few more with two hands again..
4. Repeat for a few minutes as a warmup before every range session or round to solidify the feeling.

Drill #3: Stand closer to the golf ball

This a really simple exercise in logic but you'd be surprised how much we see our golfers doing it wrong!

How to do it:

1. If you stand far from the golf ball your posture may be leaning forward a touch more making an "upright" backswing incredibly athletic, so instead the body's natural response will be to swing flatter getting inside quicker
2. If instead, you stood closer, the backswing will naturally feel more upright making it very difficult for your body to rotate around as much and get that golf club getting stuck too quickly behind
3. This feel might feel weird to start of with but that's going to highlight how naturally you were already standing at the golf ball and will help with how you stand at the ball going forwards

It's important that with this adjustment you still remain in and atheltic posture!

Final Thoughts

Correcting an inside takeaway is about rebuilding the start of your swing from the ground up, teaching your chest and arms to move as a single unit instead of letting your hands disconnect and run the show. By understanding the causes and using simple drills with clear feedback, like the headcover exercise, you can develop a an initial move that places the club in an ideal poisition for poer down the line. It won't happen overnight, but this is work that will have your ball striking thank you for it

We know that re-grooving a swing path takes time and targeted feedback. Sometimes, it’s not as simple as diagnosing a fault, you need help applying it on the course under pressure. For those moments when you're facing a tricky lie created by an old swing habit, or you're just not sure how to approach a shot strategically, turn to Caddie AI. By snapping a photo of your ball's situation, we can analyze the lie and give you smart, simple course management advice in seconds. It allows you to commit to a confident swing without letting technique worries dictate your decision-making.