Forget Low & Slow: Snatch the club back like Jon Rahm

This will take a little patience, but please bear with us: Many elite swing coaches and biomechanists agree that if you want better sequencing in your swing and to hit the ball farther, copy the short and quick way Jon Rahm takes the club back. The reason? You probably can’t. Merely trying to copy Rahm’s snappy action can promote good things, which we’ll explain in more detail later. Moving faster on the takeaway can be a real breakthrough for average golfers who struggle with the kinematic sequence of a golf swing and how to deliver real speed into the ball.But first,a little story from Rahm to help set this up:

Rahm never gave much thought to how quick he takes the club back until he played in the BMW PGA Championship a few years ago. The DP World Tour had set up a special camera on the 11th tee at Wentworth Club in England and captured footage of Rahm’s swing and the swing of Justin Rose, his playing partner. Then they replayed the swings side by side.

“By the time Justin Rose made impact, my ball was already 150 yards off the tee,” Rahm says, laughing. “It’s funny, I never want to think about it, but my wife compares it to Andy Roddick’s serve in tennis—short and quick—and there’s a lot less that can go wrong because of it.”

Kelley Rahm makes an important point, and it’s something you can learn a lot from if you’re looking to hit it farther and straighter. Although you might not possess Rahm’s strength or his incredible hand-eye coordination, and although you might not practice six days a week for hours at a time, simply trying to copy how he takes the club back can do wonders for your power and consistency.

Here’s a simple take from Rahm’s swing coach, Dave Phillips: “It’s true that the longer you swing the club, the more time you have to put energy into the swing. But the longer the average golfer swings the club, the more issues can creep in. If you just want to strike the ball better, ramp up the time you take the club back, like Jon, and change direction quicker.”

Read on if you’re intrigued by this idea that the old golf-swing cliche, “low and slow,” might not be the way to take the club back. We’ve got some data that might surprise you—and some tips to help you really take advantage of it.

RAHM’S BACKSWING: It takes Rahm 0.41 seconds to get the shaft parallel to the ground and 0.70 to the top. Amateurs are about halfway back in 0.75, GEARS Golf says.

LIV Golf/Chris Trotman

The reason Rahm’s backswing is short and quick goes back to how he compensated for a birth defect. He describes it as a “club foot,” and although it was corrected in childhood through a series of procedures, his right leg is shorter and his right foot is smaller than his left leg and left foot.

When it came to swinging a club, his childhood coach, Eduardo Celles, figured Rahm would have an easier time managing it with a shorter backswing.

“When they broke my foot and got it back in the correct alignment, they had to cast it and keep recasting it, so it developed slower than my left leg,” Rahm says. “And so the limitation of my right ankle sort of dictated how far I should take the club back to stay in control of my swing.

“I mean, I can take the club back to parallel. If I wanted to be a long-drive champion, I could probably get there, but my accuracy disappears.”

That’s why Celles got Rahm to stop his backswing when the club is still pointing relatively skyward. But before he gets to that spot, he’s already changing direction with his lower body and moving aggressively down and toward the target.

It’s a move that happens in a flash and is fueled by Rahm’s strong hands and powerful 6-foot-3, 250-pound body. If you tried to copy him, you’d likely not be able to stop the club in the same spot—and that’s the real secret to why Rahm’s quick-and-short backswing could be the key to better ball-striking for you, Phillips says.

Most amateurs rush into the downswing before fully completing the backswing windup. Worse, they start down with their arms and club instead of initiating the move into the ball with the lower body. When trying to copy Rahm’s move (even though you likely can’t duplicate it), you force yourself to complete the backswing with your upper body while simultaneously starting the downswing with your legs and hips. Your body is going in two directions at once—just like a pro. It’s similar to cracking a towel or whip. Your hand is still moving away from what you are trying to strike as your arm goes forward, creating the “snap.”

MORE: What tour pros really think about Jon Rahm

Your golf instructor might have told you to take your time starting back in the hope you wouldn’t rush and ruin the sequencing of the swing. But do you think that’s how most pros do it? Data provided by Michael Neff of GEARS Golf in Portland, Ore., shows that tour pros start back quick, reaching a point in the swing where the lead arm is parallel to the ground in only 0.62 seconds on average (Jon Rahm’s time is 0.53).“Jon is definitely one of the fastest in the takeaway among the players we’ve tested,” Neff says.

How do those times compare to the move of an average Saturday-morning golfer? Neff says their lead arm hits that mark in 0.75 seconds—and Rahm already is done with his backswing by then (0.70).

'By the time Justin Rose made impact with the ball, my ball was 150 yards off the tee.'

Furthermore, the cadence is often the opposite of an elite golfer, says Tyler Standifird, a college professor in biomechanics and an advisor for SuperSpeed Golf. Amateurs typically swing slow going back, jerk the club at the top and then decelerate into the ball. Elite golfers start back fast, slow down near the top and then ramp up again on the way down. It’s slow-fast-slow (bad) versus fast-slow-fast (good).

In a test conducted for Golf Digest, Standifird timed the takeaways of 17 “solid college golfers” and 17 average players with Handicap Indexes ranging from 10 to 25. What he found was that the average time it took the better players to reach the arm-parallel point was 0.28 faster than the regular golfers did it. “Not one good player was slower than 0.60,” he says.

To get faster off the ball, it’s important to understand how to grip the club, Rahm says. “At address, you want your hands to be loose because if they get tight, you instinctively start to get tight in other parts of your body, restricting your takeaway. You don’t want the club to be too loose, though. You should feel in control because when you swing down you’ll be squeezing hard.”

Andrew Hetherington

If you ever get the privilege of playing with Rahm at a LIV Golf event or elsewhere, just know he’s not going to say a word about your swing—and what’s wrong with it—unless you ask. “God, no, I would never,” says Rahm, the LIV Golf Individual Champion in 2024 and 2025. His Legion XIII squad also won the ‘25 team championship.

“But I do have a drill that I use, one that came from my coach as a kid, that I give if they ask for my help.”

The drill: “Grab a 6-iron and swing it back until you feel like your hands are at hip height,” Rahm says. “When you get to that spot, hit the shot at full speed.”

After a handful of reps, you’ll start to understand how this abbreviated-backswing drill gets you to use your body to generate power and speed, creating the whip-like action where the club is still moving away from the target while your lower body is shifting toward it.

“There’s a disassociation between the lower body and upper body, and it creates a lot of energy,” Rahm says. “I teach this drill when I see people slow and out of sync. If you don’t use your hips, there is no power in the swing.

“It’s funny because when I tell people about the drill and ask them to take it back only until their hands are hip high, they actually take it back much farther than that. But it’s this change of direction that gets them swinging much better.”

At the Titleist Performance Institute in Oceanside, Calif., where Phillips often works with average golfers, they have a drill called the “pelvic punch” that is similar to what Rahm teaches, and it also gets the body engaged correctly.

Again using a mid-iron, Phillips has students set the club’s shaft in the backswing where it is roughly parallel with the ground. From this “starting point,” they have to swing down and hit shots. The positive results are almost immediate, he says. “It’s hip height to hip height. They have to use their legs to do it. There’s no other way.”

MORE: One easy adjustment to hit your driver longer—maybe a lot longer

Andrew Hetherington

Elderly golfers tend to lose leg strength first, Phillips says, so it’s a good idea to enhance your backswing work with some exercises.

“I would protect the back, engaging the core and leg muscles,” he says. “If you lose core strength, you’ll start arching with your back and go into reverse spine angle. That is a problem with a lot of amateurs, ones that lack strength or are hypermobile.”

Phillips also recommends you walk as much as you can. “Golf carts ruin leg strength,” he says. He also says to do 50 “air squats” a day for a month. To perform, extend your arms in front of you for balance and just drop down bending from the knees. Go as low as you can without feeling pain.

“You’d be shocked how strong your legs and glutes will get,” he says.

Two other exercises that are great are deadbugs, which strengthen your ab muscles, and bridges for glute strength.

Oh, and Rahm wants to leave you with one more thought about all of this: “Don’t think too much.”

“I’m swinging my best when I have zero swing thoughts,” he says. “You can have one, but that’s it. Maybe do a little forward press before you start back with the club. After that, let your body subconsciously react to this quicker, shorter backswing.

“Ideally it will get to a point where it doesn’t feel fast. It just feels normal.”

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