Every instructor knows the wall drill. Stand a foot from a wall, swing back without touching it, feel the club work up the plane rather than rolling inside. The feedback is instant and the change is immediate — it's one of the most reliable takeaway correctors in the history of golf instruction. The problem has always been that the wall is attached to a building.
Shawn Koch's pathpal setup removes that limitation.
See the full drill here: Prevent Inside Takeaway — Wall Drill page on pathpalgolf.com
The drill
Shawn Koch — Golf Digest #7 Best Teacher in Georgia (2024–25), Georgia Section PGA Teacher of the Year (2016), Golf Magazine Top 100 Teachers to Watch (2023–2024), Georgia PGA Player Development Award (2022), Georgia PGA Professional Development Award (2019), GRAA Top 100 Growth of the Game Teaching Professional, and Director of Instruction at the R.T. Jones, Jr. Instruction Center at Atlanta Athletic Club with 20+ years of elite instruction experience — sets the pathpal to 90 degrees on the inside of the takeaway path to replicate a physical wall on any range or tee.
The setup
- pathpal set to 90 degrees — fully vertical — on the inside of the backswing path
- White rod at 30 degrees as a heel reference for alignment
- Cue: work the club up the wall on the backswing, not into it
- The rod catches any inside takeaway at the exact moment it begins
- Correct takeaway travels parallel to and up the 90-degree face — never contacts it
The portability is the breakthrough. The drill that requires a wall now requires only a pathpal — setup time under 30 seconds, deployable anywhere.
Watch Shawn Koch demonstrate the drill
Watch the full drill on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITE2Wu1RjAA
Why it works
The wall drill works because it converts an abstract plane concept — "keep the club on plane in the takeaway" — into a simple spatial task: don't touch the wall. The nervous system responds to physical boundaries faster and more durably than it responds to verbal instruction, and the wall provides both directions simultaneously: the correct direction is up and parallel, the wrong direction is into the wall and lateral.
The drill that requires a wall now requires only a pathpal — setup time under 30 seconds, deployable anywhere.
Shawn's pathpal version preserves both of those feedback qualities while adding the ability to hit actual shots. The traditional wall drill is a rehearsal-only tool — there's no ball and no flight feedback. The pathpal wall drill allows the golfer to build the takeaway pattern through rehearsal swings against the rod, then step into shots while maintaining the same spatial relationship to the barrier. The practice-to-execution transfer is immediate rather than requiring a location change.
The 30-degree heel reference rod adds the alignment layer that the traditional wall drill lacks. A wall drill done against a garage wall has no directional context — the golfer doesn't know if they're aligned correctly. Shawn's two-rod setup gives both the wall feedback and the alignment reference in a single station, making it a complete setup and takeaway training environment rather than just a plane corrector.
Who this is for
- ✓Golfers who roll the face and rip the club inside in the first foot of the backswing — the most common initiating fault for both over-the-top and stuck swing patterns
- ✓Players who have done the traditional wall drill indoors and want to bring that same feedback to live ball-striking on the range
- ✓Anyone whose instructor has identified an inside takeaway but who hasn't found a physical reference that makes the correction immediately feelable during actual practice
- ✓Tour-level and elite amateur students who need a portable, setup-fast takeaway reference that doesn't disrupt a full practice session
Try it
- Set the pathpal at 90 degrees on the inside of your takeaway path.
- Make 10 rehearsal swings — feel the club work up the wall, not into it. Focus entirely on the first two feet of the backswing.
- Step into a 7-iron and hit 15 shots at normal pace, maintaining the same wall-parallel takeaway.
- Remove the pathpal after 15 clean reps and hit 5 shots, reproducing the takeaway feel from the wall rehearsals.
Related drills
The inside takeaway is the initiating fault for a chain of downstream path problems. These drills target the same fault family from different angles.
The pathpal Takeaway Blocker
Uses both pathpal halves to build a dual-barrier corridor that makes an inside rip structurally impossible. A natural companion to the wall drill for deeply ingrained takeaway faults.
Avoid Swinging Under Plane Drill
Shawn uses the pathpal at 55 degrees for his own swing — keeping the club outside the hands on the downswing. The inverse fault to the inside takeaway, addressed with the same tool.
"Over the Top" Elimination Barrier Drill
An inside takeaway creates an over-the-top downswing. Once the takeaway is corrected, this drill confirms the exit path has changed too — addressing the downstream fault the backswing was causing.
Browse the full drill library: pathpalgolf.com/pages/all-drills
