Iron Benchmarks

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All right golfers, in this benchmark video, we're going to look at your

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approach shots

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or iron play.

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Now iron play or approach shots accounts for 40% of the scoring distance, the

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difference

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between two different skill levels.

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So this is probably the most important skill if you want to become the best gol

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fer you can.

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So we're going to break it down into a couple of different categories.

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Let's start with the greens and regulation.

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So greens and regulation is a great simple stat.

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It's easy to just put a check mark in your scorecard like did I hit the green

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or did

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I not hit the green.

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But again it's a little bit limited because of the size of the greens and where

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I'm aiming.

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So what if I hit a bunch of bad shots but they still hit the green.

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So let's break it down, we'll look at the green and regulation but then we'll

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break

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it down into something I like even better.

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So green and regulation goals, these are kind of compiled from a few different

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sources

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but so whether it's off by one or so doesn't really matter these just give you

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a rough benchmark

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to go at.

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You'll see that in general the better you get the more greens regulation you'll

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hit.

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And we also look at green and regulation plus one so basically are you giving

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yourself a

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par putt pros do that on every single hole they hit greens about 12 per round

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but they

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have more than 17 putts at par to shoot 80 you've got to hit a little less than

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half

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the greens but have a par putt on almost all of them.

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So only about three greens can you have a bogey putt as your first putt and

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then getting

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down into the 90s golf you've got to hit 12 so you can miss about a third and

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then when

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we get to 100 off you can have nine putt at par see about half the holes.

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So what you start to see is you can't have too many terrible holes and still

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score well.

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If you're at a beginner where you're having one bad shot per round that's

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really killing

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your score I recommend don't even keep score and go more off of quality shots

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until you

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get to about where you can play a few holes without having a terrible shot but

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because

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you're not going to hit too many greens at the higher level but you should be

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able to

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get putt at par that's what we're going after.

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Now we can break down the greens and regulation a little bit further to between

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100 yards

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and 150 or 150 to 200 yards.

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What you'll see is pros are a little bit more consistent at both those levels

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and as you

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get further to amateurs there's a bigger difference.

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So I tell most of my students you want to get really good at the 100 to 150

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yard zone

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and if you're a higher handicap golfer you're really patient with yourself in

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more than 200

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yard zone.

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We'll talk about this in a later slide in this presentation but if you're

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hitting a

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lot of fairway woods and hybrids into your greens it's hard to consistently hit

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enough

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greens or regulation to really score well from there.

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Okay now this is looking at proximity goals.

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So proximity goals is a little bit better indicator.

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That's similar to what we were doing with the driver which is basically if I

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pick a target

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how far offline am I hitting it.

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So pros are going to be a little less than 6% on average.

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So 5.5% from 100 to 150 yards 5.9% from 150 to 200.

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The way that works out is basically from 100 yard shot they'll have 50% of

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their shots

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finish inside 16 feet from 125, 50% inside 21 and from 150 yards it's inside 31

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feet.

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Now what we'll see when we get to the putting zone class is that it's hard to

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make a lot

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of putts from 31 feet.

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So in order to make enough birdies you have to have less than 150 yards you

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know somewhere

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in this 125, 100 yard zone enough times that you can hit them close enough to

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make some

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easy birdies.

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And what we'll see is even when we go to the 80s level a 27 foot foot putt it

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has a very

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little make percentage.

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So even at 100 yards you're not going to make a ton of birdies.

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So most of the ways you're going to lower your scores will be consistently

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making pars

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rather than having a lot more you know having four or five birdies.

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You don't get anywhere near that category until you get down to pro level.

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So at 80s golf we're going to have 27 feet and at 100 golf we've got 45 feet as

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our expected

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distance or 50% of our shots from 100 yards.

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Now that's 15 yards, many greens are 15 yards wide and maybe or in 20, 30 yards

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deep like

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when we start getting in this category even as we get down to about here

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because of the

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size of the greens and because of our expected miss it makes a whole lot more

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sense that

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we just aim at the middle of the green and forget about the pin.

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It's not until you get down into this zone that you want to start thinking

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about aiming

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at pins and we'll talk more about that as we talk in strategy because we'll see

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again

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15% to 18% we're about three times less accurate than the pros when we're at a

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golfer

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that shoots about 100.

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So we have to account for that and give our self more margin for air.

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The simple way to keep track of this is you're going to keep track of two

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numbers which is

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how far did I have in for my approach shot, let's say I had 150 yards and then

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how many

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feet did I have for my first putt.

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That will give you your not for your first spot, your next shot because if you

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missed

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the green let's say you missed it by 30 yards you put it in a bunker you would

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write down

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90 feet for that shot.

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But that gives you something that looks kind of like this.

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This is a golfer stats where it's a little color coded so that if he's under 6%

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it'll

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show up in green if it's more in that 6 to 10% range single digit handicap it

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'll be more

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this yellow and then if it's above 10% it'll be red.

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So for the day hit just under 10% this was I believe a 79 round so it kind of

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looks something

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like that.

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You don't have to go to that detail if you don't want to but this is a great

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way to track

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how well you're improving your iron play and as we said that's the most

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important stat

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when it comes to scoring.

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Okay, now I want to try to put some of this in perspective before we dig into

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the technique.

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So we're going to look at these are all tour pro numbers and we're going to

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talk about

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practice versus on the course.

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So at 150 yards I've got a few numbers up there for you but at 150 yards pros

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hit about

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76% of the greens and regulation from the fairway.

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Now we're going to look at this chase from the ace to compare that.

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So from the fairway they hit it to about 25 feet from the rough 54 feet that

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gives you

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that average of about 31 feet.

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Now here's a number that I throw out there for a lot of my students which is

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based on

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strokes gain.

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So strokes gained is kind of the gold standard and where a lot of this data

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comes from but

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strokes gained is the gold standard at looking at if we had every golfer on

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tour hit from

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this spot what would be the average and did you do better or worse than that?

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If you did better you gain a stroke if you do worse then you lose a stroke.

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The place where they average three which would be kind of par for an iron shot

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is 168 yards.

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For most of the pros that's going to be somewhere around an eight iron.

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So basically if they played a course where they had 168 yards into every second

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shot

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you would expect them to shoot right around par over the course of a season.

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So what I tell my students is if you have a lot of hybrids into the greens or

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fairway

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woods into the greens if you don't have a lot of clubs shorter than eight iron

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you shouldn't

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be expecting to make more pars unless you're doing really good with your ch

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ipping and pitching.

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Because even the pros are going to have a hard time averaging under par hitting

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the

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longer clubs.

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Now I mentioned this chase from the ace and it was an interesting little

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exercise where

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they had Justin Thomas and Roy McElroy at a European tour event.

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They went to a par three.

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The par three was pretty open I'll show it on the next slide but from a par

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three pretty

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flat 150 yards good conditions they still only hit on average about 94% of the

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green.

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So they still missed the green in fact Justin Thomas missed the green 8% of the

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time.

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So I have a lot of students who think they should never miss the green from 150

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yards

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off a tee on a nice par three they were still missing the green over 5% of the

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time.

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From this perfect kind of blocked scenario where they were just hitting shot

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the same

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shot over and over again they did average about 11 feet.

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So if I put this up here so that you can keep in perspective whatever you do on

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the range

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whatever you do in practice is typically going to be a lot better than what you

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do on the

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course.

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So on a flat par three they averaged 11 feet if you take all of what they do

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over the course

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of a year they averaged more than double that from the same spot in the fairway

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.

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So give yourself a little bit of patience and train with some harder windows to

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get

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you accustomed to basically having a little bit of a drop off when you get on

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the course

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but still playing and scoring really well.

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So again this is that hole where basically it was a pretty wide open green pin

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was somewhat

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up towards the middle and they still missed the green some of these like I said

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5% of

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the time.

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Now they did have a whole bunch of shots where they hit it really close neither

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of them actually

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made the ace which was the goal of the hundred shots but they had a bunch of

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shots really

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close but the average then the average was really good.

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Again what I would take away from this is when you do block practice you're

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going to

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be maybe twice or fifty or you're going to be a hundred percent better than you

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would

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in that same scenario on the right on the course.

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So don't expect perfection even if you are a very low single digit handicapper

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even the

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best miss it's all about being able to recover and get a good score with what

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you're doing

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with more of your average shots less than your perfect shots.

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Okay so benchmarks we're looking at either in greens a regulation or this

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proximity percentage.

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Now if you're struggling with it here's what we're going to think about

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technique wise.

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With most with most shots you're going to have a distribution so let's say I

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had you

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hit a hundred shots 50% of them would be left of a certain part 50% of them

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would be right

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of a certain ball typically the ones that are left would be long because of the

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clubface

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being closed typically the ones that would be right would be short because of

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the clubface

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being more open.

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If we start to impact the factors that really influence our distance control

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are going to

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be how fast we're swinging the club our contact location and our loft control

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or our shaft

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lean.

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So if you struggle a lot with this when you're looking at the video you want to

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check okay

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do I have negative shaft lean or positive shaft lean that'll help with solid

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contact.

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That's my sequencing look like that'll help with speed control and then again

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the shaft

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lean will help with my loft.

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If I'm struggling more left to right that's going to come more from the face

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path and

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contact location with your woods and hybrids but primarily we're going to be

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looking at

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what's the path what's the face and we can relate it to how does that relate to

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the low

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point but this gives you a quick little guide as far as if you're taking a

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mental snapshot

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of when you miss the green is it more direction or is it more distance or is a

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combination

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of both.

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This will help you with the starting point as far as where you want to start

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approaching

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looking at the video to diagnose your key issue and then you can obviously go

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through

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the drills to train your key issue and monitor if you're improving in that one

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specific

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category.

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I find that if you break it down into these two am I missing it short long

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because our

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contact and distance or left right because of direction it makes it a little

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bit more

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attainable so this is the most important skill but next we're going to dive

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into the

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short game where we're going to look at wedge play and how do we recover for

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those greens

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that we are inevitably going to miss every single round.