Benchmarking Distances with a Launch Monitor

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All right, golfers, in this video, we're going to talk about club gapping or

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determining

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your shot pattern.

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So what you can see here is I went through my bag and I hit five shots or so

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with each

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club and then plotted them all on the same screen here in track man.

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So you can kind of see the ranges of each of these clubs.

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And I refer to this as club gapping or determining your shot pattern.

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Basically what we're trying to do in this game of golf is let's say that out

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here is

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kind of the target and I'm starting from here.

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I'm going to hit my different clubs, different distances, right?

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So I'm basically going to try and hit shots where I'm going to have some

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dispersions that

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are going to kind of look like this and they might get a little bit wider or

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bigger as

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we get further along.

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And essentially what happens is we're looking this way, I'm hitting from here,

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I'm going

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to hit shots that basically all reach a similar height kind of like this and go

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out different

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distances.

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And really what ends up happening is as I get to the further ones, they have a

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little

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bit more roll kind of like that.

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And I get these even or somewhat even gaps and that makes it easier for me to

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pick which

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club to hit.

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Now ultimately I could have even multiple shots to the same distance.

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So like let's say that this was 150 yards to kind of right here, well I could

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have my

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draw nine iron, I could have my punch eight iron, I could have, and these aren

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't coming

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out exactly as I wanted here, but let's say my stock 150, let's just for

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argument using

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kind of tour numbers, we'll say your nine iron is kind of like this.

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And then we might say your punch eight iron might be a little bit like narrower

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in terms

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of distance, but it might be a little wider in terms of dispersion.

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And let's say we might have a cut seven iron that looks kind of like that

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pattern.

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So I might have multiple shots at the same distance.

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But again ultimately the goal is to create these kind of even gappings.

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And now you'll see some of these circles are a little bit bigger than others,

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we'll dig

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into that as we look through kind of some of this data.

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So when you're doing your patterns or you're doing your gapping, I think the

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best way is

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to use a launch monitor.

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If you can, you want to get a bunch of a large enough sample size.

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And if you do it over multiple days, that's better than just one day.

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So you know, you might pick a few clubs, you might not do the whole thing.

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But if you did, let's say your nine iron, your seven iron, your five iron, at

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the beginning

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of a few different lessons, that might give you a rough estimate as far

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as your long, your medium, and your short iron, something like that.

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If you're doing it on the range, you want to use a rangefinder or you want

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to have pretty accurate distances.

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I used to do this in college, actually like once or twice a year, usually twice

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a year,

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kind of once in the fall, once in the spring.

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And I would just go out to a flat hole and I would stand at the 150 marker and

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I would

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hit five to 10 shots, you know, late in the day when nobody else was out there.

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I would make sure to fix all my ball marks.

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But I would go up there and I would kind of look at where did those 10 balls

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kind

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of finish?

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How far left and right of the target?

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How far short or long?

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If you're doing it on the range, you can use your finger benchmarking to kind

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of see

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where your left or right is.

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And I've got another video that kind of walks you through how you can do that

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using

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the rangefinder on the range, or you can use the launch monitor like Trackman.

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In general, if you cycle distances, so if you go, you know, one club, the next

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club,

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the next club, that's better than hitting the same club multiple times.

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Takes a little longer, but it's more accurate.

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And if you can spend a little bit of time in between shots, that's better than

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if you

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rapid fire through it.

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This commonly, I use club gapping for kind of more of the scoring zone of, let

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's say,

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150 and in.

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So this would be doing a wedge matrix where basically you can see it looks un

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organized

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unless you zoom in and you see, okay, basically I did my three different swings

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.

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So my half swing, three quarter full swing, or for me, belly button, chest, top

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of swing,

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or full swing.

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And I did it for my three different wedges.

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So the white dots are the 58 degree wedge, and you'll see I do more half swing,

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three

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quarter swing than I do full swing with that one.

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So the dispersion patterns are a little tighter.

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And then I did orange, which is my sand wedge, and then I did blue, which is my

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gap wedge.

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The other option that I like to do is let's pick specific numbers and try to

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hit them

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as well as we can.

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So here, I did 100 yards, 110, 120, 130, 140.

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And you'll see I kind of struggled a little bit at the 130, that was a little

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bit in between

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clubs that day, but was pretty good at 100, 110 was pretty good, had one out

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lier, 120

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was a little short, and then 130 was a little short, 140 was pretty good.

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Or I do full wedges, so this was full 98, full 54, full 50, full pitching wedge

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.

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So these are a couple different ways that I'll use it for inside of 150 yards

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to kind

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of get some of my more critical patterns.

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When I'm in a longer club, when I'm hitting five iron or four iron or something

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like that,

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I'm mostly going to be aiming at middle of the green and playing for avoiding

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hazards,

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more so than attacking pins.

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But this gives you a little bit better estimate as far as how much buffer you

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need to give

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when you're going into more of a tack mode.

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Now if we go back to this kind of session that you did, those were the way to

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session

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and this session were on different days, but if we go back to this pattern, we

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just run

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through a few of them, we can kind of see some tendencies.

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So this was kind of like a three quarter, more of my comfortable 58, not like

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my full.

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It was consistently about five yards right of the target.

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It could have been, you know, I didn't have a great warm up.

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Who knows, this is just data that we're looking at.

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Now if we look at the 54, little bigger misses, not too, I don't like the fork

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miss pattern

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where I don't have too many at the center, but potentially if I hit more, that

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would

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even out the 50 degree wedge, a little bit less consistent.

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I don't practice that one that much these days.

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Pitching wedge had a similar pattern and then you'll see it kind of settles

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into more

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of the zone that I practice a lot or demonstrate more in lessons, kind of nine,

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eight, sevens.

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So these actually got tighter because I would come away from this saying, hey,

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I should probably

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practice my full wedges a little bit more.

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You'll see the eight iron had one of the tighter dispersion, seven iron, which

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is one

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of the clubs that I demonstrate with the most, tended to have the tightest disp

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ersion.

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Everything was inside of five yards.

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And what's interesting was I got to the six iron and this particular day, my

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six iron

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pattern was kind of broad.

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These are pretty big misses for me, 20 yards over here, 15 yards over there and

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everywhere

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from 185 to 200 there.

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If you compare the seven iron and the six iron, I had pretty big differences.

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So from a playing perspective, this type of tier helps me know where my zones

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are.

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So when I'm punching out or playing off the tee, I might be erring on I need to

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get inside

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seven iron or less.

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It looked like the zones were kind of pretty consistent there between seven

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iron and maybe

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pitching wedge.

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But if I'm outside of seven iron, it looks like I'm giving up a fair amount.

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So I'm going to play much more conservatively with my long irons in this

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particular scenario

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than I am from seven iron down.

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And you can kind of see that where these are kind of similar size circles and

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then I get

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to the six iron and it's big.

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Five iron got a little tighter just because after hitting the six, I was

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feeling more

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comfortable with the longer swing.

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And then four iron gets a little bit bigger, pretty good with the hybrid and

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three wood.

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And then this is carry distance, so my driver actually tends to have the left

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carry mispattern.

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But usually the left one would have more roll.

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So the total distance would be more the classic right handed dispersion pattern

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.

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Now I thought it was interesting.

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I had one of my students who's a six handicap do this and you'll typically see

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that the

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better the ball striker, the lower the handicap and the tighter that these

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circles will get.

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His distance control was pretty good but his club face control as far as right

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left, especially

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with his 100, 110 yard shot were pretty big compared to mine there.

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His 120 was his favorite club and so we emphasized maybe that would be one of

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the target zones

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to aim for off the tee on short par fours as well as a layup zone for par fives

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.

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But to also try to improve the 100 yard shot so we had at least a closer option

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.

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So this data can give you a lot of insight into your tendencies as well as it

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can influence

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what you're going to think about strategy wise.

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So I don't think that this is something that you necessarily have to obsess

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over but it

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can be really helpful for understanding your patterns.

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One other good way to use it is to hit the same distance but with different

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shots to

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see if you're better with a three quarter, eight versus a full nine, if you're

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better

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hitting a draw versus hitting a cut, all those things can help again influence

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your

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strategy.

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And this program is all about playing smart golf which is minimizing your risk

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and taking

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advantage of the natural dispersion.

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By doing this you'll be much more accurate with figuring out where you can aim

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and where

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you can take chances.