Bunker Leap Frog

WEBVTT

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This drill is the bunker leapfrog.

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So leapfrog is one of my favorite systems for calibrating distance control or

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building

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some distance control awareness.

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To do it, you just need some distance targets as references.

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So here we've got the purple is at 15 yards or 15 paces from right about here

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in the bunker.

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The blue is 30 and then I've got the flags we're already here, so we've got the

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flag

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at 10 and then the flag at 22.

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So I'm going to hit kind of in between them and I'm going to pay attention to

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where the

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ball is landing.

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Leapfrog, I can either try to hit each one a little bit further or try to leap

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frog backward

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and try to hit each one a little bit shorter.

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Now when it comes to the bunker play, with the full swing or with the distance

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wedges,

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I want your major mechanism for controlling distance to be the length of swing.

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With the bunker shot, I'm okay with experimenting with a couple different tem

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pos.

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I like to have kind of a slow, medium and a hard tempo because it's hard to

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change the

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length of swing dramatically.

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So we can experiment with changing the length of swing a little bit, but what I

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often see

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is a lot of bad bunker players have too short of a swing.

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The sand wedge is heavy to help us with gaining some momentum so that we can

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kind of freely

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release it down at the bottom and get the club head to pass the sand and not

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get stuck

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in the sand.

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When you take a shorter swing, you might have noticed in your full swing nine

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to threes,

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it's really easy to kind of drag the handle forward and get more shaft lean,

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which is

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good for the full swing.

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But on this bunker shot, we want to have the club head pass the handle down at

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the bottom

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of the swing.

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That's easier to accomplish when you have a longer swing.

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So we're going to do some leapfrog and we're going to focus on playing around

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with tempo

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as our first mechanism and then length of swing as our second.

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So first one, we're going to do just a, we're going to aim for that 10 yard

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shot.

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So we're going to get into our good setup position, butterfly grip, and then sl

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ittle

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on the slower, slower side so that landed pretty close next to the flag as far

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as distance

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goes.

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So then next one, we're going to do roughly the same length swing and just a

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little bit

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kind of more aggressive or faster tempo.

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So little faster tempo there and that was closer to my normal so that went

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about 15 yards.

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That's typically about as hard as I like to swing.

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So if I had to hit it further, I would grab one of my other clubs, but for

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simplicity

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of this video, we'll try swinging a little bit harder at my, my 58.

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So we have to make sure that when we swing hard, we don't start losing our

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stack centers.

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That's one of fundamental number one for helping us with solid contact.

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And we don't want to make, we don't want to get too much shaft lean because

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that helps,

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or that prevents us from using the bounce and getting depth control.

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That's also part of fundamental number one.

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So we're going to try to swing a little bigger, but try to get kind of the same

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, or sorry,

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a little faster, but we're going to try to get some of the same impact align

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ments.

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So we're going to go up.

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And there we got to about 22 yards.

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So there I just felt like there was a little extra speed early on and then

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still had kind

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of that nice coasting on the way through.

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So that's using tempo in order to influence distance.

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The second version we're going to try to do is by using the length of swing to

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control

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distance.

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Okay.

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You'll notice that I re-rigged the surface.

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I got limited surface here for interacting with the cameras and I always

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recommend practicing

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your bunkers from good lies until you get a certain level of proficiency.

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So we took the time to just kind of smooth it out, put the lines back in.

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Now the three heights we're going to do are going to be only varying the club

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about six

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inches or a foot.

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Not quite as dramatic as when we're doing the distance wedge swings where the

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difference

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in each one is 15 degrees or a couple feet.

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Okay, so we're going to go for the shorter one and we're going to try to keep

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the same

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tempo in all these swings.

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So a little bit shorter and that was pretty close to the, let's say that was

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about eight,

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so maybe just a touch shy of the ten yard shot.

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Now we're going to try to keep the same tempo and go a little bit bigger,

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hopefully not

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too much faster, a little bit bigger.

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I kind of felt like I slowed that down.

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It went a little bit further, only about 12, so I was short, but part of that

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was contact.

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I can now see here's where the line was and that hit an inch behind the golf

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ball.

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So we'll have to review that and see why we messed up contact on that one.

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So third one, now we're going to do our longer swing.

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We're now kind of hitting out of a little bit of a hole, but we'll fight

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through it.

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You can't always have perfect practice.

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Okay, so now we're going to try to go for the longer swing, try to get it to

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that 20

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yard flag target.

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So longer swing, butterfly grip, lean left, longer swing, about 18 yards.

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So not too bad again, typically with this grind on this 58, I have a hard time

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getting

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it much further than 20 yards.

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So if I have a, without changing my contact location, getting my contact really

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close

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to the golf ball, which for me right now is pretty risky.

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So I tend to err on changing target or changing clubs.

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I like to go from my 58 to my 54.

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I can usually add a couple of paces to each one of those, so I can get my full

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54 closer

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to 25.

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And then if I need to go all the way to 30, then I go down to my gap wedge or

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my 50.

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So figuring out how to control your leapfrog by either changing your tempo,

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changing your

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length of swing.

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The last one you can experiment with is controlling the face angle or the loft.

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But sometimes, especially if you're more of a novice golfer, that one's a

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little risky.

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So I would start with these two.

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If these, if you run into a barrier, then you can experiment with changing the

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loft.

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But with all of your bunker shots, all of your wedge play, you want to

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establish some

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baselines that'll help you with your touch.

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I recommend with the bunkers that you establish a baseline of about the 9 or

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the chest height

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or the 9 o'clock swing with good tempo should be somewhere around 50 to 20

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yards.

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That's a great starting point for developing your distance control with your

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bunker game.

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All right.

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Super risky, super high, long and aggressive.

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Catch it right next to the ball.

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There's almost no way I'm hitting that on the course right now.

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