Speed Control Overview

WEBVTT

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Welcome back golfers. Hopefully you've been doing the drills and working on the

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string

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or the ruler and really getting good at your putts inside of let's say 10 feet

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because

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you're controlling the start line. This class is more about speed control. This

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becomes

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a bigger impact or this becomes a more important skill as we get outside 20

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feet. Speed control

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is really helpful for your intermediate putts, for making them as well as for

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your longer

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putts for avoiding three putting. So as you can see, start line is important

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because depending

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on the different speed that I take, I'm going to have to pick a different start

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line and

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those could be a matter of degrees apart kind of like we're seeing here. I had

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one conversation

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with a really, really good putter and he said that he had had dinner with

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another elite

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level putter on tour and they both talked about how the most important thing,

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the number

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one thing that they were thinking about was speed control because speed control

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dictated

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the line and once they had the line figured out then all they had to do was

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roll it over

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the air line or over their target at that specific speed. So if you build a

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stroke where you can

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control start line then I think it simplifies things because the only thing you

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need to think

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about when you're actually rolling the putt is your tempo and the length of

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swing. You

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only have to think about the elements that are going to control speed control

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or distance.

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Okay, so I teased what it is that actually controls distance. So we'll look at,

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there

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are a couple main factors that control distance assuming somewhat centered

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contact and then

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quality roll. Quality roll comes from a combination of the face angle or loft

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and the rise angle.

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So ideally what we're trying to do in order to get quality roll is basically

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what we were

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trying to do is we are trying to strike a golf ball so that it's going to come

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up out

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of the depression that it's sitting in because a golf ball has a bit of weight

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in it to it

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so it's sitting in a slight depression almost like sitting in a bird's nest.

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That's why

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the putter face has some loft depending on the firmness of the greens, the make

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of the putter,

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three degrees, four degrees, maybe even more. So our goal is this ball is going

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to pop up

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out of the bird's nest, travel about four to six inches in the air. I think it

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's about

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four to six inches in the air and then as it lands it's going to go into roll

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right away.

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Typically golfers who have speed control issues, if we're just looking at the

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performance

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of the golf ball they will tend to either get backspin or they will tend to hit

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it with

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too much lean, hit the ball into the face and it will pop up. These bounces and

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the spin

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create some of the inconsistencies with being able to control speed. So by

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getting quality

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roll that's a relationship between the loft and the rise angle or the angle of

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attack.

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But if we were to factor these or take these out and just say all right I'm

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making relatively

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solid contact, how do I control distance? Then it ultimately comes down to two

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main factors.

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One would be the tempo or the rate of the swing. So if I'm swinging the putter

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back

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and forth this is getting accelerated primarily by gravity once I got it

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swinging. Now I would

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say that most bad putters either guide the putter kind of like this so they're

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not actually

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letting it swing they're just kind of moving it through space or they

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accelerate it. And

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when you over accelerate something you're going to have a hard time with touch.

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Imagine

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shooting a free throw or tossing a ball and reaching kind of maximum

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acceleration as you

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were letting go. For those touch activities you will tend to see a pattern

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where the acceleration

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is happening early in the motion and then as you're getting ready to release it

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's actually

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kind of in more of a coast mode. That allows the brain to kind of feel what's

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happening

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because the brain either sends a signal out like I'm applying force to it or it

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receives

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the signal back which would be okay what is this doing? If you accelerate early

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and then

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guide late you'll be able to receive more information which allows you your

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unconscious

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mind to control the putter a little bit better. So what you'll see in this

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section is mostly

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drills related to either working on your tempo or the rate of acceleration or

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working on

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the length of stroke. So the majority of bad golfers or bad putters I should

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say do one

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of a couple things. When it relates to speed what they typically do is on they

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take about

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the same length stroke on every swing and then they accelerate it on the long

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ones and

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they kind of decelerate it on the short ones. So in general they take on short

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putts they

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take too long of a stroke and then decelerate and while it's decelerating the

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face is twisting

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and they can either push it or pull it. And then on the long putts they take

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the same

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length swing as their short putts and then they try to accelerate it and what

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they'll

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find is that while you're accelerating it really hard it's ultimately hard to

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control

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the precision. It becomes extra complicated or becomes more problematic on fast

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greens

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or big sloping putts. So downhill putts primarily that over acceleration rate

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is going to be

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a big problem. So we've got videos that kind of help us feel this consistent

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acceleration

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rate. I use the idea of more of a wrecking ball or like a pendulum or swinging

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it like

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dead weight. That way I'm taking some of my artificial acceleration out of it.

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I do

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know that you will provide a little bit of acceleration in transition so it's

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not a true

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pendulum but it's a good model for most golfers to try to recreate. The other

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thing that I

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like to do is use references for length of backswing. So similar to when if you

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're hitting

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your wedges and you're working on doing a clock system kind of like Dave Pels

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or James

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Seachman or a lot of the other popular wedge techniques where you're doing kind

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of a nine

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o'clock, a ten o'clock, an eleven o'clock type swing, we're going to use some

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references

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to help dial in our distance. So this section will primarily focus on those two

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big factors

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as well as potentially controlling the role of the ball from controlling your

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loft and

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your rise angle. So when you're analyzing your putting stroke for the purpose

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of distance

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control, you're primarily going to look at it from the face on camera view. So

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the face

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on camera view is going to reveal the length of backswing to downswing so that

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relationship.

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And you'll be able to see if there's some extra arm and hand motion. Now I do

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think

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the down the line can be easier to see if you're getting some hip rotation

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because that can

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be a little bit trickier to see from a face on camera angle though not

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impossible. And

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then solid strike, you can either use a gate or the down the line camera can be

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really

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helpful for looking at if you're getting some dip, some speeding consistency

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because of the

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contact location. Though I tend to find that to be the less common one because

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the strike

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location would have to change quite a bit in order to have a big impact on

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speed. The

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main thing I see is more the length of the backswing as well as the

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acceleration rate.

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But if you are analyzing how the golf ball is going rolling, you can get the

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putter or

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you can get the camera really close to the golf ball on a tripod and you can

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you'll watch

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the video where I show you how to kind of look at it in slow motion and you can

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set up a

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golf ball so that you can see how it's actually launching and how it's spinning

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when it lanes.

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Okay so the main speed control drills relate to either feeling or hearing or

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sensing some

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type of rhythmic motion. That can either be with the putter drop feel, the pend

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ulum feel,

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the metronome matching or working on length of backswing. I'm a big fan of

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practicing

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especially longer putts working on long lengths of backswings and having a

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couple of references

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for helping you go into each putt on the golf course from less of a guess. One

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game or when

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I go on the course with a lot of my high school kids, I will always ask them on

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this

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putt, okay how big of a backswing are you imagining before they hit the putt?

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That forces

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them to commit to a length of backswing and that can ultimately help both with

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tempo as

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well as with the acceleration rate. Some distance control games that can help

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you train. One

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of the most common ones I start with is the three time same distance. So

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basically building

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some stock putting stroke. Let's say I'm going to bring the putter back. I can

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either

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do it compared to my stance so I'm going to bring it back this far past my foot

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or I

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can do it more towards them compared to a ruler so I'm going to bring the put

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ter back

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about 15 inches on each side. Roughly a 15 inch backswing is about a 30 foot

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putt on

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about a 10 stem green. So I like to start with one reference and then build on

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that

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and maybe have two or three somewhere to we do with wedges. But then other

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games that

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are useful are working on ladder drills or leapfrog where you hit a putt, hit a

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putt

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slightly further, hit a putt slightly further and just basically work on can I

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incrementally

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take the putter back further and keep the same acceleration so that I get

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incremental

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distance improvement or moon walking which is basically the opposite. I'm going

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to start

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at the far one and then incrementally take the putter back shorter, shorter,

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shorter

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and try to keep kind of even gapping in those, in the distance of each putt. I

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'll also do

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end zone training, you'll see that video as well as fringe putting so that's

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more of

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kind of a little bit more random but using my references all the time for

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trying to control

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my distance. Alright as we summarize distance control I think the challenging

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thing is

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that it's deceptively simple. There's only a few factors for controlling

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distance. I

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have my length of stroke, my tempo and the quality of the golf ball rolling

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which comes

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from lost control, the angle of attack and solid contact. On paper it sounds

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like it

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should be easier than trying to control the putter face to within half a degree

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. But the

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tempo and the length of stroke can both be maybe more subject to distractions

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or even

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variance when you start to get a little bit of adrenaline or you get a little

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sluggish.

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I think that this one is a little bit less consistent than someone's start line

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or face

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control barring some certain putting styles. So this one takes, when we're

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designing our

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putting plan we're going to give more of the time typically working on speed

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control

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than start line unless we have a specific start line issue. Because this will

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be one

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of the ways to elevate your performance by getting you the ability to avoid

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long three

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putts as well as make more of your birdie opportunities in the 20, 25 foot zone

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down

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to about 10 feet or so. So in the next class we're going to take a look at the

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last of

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the three scales greenery.