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Face And Path Examples - Overhead Path Visual

The movement of you club path, and the orientation to that face are the two big components to understanding your ball flight. In this video, I use an overhead camera to show you what different orientations look like. Many amateurs swing with a clubface that is open to the path too long, and as a result they have a hard time creating consistent contact.

Playlists: Fix Your Cast, Fix Your Flip, Squaring The Club Face Explained, Understand Your Swing Plane/Path, Swing Plane Simplified - Working with steeps and shallows

Tags: Not Straight Enough, Not Enough Distance, Release, Analysis, Concept, Intermediate, Beginner

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In this analysis video, we're going to take a look at the face to path relationships using the overhead view.

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So in this swing, I'm taking a little bit longer than 9 to 3, but I wanted to have a really clear clove-face.

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So we're hitting just kind of a 9 to 3 style shot.

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Now here you can see the about waist height, the hands are in front of that right shoulder,

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even with that right thigh, so that's probably closer to where the clove would be parallel to the target line.

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You can see that the clove face is close to vertical or slightly past.

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Now as it comes down, you'll see that it's rotating towards the target at a relatively consistent rate.

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You will understand that a little bit better as we look at some other examples.

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And then unfortunately the clove kind of disappears out of view, but what you can see at this position is that that right hand is more or less on top of that left hand.

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So looking at that from the down the line view, we can see that that clove face is rotating so that it's more or less pointing at the golf ball.

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A few frames before impact. That was the important thing that I wanted you to see from that kind of overhead view.

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And then here you'll see the clove working more towards toe up or possibly even a little pat, depending on your grip strength and how much form rotation you're going to have.

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As we look from this face on.

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That just a little bit. So if we look from that face on, you can see that there's a full release where that right hand is kind of passed over on top of that left hand.

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From that from that overhead view, that's where we were seeing that right hand more on top.

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Keep that in mind as we look at some amateur golfers and some of varying levels.

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So I'm very low handicap, very good ball strikers and then some higher handicap so that you can kind of visualize how this face and path relationship works.

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So in this particular golfer.

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So in this particular golfer, you can see that that clove is pointed well out to the right of the golf ball.

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And you can see that it more or less stays there.

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And then this golfer is going to use the path by pulling up on the handle in order to get that face pointed more at the target.

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But you see that he did so basically using that open face and pulling the path left as opposed to the gradual and continuous closing that we're trying to get during that release.

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So when he gets to that finished position, you can see that the right hand is well underneath the left hand not on top because it wasn't rotating closed during that phase.

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Now with this path, if he had rotated it closed, the ball would have gone way left.

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So it's not a simple one to one fix if we just fix the face.

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Usually the face and the path both have to be adjusted.

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And then here's another gentleman who has the club face in a fairly good position here where the club face is just past vertical.

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But you'll see that through that phase, the basically here, the club instead of rotating this way.

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Is more or less just sliding across like so.

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Can you see how that face is still pointed way out to the right and then he's going to use that early release or kind of a scoop pattern to get that face that's well open here pointing in the general direction of the target.

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But unfortunately that scoop method tends to cause that lead arm to break down and you'll see in addition that his trailhand is very much underneath the grip instead of on top of the grip.

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So he hasn't had a ton of that forearm rotation during his release either.

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Now we've got an example of a golfer who has actually had been working on the motorcycle arm shallowing.

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So you'll see the club faces in a fairly closed position and works its way into a good closed position already pointing at the target through here.

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So he's able to get pretty good arm extension on the way through.

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There's a tiny little breakdown of the wrist, but for the most part he has pretty good arm extension part of that is because you can see that his hands are well ahead of the golf ball or from his perspective they look well ahead of the golf ball.

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From the face on camera they would look like they're just slightly ahead where the last few examples the hands would be closer to in line with the golf ball.

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By getting the club face closed early he's able to continue rotating which allows his hands to get ahead of a golf ball and allows his arms to extend through the ball leading to consistent ball striking.

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Now here we have Jack Nicholas hitting a five iron obviously the camera freeing rate is not going to be as good that we'll be able to see clearly where that club faces.

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But you can get a good sense of the path as it relates to the club face.

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So when he gets to the shaft parallel to the ground which would be roughly when the hands are even with that right shoulder you can see that the club head is still coming from the inside of that target line.

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And then as he goes through you'll see that that lead arm is going to rotate or that trail arm is going to rotate as they're both extending.

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So here you can see he's got a fair amount of arm bend still got that arm bend and then those arms are extending.

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So I like to kind of reference a spot somewhere down on the target line where those arms are more extending there as opposed to what we saw with a lot of the amateurs where they were extending more at the golf ball.

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Another example this one JB Holmes and I'm not sure why they didn't have better frame rate or shutter speed but we can see some of the shaft relationships as well.

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So compared to a stance you can see that that club is coming more from the inside from a down the line camera angle.

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You would see that that would only look like the club was about a club head whip inside of the golf ball but from the overhead you can see that it looks like it's way behind.

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Especially when you combine the fact that his chest and shoulders are already starting to point more out in front of the golf ball.

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That allows him to have his hands continue to lead and when he gets the impact you can see that his body is already turn facing the target.

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So we're closer to the target. You can kind of see the blur of the club at this point already starting to point at the golf ball and that combination of having the golf club pointed at the golf ball.

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Earlier allows him to both come from a shallow angle as well as get that good arm extension on the way through.

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So I'm limited with the number of overhead views that I have at least until I get a drone.

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So here's a target line view of Roy McRoy. Now we can see that great body action and arm shallowing piece.

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And then as we get to waist height you can see that compared to his left forearm there's a little bit of that flexion in that lead wrist. So he's done a good job with the motorcycle because we know that up here at the top of the swing that lead wrist is actually an extension or pretty close to flat.

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So it's done it a good amount and you can start to see the club face there is already turning towards the golf ball.

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You can see it kind of having a consistent rotation towards the golf ball during this face here. Now unfortunately we can't see the last couple phrases before impact or frames before impact because of the camera location and grass height.

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But you can see that those arms continue to rotate through.

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And the way that you can kind of visualize that is if you look at the lead hand or the glove of his lead hand you can see that it continues to rotate towards the target and then beyond as those arms extend.

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What a lot of amateur golfers would do is as they get to this point the glove hand would stay pointed at the target and that lead wrist would just bend and break down and then eventually that lead arm would start to chicken wing.

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Because he has a consistent rotation and he had that arm shallowing piece his face and path are in a very good relationship. So he gets into this great follow through position with the arm extension piece body in a really good position where he hasn't early standard stood up arm extension right hand on top of left everything is looking great there.

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If you're having any issues with your release or figuring out your face and path relationships and why you might be having contact issues, please check out the associated videos here or feel free to send us an email or submit your swing and we can help you get on track.

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