WEBVTT

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One key component to learning is having appropriate feedback.

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You see, I played a lot of basketball, and feedback was pretty self-explanatory

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.

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If the ball came up short, I needed to shoot it harder.

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If it went long, I needed to put a little less energy in it or add more arc.

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Those were very easy, but it is very common for me to ask a student,

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"Well, what did you do there that made the ball do what it did?"

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And I usually get a blank stare or a canned response.

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You know, I got quick, I stood up.

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Well, I usually follow up with, "Well, what are you going to do different next

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time?"

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And realistically, I can see in the face that they have no idea.

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To take advantage of every swing, you need to understand ball flight

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and you need to have clear feedback, because ball flight really tells a story

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of what the club was doing when you made contact with it.

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There has become a whole science of measuring ball flight thanks to advances in

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measurement tools.

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The main one used as Trackman, and it is used to create the shot link on TV,

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or the comet tail that you see on the live golf telecast.

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When it comes to ball flight, all I really want you to know is this.

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The majority of the starting position is controlled by the direction of the

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club face,

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and the curve on the ball is controlled by the difference between the path and

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the face.

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Here are some examples.

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A slice is hit with a club face that is pointing at or left of the target,

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but the path is going to be way left or outside to in.

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So the face is open to the path and it creates slice spin.

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While a hook is hit with a face that is pointing right of the target,

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but a path that is going more to the right or into out.

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The face is close to the path, so it produces hook spin.

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It is very important when looking at ball flight to notice the starting

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direction as well as the curve.

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I've had many students tell me I'm hitting it all over the place,

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or I'm hitting it straight left, straight right.

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These two statements usually result in little information to go off of and are

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rarely accurate.

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In reality, our swing tends to have a nice pattern to it,

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and paying attention to ball flight can usually tell us what our swing is doing

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.

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The hard thing is that the pattern can appear very, very different.

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For example, here's one pattern.

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A fat shot and a thin shot typically result from the same swing.

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They both have the bottom of the swing behind the ball.

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One of them just barely misses the ground and the other one makes contact with

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it.

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One common pattern that you'll see for an over-the-top swing

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is characterized by having fat and thin shots,

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toe shots, pulls, or slices.

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In addition, frequently these players will have trouble hitting driver,

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and they may be very solid with wedges and short irons.

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To the untrained eye, that looks like a lot of different problems,

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but as we will learn through this program,

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it is one consistent swing that produces the consistent pattern of misses.

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A second common swing pattern comes from an overly into out path,

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which is usually characterized by early extension.

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This pattern is characterized by blocks and hooks, mostly thin shots,

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can typically be a good driver of the golf ball,

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but will have contact issues with chipping, short wedge shots,

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and definitely wedge issues off of tight lies.

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So you can see by paying attention to your pattern,

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your game will teach you everything that you need to know

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from what you're doing on the course.

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Then you can come back to the different sections

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and figure out what you need to do to troubleshoot,

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to correct your swing and work on your pattern,

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not just overreacting to each individual shot.