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Reading A Divot

As you learn to read the objective feedback, we don't want to neglect the information that a divot can provide. The divot can show you the baseline path of the swing plane (horizontal swing plane) and it can show you if you are steep. However, it won't always show you if you are steep. For instance, if you don't take a divot, you could still have a steep angle of attack. But if you do take a divot and it's deep, then you very likely have a steep angle of attack.

Remember, the two components to creating ball flight are "club path" and "club face". The divot can give information for looking at "club path", BUT, just because you see a divot that is slightly left, that doesn't mean that the "path" of the club is left. If you are hitting down enough, the true path of the club will be slightly to the right.

Tags: Fundamentals, Iron, Intermediate

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This content video is reading and divot.

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Now first, I want to give a special thanks to a golf instructor in Texas by the name

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of Chris Como.

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If you're in the Dallas Fort Worth area, please go search him out.

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He's great.

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When I was at the Byron Nelson, we had a great conversation and kind of led to a lot of the

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inspiration and content for this video.

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So I think that divots can provide a couple pieces of useful information.

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The two pieces of useful information is they can tell you the kind of path of the club,

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not necessarily the absolute path of the club when it may contact with the golf ball.

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But what's called the horizontal swing plane?

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Or when you see them on TV and they draw the line of the club moving through impact and

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they say, hey, there's the swing plane.

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It can basically give you a really good rough estimate as to where that swing plane would

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be pointed.

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Now the problem is it doesn't know exactly how much you're hitting down and say, you know,

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with an iron for every two degrees I'm hitting down, it's going to be about one degree

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that that's going to adjust that path.

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So this divot is going to give us the absolute most left word the path could be.

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So for example, you can see the tree in the background there.

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If I were to take a swing and have a divot pointed in the general direction in the tree,

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well, the true path of the club when it's making contact with the golf ball could be anywhere

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from a couple degrees to maybe even 10 degrees right of where this divot is pointing,

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or if I just barely took a divot, it could be roughly where that divot is pointing.

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So again, that's why we can't take a divot as an absolute path.

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It gives us a great idea as far as a general range of the most left that my path could be.

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The other thing that we can use a divot to look at is angle of attack.

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And unfortunately, it can only give us one answer, which is if you take a really steep

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divot or a really deep divot, such as the one shown on the screen right now, you can

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pretty much assume that there was a pretty steep angle of attack.

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It's a very safe estimate.

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Now, just because you don't take a divot doesn't mean that you have a shallow angle of attack.

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You could have a steep angle of attack, so if it goes way into the ground, we're pretty sure that

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it wasn't kind of coming in on a gentle slope and then just quickly changed.

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So there's a very good chance that this was a steep angle and we took a huge chunk of earth

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out of the ground.

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Now, if I am coming down steeply, but I've already started to kind of pull up and so I have kind

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of this narrow bottom kind of like so, I can catch it thin or top the ball and still have a steep

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angle of attack.

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So it doesn't give us the one to one of no divots, shallow, deep divots is steep, but it does tell

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us that if I tend to take steep divots or deep divots, there's a good chance that my swing

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gets steep.

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So one of the best ways that we can look to see if you have a shallow angle of attack

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is going to be kind of the length compared to the depth.

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So if you have the long skinny divots that look sort of like a dollar bill and still leave

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the blades of grass or barely take just enough dirt, that's a good indicator or I should

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say, not the blades of grass, but if you leave the roots, if you take really deep divots where

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a lot of earth gets moved, there's a good chance that you're being steep.

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So while it doesn't give us a ton of information, it does give us some, especially when we're

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on the course, we're trying to figure out what we might have done.

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Now, it can fool you.

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For example, I could have a divot that's pointing right of the target and I could have a

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golf ball that starts slightly left of the target, but then fades back.

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For example, if I were to hit a closed face on the heel, I could get that golf light.

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So we're using these pieces of information such as the divot to give us feedback and then

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it's up to you to interpret that feedback.

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But I don't want to completely ignore the divot.

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We do want to have them, we want them to start slightly after the golf ball for our

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stock full swing and we want them to be about the width of the clubbed and somewhere around the

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length of a dollar bill.

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If you have all that criteria, there's a very good chance that you have a pretty good angle of attack

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and then it's just the matter of getting the club-face oriented to the path.

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