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Swing Plane Simplified - Working with steeps and shallows

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Start Line String

A lot of elite players will say that when they are playing well, they are able to see and hit their "lines". By using a ribbon or string on the range, you can work on your pre-shot visualization, re-calibrate your alignment, and fine tune your face-to-path relationship. Once your alignment and start line "awareness" are re-calibrated, you will want to make note of any patterns in your ball striking. If you are consistently starting the ball left or right of the ribbon/string, you may need to work on some shallowing moves, such as the "Jackson 5", or ulnar deviation of the wrists. Overall, this is a simple, but great drill for giving players a better awareness for their start line, while allowing them to hone in on what may be the cause of their misses. 

Playlists: Practice Strategies, Fix Your Slice, Understand Your Swing Plane/Path, Fix Your Hook, Swing Plane Simplified - Working with steeps and shallows

Tags: Not Straight Enough, Practice Strategies, Drill, Intermediate

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The drill is working on your start line.

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So I have a couple drills on start line training because many good golfers describe

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when they're playing really well they can control their start line.

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The curve might be not be perfect but they can really control where the ball starts.

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So what I have here is I have a ribbon out in my general direction of the target.

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So you can see that from the down the line.

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You can use I recommend using the rope.

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The same rope that you practice your rope swings with works really well.

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It gives you a good long enough pattern.

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You want this to be at least 10 feet or so if you're really working on start line visualization training.

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So what you'll do is you'll get into your setup position.

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And then you're going to practice tracking your eyes towards the target here.

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Now for some of you this may feel like it's way out to the right or way inside out.

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And that can have to be with how you tend to turn your head in order to look at the finished position.

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But get used to calibrating where it is in space.

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What I would do is I would take a look from behind the ball just like this.

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Just to confirm everything is all lined up and then start with your feet together.

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Left foot right foot now we're in good alignment and we're going to have more start awareness.

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Now if you tend to take swings and they're mostly starting to the left of this.

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Then working a little bit on the Jackson 5 or usually that unhinged movement are the two magic things that help get the path a little bit more into out.

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Or get the club face open enough so that it starts more to the right.

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If you tend to always start it out for the right and you have a hard time starting it left then working more on staying in your posture and getting into a finished position.

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Where your shoulders are more angled down at the target instead of up here.

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So basically working on your early extension pattern is usually what we'll get more of the leftward start line.

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So all you're going to do is you're going to intuitively feel and make some small little adjustments so that you can get the ball to start where you want to.

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So first I'm going to try and hit a draw where I'm going to start it just a little right of this line.

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Now I may feel a little uncomfortable and even anxious if I'm not used to where this is pointing if I'm used to aiming way left or aiming way right and this just doesn't look good.

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It's going to take probably 20 30 maybe even 100 balls before it starts to feel comfortable.

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It may take a couple days before it feels comfortable.

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Work through it it's useful to be able to accurately see what's a straight line and what's not.

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So a little draw.

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So that was drawing until the wind hit it.

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The feed will and I got that to start right.

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What it's taking it didn't have the greatest low point control but my shoulders a little off today so I'm not too worried about that.

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Now we're going to try and hit a little bit of a cut so I'm going to get this to start a little bit left and I'm going to try to do this more intuitively.

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Okay I want this to start left and then it's going to curve back to where that target is.

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So there I got it to start left was able to take a pretty good, good low point got it to curve actually a little too much past my target.

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But met the objectives of really controlling the start line.

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Now I'm going to try and get one to go right down the target line or right over my start line.

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So to do that I'm actually going to go through kind of my full alignment process like so.

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That looks pretty good and then give it a go.

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So to me that started just a hair right of the target but overall I would count that as a very successful rep for controlling my start line and getting pretty calibrated as to where my body is.

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Based on how this looks to my brain today.

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