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In this analysis video, we're going to take a look at the swing of Henrik St

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enson.

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Now Henrik Stenson just won the Open Championship, he climbed up to number 5 in

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the world.

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He's had some brilliant ball striking over the last few years, but what he did

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at the

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Open Championship is one of the most impressive tournaments that I've ever seen

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, and his final

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round 63 coming in the final group to beat someone like Phil Mickelson who

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shoots a

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bogey-free 65 himself is nothing short of remarkable. So in this video, we're

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going to take a look

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at what he does so well that makes him such a consistent ball striker, as well

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as one or two

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things that make him default to hitting three wood off the tee instead of

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driver. In doing so,

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hopefully you can understand some of the necessities to be just a good ball

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striker as well as a

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great driver of the golf ball, and perhaps you will decide to hit more three

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woods off the tee

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instead of driver yourself. So first let's talk about how Henrik powers his

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swing and how he's

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able to be such a consistent ball striker. So he powers the swing using his

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whole body.

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We can see from the down the line view that he tends to rotate his lower body

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before his trunk,

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you can see that his thighs get back to that kind of target line checkpoint by

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about the time the

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lead arms parallel to the ground, and then we'll see that he continues to

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rotate his body. You can

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see that his chest is roughly parallel to the target line by the time the shaft

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is parallel

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to the ground, and you'll see he does a good job of kind of delaying the

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straightening of his trail

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arm. Now at the same time that he's powering it with his body, you can see that

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from the down the

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line view he has a great path. So if we take a look at the checkpoint kind of

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here, you know,

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just after delivery position, when the shaft is parallel, we'll see that the

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club is just slightly

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inside of his hands compared to the target line. He hits the golf ball with a

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little bit of shaft

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lean, which we'll see from the face on view, and then as he gets to kind of

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follow through position

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or roughly when the shaft is parallel, after impact you'll see the club head

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just outside

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of his hands. So that tends to produce a very neutral path, and that's part of

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the reason why

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he hits the wall very straight, and he powers it with his whole body, that's

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part of the reason

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why he hits it very consistently. Now the question is, why would someone who

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has that

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grade of a path from down the line and powers it with their whole body? Why

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would they not want to

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hit more drivers? Granted, he can hit this three wood about 290 yards off the

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tee with his

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120 mile an hour club head speed, but it could be a huge advantage if he could

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transfer that

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to the driver. So we're going to take a look at the face on view and talk about

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why he may

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struggle a little bit with hitting driver compared to when he hits this super

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three wood.

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So now let's take a look from the face on view, and we can see one of his

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dominant movements that

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does give him a little bit more trouble with the driver, and one of his

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complementary compensations

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that helps him succeed. Now we know from the down the line view that he has an

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overall

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really good sequencing and really good path, but this will help us see kind of

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how he's controlling

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low point along that path. And so what we'll see is that he's controlling that

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low point

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with a little bit more of the upper body lunge. So the upper body tends to get

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forward a little bit,

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and then he doesn't really have it back up as he goes into his bracing. Instead

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, his upper body

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kind of continues to drift forward towards the target. He doesn't even more so

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with the irons,

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and it works great for helping him get the bottom of swing out in front of the

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golf ball.

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Now to compensate on it and to make it so that it's not too steep, he lets his

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right arm get a

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little bit more behind his body. So if you have the pattern of getting your

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upper body to kind of

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lunge towards the target and that right arm getting behind your body, as long

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as you're powering the

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swing with your entire body, and as long as you're keeping a really good path,

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you can have

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great ball striking success like Henrik Stenson. But you're going to tend to

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have some angle of

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attack issues, especially when you get into the driver. When that upper body

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lunges on top like so,

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because it pulls the arms with it, you're going to tend to see the club working

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more in a high to

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low pattern. And we're going to see that when we take a look at some of the

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footage of Henrik

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Stenson hitting a driver. Okay, so now we got a couple different views to look

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at the driver.

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This from behind view, you'll get a great view of that right elbow getting more

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along the backside

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of his body. A lot of most golfers at this point that elbow would start to

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disappear because it's

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working a little bit more across his body. And that movement I call the wipe

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would allow him to have

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a little bit more spine tilt or axis tilt. But because he doesn't do that,

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because the right arm

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stays there and he doesn't have a whole lot of axis tilt, you'll tend to see

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that the golf club

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is going to work a little bit more down into the golf ball and then back up

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relatively quickly.

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That pattern works really well when you're trying to hit the ground. So it

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works great with the three

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wood works great with the longer, longer mid-iron short irons. It just doesn't

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work too well with

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the driver where we want to have a little bit more flat bottom here. This is an

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interesting

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camera angle to be able to really analyze a lot of what he's doing. But one of

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the things that

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we'll be able to see is that we're going to see a unique thing for a tour pro,

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which would be you

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can see the driver coming from a higher position coming down in the golf ball

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and actually striking

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the ground just after contact. You won't see a lot of tour pros make contact

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with the ground with

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their driver, but this demonstrates that how his lunge of his upper body makes

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the club want to

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hit the ground. And so it's very hard for him to work out of getting the club

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to hit the ground.

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So instead of choosing a golf club like the driver where it's working against

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what his body

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naturally does, he tends to err on more hitting the three wood. So if you tend

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to lunge with your

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upper body, especially if you like to swing hard or really go after the golf

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ball, I would recommend

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hitting more three woods off the tee. It'll ultimately fit with what you're

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doing with your

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pattern. Let's take a look and compare him to a elite driver of the golf ball

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with driver so that

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we can see exactly what I'm talking about as far as this bottom of the swing

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thing. All right, so

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now we're just going to take a look at the overall shape of the bottom of the

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swing. So the only

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thing that really matters is the point of contact. But what we can see is

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instead of using just kind

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of the angle of attack and the number is it plus one, is it plus two, is it two

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down any of that

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stuff, we're going to take a look at the pattern of the golf club kind of

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through the whole hitting

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area. So we can see we're going to use the relative height of the golf club

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compared to the ground

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and the height of the golf ball compared to the ground. So you can see this is

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this camera angle

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isn't perfectly online. So what we can see is this is probably pretty close to

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where he would be

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the club head in front of his right foot. You'll see that it's still well above

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the height of the

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golf ball. So now it's still slightly above the height of the golf ball and

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there are only a couple

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frames before impact. Now right at around impact he gets the golf club down to

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about the height of

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the golf ball. And then it'll stay there for a couple frames and you'll see it

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start to come up

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pretty quickly. Now if we compare that to someone like Jason Day, when we get

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the golf club even

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with his right foot, you can see that it's pretty close to the height of the

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golf ball.

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So you'll see that the golf club stays very low to the ground for a longer

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period of time. So it's

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low to the ground pretty much from right foot all the way through and past left

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foot where Henry

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had it not quite as low to the ground even with the right foot and then coming

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up a little bit

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quicker compared to what Jason Day was doing. We're looking for kind of these

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minor details

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but these details reveal some of the key differences in those who are really

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good with the shorter

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irons and those who are really good with the longer clubs. Henry with that

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upper body lunge

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would have a hard time getting the golf club low to the ground for the entire

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hitting zone.

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So he's made the smart choice of hitting more three woods instead of fighting a

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swing and hitting

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drivers. If you struggle with driver, I would recommend either hitting three

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woods or learning

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how to make some swing adjustments so that you can get the club to stay closer

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to the ground for

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a longer period of time while using your body as effectively as you can. If you

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want to learn

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more about your game, feel free to subscribe to our YouTube channel where you

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'll see us break down

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tour pro swings and give you little nuggets just like this video. If you want

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to understand

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kind of the tour model and the different styles that work with whether it's a

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short iron or a

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driver, head over to golfsmartacademy.com and sign up for a free membership

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where you can check out all

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of our 500 plus videos to really help own and understand the golf game both

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what the club needs

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to do, how the body can do it, and then ultimately how you can train it. If you

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need any help you can

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email us questions or even submit your swing to get a video analysis just like

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this done for your

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own game.