WEBVTT

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In this analysis video, we discussed the member question, why can't Tiger hit a

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fairway with

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the driver? So, Tiger has had, I'd say, better than expected season. He's doing

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great with

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his iron play. His putting is really come around, but he still seems to

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struggle with

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the driver. In this video, I'm going to talk to you about one or two ideas that

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might contribute

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to why Tiger struggles so much off the tee.

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Whenever I'm addressing consistency, there are three main factors that I look

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for. One

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is the low point control from the face-on video. We're basically looking at the

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height

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of the club down at the ground. Here you can see he's got the club close to the

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height

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of the golf ball for a relatively long period of time. So, low point control

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might not be

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the biggest reason why you would struggle with the driver. For many amateurs,

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it will

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either come down from a too high a position or it will come up too quickly

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leading to

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topping the ball or hitting it really low on the face.

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The second area of consistency that I look at is the swing plane or the rough

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path of

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the club. Now, a guesstimate you can use is if you take the swing to impact and

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then

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freeze it, you can draw a line up the shaft and that will roughly give you the

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shaft plane

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an impact and then you can kind of see how close he is with the hands and the

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club on

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both sides of the ball. You'd have to have the perfect camera angle but you can

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see from

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this view that the path does appear to be slightly into out and it appears to

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be following

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a relatively good path as it relates to the driver. So, it doesn't look like

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low point,

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it doesn't look like path or is main issues which lets us think that possibly

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the third

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one is going to be an issue. The third main issue is looking at the face to

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path relationship

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and basically looking at the timing of how he rotates the club face. So now, if

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we get

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him to roughly shaft parallel here, the club face is not in an overly position

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or overly

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open position and it's not in a terribly close position. He really can do a lot

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from

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where the club is here. But now, as we come down, you can see through these few

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frames

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through here the club is still pointing well out to the right of the target

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which many

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more consistent drivers of the golf ball would have the club face pointing a

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little

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bit closer towards the golf ball or towards the target and not have to rotate

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it quite

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as fast down at the bottom. So one possible reason Tiger struggles off the

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T is he struggles with closing the club face too late in the downswing. Most of

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the amateurs

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who I work with who have this pattern and many pros who have this pattern do

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struggle

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with bigger misses off the T and often struggle with two way misses. Now, the

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next question

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I always get is why is that a bigger problem with the driver than it is with

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the iron?

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But before we investigate that, let's take a quick look at his iron play. Okay,

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so now,

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over on the right, we have a swing vision from the memorial tournament and we

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'll compare

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it to a driver from roughly around the same time of the year. So now, if we get

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him down

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to that chef parallel checkpoint with the iron, you can see that the club faces

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in a

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little bit more closed or turned down position. That by itself isn't going to

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make us more

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consistent, but it could mean that we don't have to close it quite as

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aggressively late.

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And now if we get the club to about the same distance before impact, so

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somewhere kind

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of in this zone here, you can see that the club face is pointing more at the

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golf ball

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or closer to the target than it is over here with the driver. Now, we don't

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know what shots

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he's hitting with these two, but if you look at some of his swings with the

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driver throughout

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the years, you will see that this is a common pattern here where the club face

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is open late.

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And with his iron play, this is more of the common pattern. He tends to get it

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closed

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a little bit sooner. Now, we just have to speculate as to why that happens.

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Perhaps it's the way

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he swings at it harder with the driver that causes the face to get open.

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Perhaps it's

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a waiting of the club in his hands that he feels when in order to swing up on

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the ball,

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he has a hard time doing so with the club face feeling closed. Who knows, but

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this would

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certainly be one area that he could investigate since it does contribute to the

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fact that

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he struggles more with hitting fairways off the tape. Now, let's say you have

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this position

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here with an iron as well as a driver, but you mainly struggle with accuracy

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problems

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with the driver. Well, that can happen for a couple different reasons. One, it

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's often

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easier to close the club face late by straightening the trail arm and kind of

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flipping the wrist.

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And it's often easier to do that if you are a little bit ahead of the golf ball

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or swinging

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down on it because of a little bit of a forward lunge. That pattern of hitting

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down with a

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little forward lunge tends to be more repeatable with irons than it does with

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driver. The second

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answer could be just the fact that the club is longer. And when the club is

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longer, it

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has more resistance to change because it will be moving faster. And when the

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club has more

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resistance to change, it's easier to control if you can get it squared up

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sooner. I use

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the example of imagine you were playing badminton. And instead of playing badm

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inton with a normal

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racket, which is quite light and which you can square up with just a little

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flick of

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the wrist, imagine if I gave you a badminton racket that weighed, let's say, 10

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pounds.

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It would change your strategy of how you'd have to play. You'd have to get in

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position

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earlier so that you could have the badminton racket going on the path that you

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wanted

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with a face pointing in the right direction because you wouldn't be able to

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change it

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so quickly down at the bottom or right before impact. It's one of my theories

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based on talking

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with a few golf science guys that that becomes more of an issue when you're

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swinging a longer

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club like a driver than it does with a shorter club, which leads to why a lot

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of golfers

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who have a club face that's open struggle more off the tee than they do with

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their iron

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play. One thing that I've noticed is that golfers who tend to swing at it with

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a little

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bit more ease or rhythm tend to be able to recover better from that open club

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face position.

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Now just so you can see that this is not something new in his game, here we

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have two

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swings, one from 2008 over on the left and one from 2013 over on the right. You

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'll see

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he has the club face a little bit more closed in this one than he does in that

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one. But

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as we start to approach the golf ball you can see the club face is still well

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right

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of where the fairway is there and you can see that this one will not quite as

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dramatic

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is still pointing more off to the right than it is currently. So this seems to

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be a pattern

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that he has struggled with which could explain why he struggles more off the

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tee. But it's

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hard to mess with anything when you are one of the best iron players have the

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great short

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game and the mental game to win as much as he had even with having an accuracy

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deficiency

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off the tee.