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Understand Your Swing Plane/Path

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Case Study - Yardstick & Swing Path

This case study provides some great visuals on the club path changes necessary for producing a draw, fade, or straight shot. Regardless of whether you own a high-dollar launch monitor, a yardstick and overhead camera can provide some surprisingly dependable information on these patterns. Overall, if you are working to better understand and manage your club path, this is an excellent starting point from which to build on.

Playlists: Understand Your Swing Plane/Path

Tags: Draw vs Fade, Impact, Follow Through, Release, Concept

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This case study video is looking at using a yardstick to track your swing path.

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So I'm actually going to do a little case study on myself just to show you how different

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swing looks from down the line correspond to the path looking from overhead.

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So you can see over here on the track man that this particular swing had a two degree left

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swing direction, but I hit down on it 5.8 the tack angle this is a eight iron and so the

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club path was one degree into out basically hit a very straight shot just slight slate

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draw.

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So let me tell you how I've got this set up.

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I've got a golf ball six inches away from a meter stick and I've got these colored

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hashes at about at six inch increments.

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So what you'll see somewhere in between there is that first increment.

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So I've got the golf ball between two t's there's the first six inch increment.

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So you can see this is kind of like the bowling alley set up that I use, but we're going

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to be able to get a rough measurement with my eight iron.

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So what you'll see is from the down the line the swing is going to roughly match that

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forearm plane and then as it's coming down it looks like it's pretty straight compared

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to that forearm plane just slightly into out.

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Well what you can do with the overhead camera is you can track where it's crossing the

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meter stick.

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So here I've got five or there's a foot.

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So basically it's crossing a spot two feet behind the ball and six inches in.

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So if you took a alignment stick and kind of estimated so if you take your putter which

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is three feet and you subtract the grip which is a foot or if you put the grip down twice

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that roughly gives you a target of about where the club head is going to pass over on

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a pretty neutral swing.

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So now you can see I hit that solid.

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This was kind of just a stock shot.

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Now let's take a look at a swing that would be more of a stand up.

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So I attempted to get a little steeper with my arms and stand up or early extend.

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So you'll see that from the down the line the club path is coming well from the inside.

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This was so the swing direction was four degrees into out.

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I hit down four degrees so the club path was six degrees into out.

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What you can see from here from overhead is that basically the club is passing about the

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meter stick about six inches closer to the golf ball.

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So instead of crossing over on that line now it's crossing over on that line that's going

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to give it this trajectory of going more into out and you'll see that on the way through

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the club stayed away or further out compared to that meter stick as well.

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So from the down the line you'll see it go up and to the right this was kind of a more

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of a pretty good size draw for an eight-iron.

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Okay last we've got an outside in swing so this wasn't terrible in transition I probably

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could have thrown it out and cast it in a little bit more to be more representative

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but you can see it's coming from above the swing the impact plane and then going underneath.

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So from the down the line camera angle you would see subtly going from the outside to

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underneath.

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But from the overhead camera we can see quite a different story.

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So this is crossing the meter stick somewhere back here.

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So remember if we keep this kind of to scale right here was two feet behind the ball

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where it was crossing the meter stick that was giving me a pretty neutral path.

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Here was six inches closer that was giving me a much more inside out path about six degrees

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inside out.

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So now it's crossing almost a foot behind of the neutral path and so it could follow that

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trajectory but it's not going to what it's going to end up doing is it's going to become

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straight down that bowling alley and you can see it's already in line with the ball and now

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it's really darting over to the left.

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So this was a 13 degree outside in swing direction.

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Hit down on it four degrees so the club path was only 10 degrees outside in but you'll see

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roughly how it's crossing if I had the yard stick or meter stick even further down you'd

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be able to see where it was actually crossing much earlier.

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So one way to kind of measure your swing path and I use that term loosely is if you use

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an alignment stick or a yard stick and you roughly look at from either you can set up

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a camera on a slight angle or if you're just kind of observing where the club is crossing

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the meter stick that will help you experiment with your path.

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This is kind of one different way of looking at the path but it's similar to say the

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four square set up and so if you have a chronically outside in swing you can visualize where

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this would need to cross in order you could set up some type of feedback so that you

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can roughly six inches in to feet behind the ball with an eight iron would give you a spot

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right around there that you would want the club to cross if you were going to have a neutral

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path.

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Then you can let your brain kind of troubleshoot and figure out how it's going to actually

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get that to happen.

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So all three of these shots ended up fairly close to the target.

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One was 14 feet away, one was five feet away, one was two feet away.

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So they all ended up on the green in the right ballpark and one had very little curve,

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one had a big curve and a big draw and one had a big fade.

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So hopefully this overhead camera, little case study, helps you visualize the path especially

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when you compare it to what you'll likely see when looking from down the line.

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Hopefully this gives you a couple checkpoints when you're working on managing your club

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path.

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