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Delofting vs Closing The Face

If you breakdown delofting the face into its components you can learn more about the face-to-path relationship. Delofting, but keeping the same face alignment requires a few elements. 

  1. You must close the face to the path.
  2. You must hit it earlier on the arc to prevent the face from actually be closed to the target
  3. You must swing more out-to-in to balance the path change from hitting it earlier on the arc.

Tags: Fundamentals, Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Not Enough Distance, Early Extension, Chicken Wing, Cast, Iron, Driver, Impact, Member Question, Concept, Intermediate, Beginner

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This concept is looking at D-Lofting versus closing in the face to path.

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So many golfers have got a flip style release where the shaft is pretty vertical at

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impact and they always want to get more shaft lean because shaft lean is going to help

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with compressing the golf ball.

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It's going to help with solidness of contact by moving the bottom of the swing forward.

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It does a lot of really good things.

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But it's referred to as just D-Lofting and I'm going to show you what you really have

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to do in order to move the grip from here to there.

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So I've got the trusty Hula hoop out because if we're swinging the club around and

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we imagine that the club head was like a sparkler you could see kind of the path of the

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club head as it went through impact.

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It would either follow kind of a circular shape or like this or ideally it would have a little

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bit more of this squished kind of ellipse look to it.

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So if our goal is to get the shaft leaning forward like that impact but we're used to hitting

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it with the shaft fairly vertical.

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I've got new for you.

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You're going to have to rotate the club face more closed because basically what happens

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is if the club is swinging around me and we're around this circle when it straight

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up and down it's pointed at that general direction over there.

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Well when you add shaft lean you're basically hitting it earlier in the circle and so

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you can see that club face is now pointed a good 10-15 degrees off to the right.

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So if all I did was shift this forward and squish it down which is what it would take to

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create that shaft lean well then the club face is pointed over there.

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So I would have to rotate the club to still have shaft lean and get it pointed at the target.

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So one way to think of this whole shaft lean idea is the more that I close the face to

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the path the earlier I can hit it in the circle or along its path and still have it pointed

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at the target.

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If you hit the ball with the shaft straight up and down so you scoop and all you hit

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their pull so it never starts where you're aiming it always starts left and it always

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hooks then you could just get shaft lean and it would straighten it out.

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So that also tells you that when you're working on trying to get shaft lean the skill prior

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to getting shaft lean is learning to rotate the face more close to the path so basically

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getting the face to rotate like this in space.

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If you also then scoop you should hit more shots left so if you're working out of a scoop

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pattern or a flip pattern and you're working on getting some of this shaft rotation

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then what you'll do is you'll work on getting shaft rotation when you flip it will go straight

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or sorry it'll go left or over draw so then you can use the body rotating to hit it

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earlier in the circle which would take that shaft rotation and now point it right so that

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the ball launches a little right and potentially has a little bit of a draw to it.

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So now working through it we're going to do a walk you through what are the normal

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stages for someone working out of this pattern.

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So if you're used to hitting it straight kind of more like that with a vertical shaft not

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taking a whole lot of divots then what'll happen is the first step you need to do is getting

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the shaft to rotate and if you have the same impact to release same impact timing but all

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you do is release the shaft then or release the club then what should happen is it will

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tend to be too close when I may contact with it it'll launch 20 30 degrees left or so

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and over draw it may even launch more than that.

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Now to fix it what I'm going to do is I need to have that same amount of shaft rotation but

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I'm also going to have body rotation so I hit it earlier in the arc basically right around

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there is what I was used to feeling at impact now it's going to happen after impact so

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impact's going to feel like it's happening earlier.

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I'm going to take it back rotate and that should make it launch a little bit more right

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and depending on how much I rotate the shaft it'll either go pretty straight like that one or it

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might even have a bit of a draw depending on the face to path relationship but that's the normal

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pattern for learning to deloft the club you've got to close the face and then get the shaft leaning

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forward by hitting it earlier in the in the arc if you do that you will hit it with less

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loft but a club face that's still pointing at this target which is all really a deloft

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club actually is trying to apply it to a full swing.

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