Understand Your Swing Plane/Path
Subscribe now to watch the full video.
A can of Dr. Scholl's foot spray is a great tool for identifying impact location. As many golfers are unaware of how they are making contact on the face, this is a quick and inexpensive diagnostic. Overall, making centered contact is important as it is an indicator that you are properly controlling low point and the face-to-path relationship. If you start to notice that your impacts are more heel or toe biased, you may need to make some setup changes or take a long-term look at possible swing fixes. However, once you can consistently make centered contact, you should progress to a few "skill games" and see how difficult or easy it is to the shift impact location on command.
Tags: Fundamentals, Poor Contact, Drill, Intermediate
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,000
This drill is face awareness with the doctor's shoulder's foot spray.
00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:10,000
So hitting the ball in the center of the club is a combination of seals, but largely
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:13,000
related to path control.
00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:16,000
Low point control, path control is how you make solid contact.
00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:21,000
And then getting that to fly straight is a result of how well you're able to control the
00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:23,000
face to path relationship.
00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:28,000
So many golfers are simply unaware of where they're making contact on the face.
00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:33,000
So this is one of the tried-and-true methods of identifying where you're making contact
00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:35,000
with the club face.
00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:40,000
If you start to see a pattern and that pattern is not in the center of the club, then you
00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:46,000
can either make some simple setup changes or take that as a diagnostic tool that's something
00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:48,000
in your swing is a little bit off.
00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:52,000
And if you're working long-term, you can try to balance that in order to create better
00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:53,000
of face awareness.
00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:57,000
However, face awareness is a skill.
00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:02,000
As I demonstrate with my students, when you know what you're doing, you can hit it on the
00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:06,000
toe, hit it on the heel, hit it on the center deliberately.
00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:11,000
And so sometimes when I ask students to move their contact point around, they have a quite
00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:14,000
a bit of trouble doing so.
00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:18,000
But anyway, this is just to help you gain awareness of where you're making contact
00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:19,000
on the face.
00:01:19,000 --> 00:01:20,000
It's very simple.
00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:25,000
It's either with a driver or with an iron, but you're going to spray the face so that
00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:29,000
the face becomes nice and white.
00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:32,000
It doesn't take very long for it to dry.
00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:35,000
And you can see that it'll look just like that.
00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:40,000
And then what we're going to do is we're going to make a swing.
00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:45,000
And we're just going to see where we made contact on the face and make either some conscious
00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:49,000
or some unconscious adjustments to that.
00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:56,000
Now, the reason I like to use spray instead of those stickers is one, I find it's even
00:01:56,000 --> 00:01:57,000
more convenient.
00:01:57,000 --> 00:01:58,000
Those stickers.
00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:01,000
And two, the stickers will change the flight pattern a little bit where the Dr. Schultz
00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:06,000
spray doesn't change it very much.
00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:10,000
So now we're going to take a swing.
00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:13,000
So that was a little low on the face.
00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:19,000
But you can see contact wise that was pretty close to the center there.
00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:23,000
Now when you do this on grass, especially if it's a little bit wet, which I'll find
00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:29,000
is the blades of grass will tend to mask or hide where you're making contact after you've
00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:31,000
done a handful.
00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:40,000
So you will have to reapply this every three to five swings or so.
00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:44,000
So there was a little bit more clear pattern.
00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:47,000
The first one was right there, a little bit low.
00:02:47,000 --> 00:02:52,000
That one is more just above the bottom groove, close to the middle, maybe even a touch
00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:54,000
on the heel.
00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:58,000
But I would take that as far as center face contact.
00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:05,000
So now my goal is to try to duplicate that same contact.
00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:09,000
But just for our human say, let's say we were able to do that.
00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:11,000
Let's say we now wanted to do a little bit more of a challenge drill.
00:03:11,000 --> 00:03:19,000
I'm going to try and move it a couple millimeters more towards the heel just by changing
00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:26,000
my setup slightly.
00:03:26,000 --> 00:03:32,000
Unfortunately it looks like that was pretty close to the same spot.
00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:35,000
So we'll call that a failure.
00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:37,000
We've got to try it again.
00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:42,000
This is getting pretty close to the last one we can do before I'm going to need to spray
00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:43,000
it again.
00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:47,000
So I'm going to play it just a little bit towards the heel and see if I can trust myself
00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:54,000
to make the same swing.
00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:55,000
Nope.
00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:59,000
How to hard time getting in the heel that's in the center as well.
00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:05,000
Alright, so you can see at this point it's very hard to tell where I would be making
00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:06,000
contact.
00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:15,000
So I'm going to quickly reapply for me striking it on the toe is much easier than striking
00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:16,000
it on the heel.
00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:19,000
So I like to use the heel as a challenge game for me as far as feeling the weight of the
00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:20,000
club.
00:04:20,000 --> 00:04:32,000
So we'll do that one more time try not to shank it but try to hit it on the heel.
00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:34,000
And we can see where I'm stuck today.
00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:39,000
It's a little bit more towards the heel than where it was on the first couple but I was
00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:42,000
hoping to get one in this heel space.
00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:46,000
We'll try it one more time.
00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:52,000
The especially if I'm doing this with a driver what I may find is if I'm consistently
00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:58,000
hitting it on a certain spot on the club then I just need to factor that into my
00:04:58,000 --> 00:05:00,000
expected ball flight.
00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:06,000
So it's not necessarily a bad thing if you can't constantly hit the sweet spot or what
00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:12,000
I'm struggling with today is hitting it away from the sweet spot.
00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:18,000
All that means is you have to with the driver or three would you would have to understand
00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:19,000
how that would impact your swing.
00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:22,000
So let's say you were hitting it constantly on the toe.
00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:27,000
That means that if you hit a straight ball where you hit it on the toe your path was a little
00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:32,000
bit outside in and the face was a little bit open in order to get that straight shot.
00:05:32,000 --> 00:05:38,000
So it could throw you off if you're not quite comfortable with reading the ball flight but
00:05:38,000 --> 00:05:43,000
ultimately it's a great tool to understand where you're making contact.
00:05:43,000 --> 00:05:50,000
So let's see if we can get that heel contact one time.
00:05:50,000 --> 00:05:51,000
That felt more heel.
00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:56,000
All right so it was a little high on the face but I was able to move it pretty close to
00:05:56,000 --> 00:05:59,000
the end of the score lines there.
00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:06,000
So I'll take that but the ultimate thing is just using the Dr. Scholes Fussereda
00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:07,000
identify your pattern.
00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:12,000
A skill game is playing around with how well you can refine it.
00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:16,000
Whether you control that with your upper body or your arms is a little bit up to you.
00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:20,000
But ultimately it's great to have technique where you can hit it in the center but it's
00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:24,000
better to have skill where you're able to adjust whether you want to hit it on the heel
00:06:24,000 --> 00:06:27,000
or whether on the toe or whether in the center.
00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:36,000
All right for a fun little bonus freshly sprayed let's hit it on the toe.
00:06:36,000 --> 00:06:43,000
So I'm very comfortable hitting it anywhere from the toe to the center not very comfortable
00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:44,000
hitting it on the heel.
00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:50,000
That's important for me especially with the woods if I wanted to understand where my
00:06:50,000 --> 00:06:52,000
likely miss patterns are tend to show up.