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In this concept video, we're going to discuss losing distance.

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So it's very frequent in this adventure of learning golf that you're going to have great

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weeks and then bad weeks.

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Or great rounds followed by bad rounds.

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Well one of the more frustrating things for a lot of my students is when you have a great

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day and you're driving them all 293 hundred yards and then you go out there the next day

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and you're topping out at 260.

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Now I get a fair amount of emails as far as what do you think I'm doing?

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And I always respond with let's start with the objective data and you tell me what you think

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might be happening so we can come over the plan.

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So there's a few little objective things that you want to try to zero in on.

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One is going to be contact.

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So the first time you start to have issues as far as losing distance that you've already

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gained, the first thing I want you to do is either spray the face or take impact

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tape or you can even just take a strip of electrical tape and place it across the face

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and monitor where you're making contact with it.

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If you're making contact with it in a place that's a little bit further away from the

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sweet spot than what you're used to, you can lose significant amount of distance with

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the driver hitting as much as a half inch off sweet spot which really half inch, you know,

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kind of the size of the width of your thumb isn't going to be a whole lot.

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So if you're hitting a half inch off of the sweet spot that could cost you 20 yards or so.

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So that could potentially or sorry, 20 percent of your distance.

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So if you're used to hitting them all about 300 yards and we take away 20 percent,

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that would be about 240.

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So perhaps you're doing in your swing that is affecting your contact.

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But the next piece I would look at would be clubhead speed.

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So obviously it's very hard to monitor clubhead speed unless you have a launch monitor,

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but if you do have a launch monitor, you can always just pop it up quickly, take a few

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swings or even just a radar monitor, quickly take a few swings and see if you've lost

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it.

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I'll tell you that that seems to be the least common.

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Usually I'm going to look at contacts first, then I'm going to look at clubhead speed

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that when rarely is it.

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The third thing we'll look at will be ball flight and specifically we're going to look at the height

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of the shot as well as the curve.

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So if my long drives are kind of having this nice little plateauing kind of climbing high

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and then plateauing and then landing and today I'm hitting a ball that's kind of spinning

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a little bit high off to the right, that's going to help me understand what I might be

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doing differently with my face or my path that's causing me to have basically a decrease

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spin loft and I'm not transferring as much energy to the golf ball.

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Now the last little I'm going to call it kind of 3B or 4 is going to be what are the

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conditions that you're playing in.

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Now frequently I've had players especially since I've been teaching here in Colorado where

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we have dramatic changes in temperature.

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You could have a day where you're hitting ball great and then the next day is about 20 degrees

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cooler and now I've got a jacket on, I've decreased the range of motion, I've probably

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slowed down my clubhead speed a little bit, I've affected my spin loft and because of having

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to swing around all this clothing and that's caused me to lose this.

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So I try to communicate that every day you kind of have to gauge a little bit unless

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you've got all these variables under control.

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So use the logical kind of post shot routine to be able to really zero in on why you

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may be losing distance and that will help you develop a plan to adjust your pattern to

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get either the path or the face to the path back on track so that you can get contact.

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And if it's because of the temperature near the fact that you're wearing more clothes,

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you're just going to have to deal with the fact that today what I would normally hit my

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eight iron, I'm now going to grab a seven iron.

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But that's kind of the big picture of how you play golf and how you adjust for how your

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game is going to change a little bit.

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But by tracking it, we'll figure out these patterns and you'll know what you should adjust.