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Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in America AND its list of Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America. Meet your new instructor.

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Making A Change

Making a change involves a balance of risk vs reward. Right now, you have a swing that you are comfortable with, and any change that you make could make you hit the ball better, worse, or the same but with more frustration because you expected better improvement. There are three major big picture things that you can change to improve your game.

  • How you are creating power.
  • How are you controlling the path.
  • How are you controlling your face to your path.

Once you have the pattern identified, there are a few ways to look at how to work on those pieces. Your goal is to figure out the primary, or most important key, as well as your secondary, or supporting keys. Here is a some of the criteria you can use for laying out your plan.

  • What is the most impactful change you could make?
  • What shots do you HATE to see?
  • What is your sport history? What are your strengths and weaknesses?
  • What is your schedule, or time frame, for when you need to perform well?

Tags: Fundamentals, Intermediate, Beginner

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This concept video is how to make a change.

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So when you start working on your golf game, there's really two options.

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You can either work to own your swing as it currently stands

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or you can work to balance your swing.

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Now, I'm assuming that because your golf smart academy member,

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you're frustrated with some part of your game

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or you're just passionate enough that you want to try to reach your potential.

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And so at some point, you're going to try to make a change.

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Now, making a change is going to involve a little bit of this balance of risk versus reward.

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So right now, I have a swing that I am comfortable with.

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If I make any change to the system, something else is probably going to adjust.

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One of my friends Grant Wait has a great saying that I love where he says nothing happens in a vacuum.

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So if you get to the top of the swing and you change the amount of pressure in your pinky finger,

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it may change the way your lower body responds to the shot.

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It would be really easy if we could keep everything the same and just adjust one variable at a time.

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But unfortunately, that's not how movement and that's not how humans work.

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So I usually talk about there are three main drivers to building your golf swing.

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One is how am I creating speed to is how am I controlling the path of the club?

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And then three is how do I organize that club face to the path?

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So it is the club face pointing right of the path, even with the path left of the path, all those things.

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So nothing happens in a vacuum.

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Let's say I am working on getting the club face to close.

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Well, to close the club face early, my shoulders are going to work differently.

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Because my shoulders have worked differently, my rib cage is going to work a little differently.

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And my hips are going to work a little differently.

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Now, some of those may be much easier for you, some of those may be harder for you.

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But it's important to understand that when you are changing one thing,

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it might not work unless you change another thing with it.

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So there's always this little balance of kind of risk reward.

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Because whatever your swing is right now, even if it's hitting a 50-yard slice,

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it's relatively consistent and your brain knows it pretty well.

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So especially if you've been playing for a few decades, you know your swing well.

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So making a change, there's always a little bit of a risk to reward.

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There is a chance that your mispattern is going to change and you may not be comfortable with that.

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So I think that we can always decide on what to work on that minimizes the risk of having really big drops.

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But occasionally, you're going to have a little one step backward before force that's forward.

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So let's go over the criteria for how you should decide what to work on.

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Once you've identified your pattern and you've figured out the few movements that you know you need to work on in order to improve,

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how do I decide which one of these movements to work on?

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So the first thing is going to be what's the most impactful?

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So what change could I make that is going to make the biggest effect?

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Like if I have a swing where the club faces wide open and I'm hitting a slice,

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then closing the club face or working on that motorcycle movement is going to be the most impactful.

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It also might be the most challenging where working on something small in my setup may have minimal impact in the short term,

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but it also might have kind of it might be one of the more easier gradual changes.

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So one of the other ways when we're working on these, we figure out what's the most impactful,

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we figure out what is the shot you fear?

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So if you're hitting a slice, that means that the club is swinging outside to end with a club face,

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that is pointing right of that path or point it open.

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So I have to make a change if I want to hit this ball straight or even if I want to draw it.

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The path is going to change in the face to the path relationship is going to change,

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and potentially I need to use different powers versus in order to do it.

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Ultimately we're going to come up with one or two things that control everything,

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but at first it may seem like you're working on a couple of things.

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So one of the ways that we can decide which one we want to work on kind of as our primary is what shots do you hate?

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Let's say you're a slicer and you hate more than anything the shot that goes off to the right and slices more to the right.

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That shot just drives you crazy, right?

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And so I know that if I hit that shot, it's going to pull me out of working on it and I'm going to start tensing up and questioning it.

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So I know that if I were to strengthen my grip and if I were to work on this motorcycle,

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those two in combination are going to keep the face more close to the path,

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which is going to make it virtually impossible to hit that shot way out to the right that goes for the right.

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So I know that may be the better avenue to work on first because it's going to not really affect my fear shot.

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Conversely, if I hate the pull more than anything, my home course has nine holes and they all have problems on the left side.

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And I hate just hitting this big pull, well then what you may have to do or what your brain may prefer to do would be to work on getting the path going more out to the right first

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and then work on close and club base.

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Just know that if I get the path going out to the right first, then yeah, hitting left is probably unlikely.

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We're hitting that pull is probably unlikely, but I could hit it way right.

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I could hit right of right if I don't also close the club base.

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So we like to take this thought process of just laying out a logical plan of deciding what to work on based on what's most impactful,

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what shots do I fear and will give you a couple others.

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So one of the other things that I like to look at is your sport history.

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This will go into a little bit of what's going to be the most challenging for you to work on versus the ones that are the easiest.

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The ones that are going to be the most challenging are the ones that are revolved around really deep patterns.

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So take my personal example.

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I tend to drift towards early extension and I tend to drift towards a little bit of a shut face takeaway.

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Now part of that is because I played a lot of tennis especially as a kid and I was really weak in my upper body but pretty strong in my leg.

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So I developed this pattern of jumping through every shot to create topspin.

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So if you know that your patterns are kind of built around this chop,

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that's going to be something that's a little bit trickier to change but then again it may also be more impactful.

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I'm going to be hard for me to quiet down my lower body but if I'm working on my finesse wedge shots,

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that may be the most impactful even though it's the most challenging.

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So it really depends on how much you're willing to kind of go through some of the growing pains versus how quickly do I want to feel comfortable.

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So that brings us to the last point which is the schedule.

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If I know that I have to play next week in the most important round of my year, I'm probably not going to work on anything new.

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I may work on something that helps refine my setup, that helps refine my tempo, things that have minimal or smaller impacts as far as making it go bad,

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but could potentially help kind of just zeroed in for right now.

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So there's all these different factors for deciding what to work on, but at least it gives you a logical approach to deciding of the movements that you've identified that will help balance your patterns.

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What are you going to work on as your primary, what are you going to work on as your secondary and what's kind of the icing on the cake?

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Once you figure that out, it makes the learning process very logical and it makes the learning process a lot more tolerable,

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which means that you'll ultimately be more comfortable and you'll get there faster.

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Thank you.

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