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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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Swing Path Railroad Tracks

Visualizing your swing path is helpful for decoding ball flight. 

Playlists: Fix Your Cast, Fix Your Slice, Understand Your Swing Plane/Path, Swing Plane Simplified - Working with steeps and shallows

Tags: Not Straight Enough, Draw vs Fade, Concept, Drill

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This drill is swing path railroad tracks.

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So what we'll do on this is we're going to use a visual representation, we're going to

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get some visual feedback for your path.

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So if you're struggling with either hooking the ball or slicing the ball, if you have

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a lot of curve, then there's going to be a big difference between your face and path.

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To rule out which one of those is causing the majority of the curve, is that the path is

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really off and the face is just pretty square or is the face pretty square but the path

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is way off.

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We're going to use two alignment sticks.

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So I've got a red stick and a white stick.

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The colors obviously don't really matter.

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But what we'll see is you don't have to have these really close together, but the lower

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your handicap, the more you can bring these close together.

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However, if you are curving the ball, give yourself a little bit of leeway.

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What we're really using this for is the visual.

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So when I take a swing in my mind's eye, I can kind of see a blur of the club or after

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I've swung I can kind of see a rough path of where that club would be swinging.

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So if I'm slicing the ball, I'm going to have the blur of the club going more outside

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to in kind of like this.

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If I'm hooking the ball, I'm going to tend to have the blur of the club going more

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into out.

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And use the trusty hole of hoop.

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If I have a fairly neutral swing path, you'll see that the club is going to come slightly

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from the inside to then slightly back to the inside.

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If I'm hooking the ball, it will come kind of very close or it will come over the white

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stick relatively close to the golf ball as opposed to way back here.

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It'll come closer to the golf ball.

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And then it'll start to kind of peel off and work just slightly out.

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It'll rarely see it really swing over out towards the target line or out towards the red

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stick.

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But a solid hook is going to look pretty much like that.

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Now if I'm slicing the ball, the blur of the club and the club head is going to get

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more out towards that red stick on the ground and then start swinging across just like

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this.

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So you can use these two sticks to just help you get some visual feedback.

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You can take some practice swings, trying to get the blur of the club to kind of swing

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right down the middle.

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And then when you take some shots, you can focus on not so much of the feedback, but what

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did that look like if you replayed the blur of the club?

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If you're unsure, you can just set up your camera right down that alleyway and you'll

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be able to get a rough estimate of the direction, the horizontal swing plane.

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So the direction that you're kind of swinging in the club.

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It doesn't give you the true path because it can't tell you how much you're hitting down

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and how much you're hitting up.

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And for every degree, you hit down on the ball.

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It's going to affect the path a little less than an degree, half a degree to two thirds

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of a degree depending on the club that you're swinging.

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So you can use this to help zero in your ball flight.

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It's similar to the four square model, but it's a little bit easier for setup when you're

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on the range.

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I think the four square model can be a little bit more specific and help you with not only

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controlling direction, but looking at low point and where that is.

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But this one, you can quickly set it up and then quickly take it away.

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The other thing that is really useful is let's say you're using this visual feedback and

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you get your, you find yourself hitting a pretty predictable little fade or little draw,

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like a ball flight that you like.

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Then what you want to do is keep the training station there, but then take a few swings

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outside of the training station and try to recreate the same ball flight.

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Then what you can do is you can use the edge of a T-box or the edge of the fairway where

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the line of grass goes from fairway to rough as one of the elements that.

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So it's a training device that you can kind of use on the course because I can pretend

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that, alright, I'm done practicing with my two sticks.

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Now here's the edge of the T-box.

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I can imagine that that's one of those sticks and I can take some swings and try to get

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that visual path figured out.

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And then once I have that visual path in place, I can set up to my ball and try to recreate

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that path.

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So if you're struggling with a little bit of your path control and you're more of a visual

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golfer, you can't really feel too well.

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Some of these, you know, shallowing movements or you can't feel that loss of posture,

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use the sticks on the ground to kind of help your brain coordinate where you want to swing

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the club and that'll ultimately help you develop your stock tour swing.

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So now a fairly neutral swing.

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Good.

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And then I'm going to do a little early extension.

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Kind of like this.

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So you can see how you can use those visuals to help you really zero in on how you're

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controlling your path and what it looks like, especially if you're a visual learner.

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