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Hi, this is Matt Saternus for Plugged In Golf and in this video I'm going to take one the
trickiest concepts in ball flight, the 3D club path, and explain it in simple, practical
terms so you can hit better golf shots. Let's get plugged in.
I've had dozens of students say to me, "Matt, I can hit straight shots, even draws, with
my irons and wedges, but my driver, all I do is slice it." In this video I'm going to
explain why. I'm going to start with a little bit of practical application, I'm going to
explain the technical side of it, then I'll come back to some more practical stuff at
the end.
So, for the short attention span crowd, here's the practical application in just a snippet:
the more you hit down on the ball, the more your club path, your 3D club path, goes to
the right. The more you hit up on the ball, like with a driver on a tall tee, the more
your path goes to the left. Now I'm going to get into the technical explanation and
I'll loop back to the practical piece at the end.
So hopefully we all know that the golf swing happens in 3 dimensions. And lots of people
have used a hula hoop of what the golf swing looks like and I think that's a pretty good
model. So, imagine that this is your swing and let's assume it's pointed straight at
the camera, if you were looking down if would look like your swing was pointed straight
at the camera, and now we can see this club head moving along this hula hoop down and
through. Now, what we need to understand here is that even though the hula hoop, the arc
itself, is pointed straight at the camera, the club is only moving straight at the camera
at one point, right here at the bottom when it's moving level to the ground or when the
angle of attack is zero. Anywhere there's a negative angle of attack, where the club
is moving down, it's also moving out to the right, so the more it's moving down, the more
it's moving to the right. Same thing on the other side, in reverse. The more that club
is moving up, the more it's moving to the left and hopefully you can see that on your
screen there that as this club moves up it's still on plane, this plane hasn't moved, but
the club path is moving to the left.
So, circling back to some more practical application, as I said, the more you hit down, the more
your club path moves to the right and we know the more the club path moves to the right,
the more the ball is likely to draw or it will draw even more dramatically. So if you
have a wedge where you're going to hit down a lot, let's say 6 degrees, that's going to
make the club path want to be more to the right, because even if the hula hoop, your
swing arc, looks like it's pointed straight, when you hit down 6 degrees, your path is
actually out to the right. So that's going to promote some draws, maybe even too much
draw and that's why most people don't hit slices with their wedges, they hit pulls or
hooks. With their middle irons, where that angle of attack starts to flatten out or even
in their long irons, where it flattens out, that's when they hit some really straight
shots for the average golfer. And then when you get to the driver where people are trying
to hit up to maximize their distance, they're hitting up and that path is moving to the
left even more than it normally is, if they're a slicer with everything, and that's when
that ball really starts to curve off to the right. So we need to think about how we can
move the arc to get it back to straight, to get the club path back to zero, so, let me
grab the hula hoop again. Now, again, if this is pointed right at the camera, and I'm interested
in this part of the arc right here, well my club path is out to the left because I'm hitting
up, but if I take that whole hula hoop and tilt it out to the right, I can still hit
up and now my club path is straight, straight to the target and I'm going to hit a nice
straight shot. So, what you might consider doing is setting up differently with different
clubs. For your wedges, maybe set up a little more left of target or open to the target.
For your driver, set up a little bit more closed to the target to zero out that path
and balance out the effect of hitting up or down.
If you have any questions about the 3D club path or any other aspect of ball flight, please
post them down below and I'll be happy to answer them. You can also check out PluggedInGolf.com
and the other videos in this series to understand even more. If you enjoyed the video, please
give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also follow PluggedInGolf
on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and check out PluggedInGolf.com for more great golf
content. This has been Matt Saternus, thanks for watching.