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Hi this is Matt Saternus. This is the first of five videos where I'm going to give you
a functional, practical understanding of the ball flight laws starting with Start Direction.
Let's get plugged in. In this first video I'm going to cover something
very simple, but very important: start direction. I'm going to discuss why the ball starts where
it does because there's a lot of misconceptions about it. Simply put, the ball starts where
the face is pointed at impact. So, if we assume that right at the camera is on target, if
the face is nice and square to the target, the ball will start on target. It could curve,
and we'll cover that later, but it will starts, pretty much, on target. If the face is pointed
over to the right, it's going to start to the right, if it's pointed to the left, it's
going to start to the left. Now, to be perfectly technically correct, the ball starts between
the path and the face, but it heavily favors the face, so for a functional, practical definition,
the ball starts where the face is pointed. Let me give you a quick demo that you can
do at home to see this for yourself. Get a 2X4 or a large book, anything with a
long straight edge, and lay it down on the ground. Put your putter's heel against that
2X4 and use it to guide the putter's path so you know that the putter's club path is
going to be perfectly straight. Now putt a few balls with a square face, closed face,
and an open face and what you'll see is that the ball starts exactly where the club face
is pointed, just as you're seeing in our demonstrations. Now, armed with this one simple piece of information,
you can go to the range and understand your ball flight and your golf swing a little bit
better. For example, most people fight the slice, or the ball that ends up to the right
too much. If your ball starts to the left or starts straight and curves right, what
I've told you today won't fix your ball flight, but for a lot of people that I've worked with
they say they slice it, but really their ball starts right. So if your ball starts right,
we know that your face at impact is pointed to the right, so what you need to do instead
of worrying about the path might be to get that face into more of a squared position.
If you have any questions about this, please post them below and please keep an eye out
for the other four videos coming soon in this series on ball flight. 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.