WEBVTT
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The way we teach people to play this game, and
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the assumptions we make of who they are initially destroys
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their potential to ever really get good. Because at the
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end of the day, whoever has the best face control
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when they play golf wins. I don't care what the
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swing looks like. Look at the tour. There's a lot
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of really weird looking swings that are really good. Why
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because through the ball they control the face and they
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can hit the shots they want to hit under pressure.
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Today I'm talking to Mike Malaska, who is a PGA
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National Teacher of the Year who played in two US
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Opens and was an All American at Weaber State is
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the correct pronunciation, correct, that's correct. Called it Weber until
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I was fourteen, so I always never quite know if
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I got it right. I got well, Mike, thank you
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for being here, And I wanted to kind of start
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by asking you. You know, I listen to you on
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talking about the role of the arm and the hands,
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you know, and the wrists in the swing, and so
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much current instruction is based on everything else, it seems,
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so you know, talk a little bit about you know,
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your your view on how those play into the swing
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because everybody tells you, you know, don't swing with your arms,
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don't swing with your hands, swing with your you know,
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with everything else.
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Well, okay, let's talk about how you learn things. So
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when you learn motion patterns hit, throw, catch, it's it's
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called tactile learning. So you learn from hands, fingers, toes
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and feet inward. That's how your body learns patterns. This
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doesn't learn how to make this move. I mean that's
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a misconception to start right relative to physiology, anatomy, kinesiology,
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and how you learn learning things. So you know, this
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doesn't control this necessarily. This learns what to do. This
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figures out how to accommodate what this is doing. So
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if your hands are trained and they're on the club,
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and your hands and arms are trained to do what
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they need to do with the club, then your body
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can start play at a bigger and bigger role. But
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your hands still have to feel and adapt and understand
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where the club is and be able to direct the
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momentum of the club to the ball. You can't just
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stand up and turn back and turn through and the
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club is going to run into the ball. The physics
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behind it is impossible. You'd miss the ball by a
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foot above it. Okay, So something has to sense where
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that club is in space and time, and as you
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move that something has to direct the momentum into the
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correct arc because the arc that you're initially on, if
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you just unwind, you're not going to come close to
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the ball because of the physics of circles.
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You know.
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So when they start talking about body controls, your hands
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and arms, I've seen very very few people who get
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a lot better to its. Now, yeah, your body has
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to move. It's it's a blend. It's a blend of
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two things, and it's emotion. There isn't necessarily one that
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overrides the other. But initially all these tour players, I mean,
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I just did an interview with Nicholas and Jack was
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talking about when he hits shots and what he sees,
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and he says, well, the first thing is I fear
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the shot I want to hit, And he says, and
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he gets right up in the camera and he goes
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and then I see it in my fingers. I can
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feel what the club's going to do. And then once
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I feel it in my fingers, my hands and arms
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figure out what they need to do, and my body
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then taps in and accommodates what I'm doing with my
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with the club. That's freaking magic. And you see the mistake,
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the mistake we make as teachers is we assume levels
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of competency hand eye coordinates and relative to the club
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in the face that these people will working there don't have,
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and so the information assumes those levels of control. Now
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I can stand up and put my hands on the
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thumb of you, I could do anything I want to
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do with my body, and my hand could go oh okay,
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if you're going to do that, I'm going to have
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to do this to get plucking the ball. But again,
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I've been I've been hitting.
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Golf balls and baseballs and tennis balls and getting and
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throwing things since I was three four years old, So
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I'm I'm pretty good with this stuff, right.
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So so when I look at people, so when I
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get to a student, I assess how good are they
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with their hands and arms with little teenie shots to
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control the space and make it work.
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If they can't do yeah, they have to learn that,
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right well.
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So you know, I mean, first of all, I mean
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it's it's really interesting because you know, obviously you know
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all the you know people you know.
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I'm trying to.
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You know, most people who you know, or a lot
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of people who are playing and maybe maybe that particularly.
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You know, most of us grew up playing baseball, right,
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We grew up playing basketball, you know, even if we
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weren't any good, you know, you grew up doing that.
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And that's really where you know, you have that kind
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of athleticism and that hand eye that you developed. And
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nobody ever said, you know, when you're playing baseball. You know,
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at least when I was growing up, nobody ever sat
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there and said, well, you got to rotate, you know,
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through through your swing, right, you kind of felter your
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way through it.
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Yeah.
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By the time you're five years old, okay, you when
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you understand the human body. By the time you're five
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years old, you've learned the four basic skills you need
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to do any athletics thing you want to do the
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rest of your life. Hit, throw, catch, and kick. Now,
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once you look, once you learn those patterns, you have
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a DNA for how you do those patterns the rest
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of your life. It's about applying those patterns in different
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planes of motion and applying it to a different title
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called tennis or baseball or golf or whatever. It might be,
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but your body is a pattern machine. So the other
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thing about individual humans is we all have a DNA
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for motion. How does our body sink? And when you
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take the golf club out of it and you have
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somebody do a certain pattern, take a stick and hit something,
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and you watch how they transition and how their body
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moves or how they throw a ball, and then you go, okay,
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that's their DNA for motion. Now, I've never seen anybody
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that I've had throw a ball or hit something take
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it back and come over the top and use their shoulder.
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Everybody sequences and moves perfectly. So why all of a
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sudden when they get to golf.
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Does that go away?
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Well, A lot of it's because of the way golf's
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been taught. A lot of it is because the ball
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is still, so people's feed are still. And in all
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sports you play, when you throw a ball, or you
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hit a ball, or you hit a tennis ball, you
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feed go steps swinging, step swing, so you're stepping, okay,
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it's a dance step. And then all of a sudden
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you tell somebody, Okay, we're gonna put your feet here,
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and we're not going to move your feet, but we
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want you to sequence the way you used to. That's
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very difficult to do. So you actually, in my world,
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you actually have to allow people to feel the motion
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that you want the way they do it with stepping,
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and then you gradually decrease the stepping. All right, because
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if you start static feet and say, okay, we're going
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to go back, we're going to change directions and you know,
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but don't move your feet, I'm telling you you're you're dead.
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Because people don't. People do not have that much what
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they call spatial awareness, approbe perception. And so so where
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the industry I think goes wrong is first static feet,
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second trying to change somebody's natural movement patterns because they
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don't even know what their patterns are. They don't look
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at them. They have an idea what their pattern should be,
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and they try to get everybody closer to the pattern
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they think is ideal. And that's I mean, if I
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had to summarize up my whole career, I did that
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for a while. I understood movement, I understood biomechanics, I
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got muscle firing patterns, I got all that stuff, and
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I taught it for two or three years, and quite honestly,
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it was the worst production I'd ever had out of students,
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and it was the worst that I'd ever played trying
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to do the same thing. So I knew there was
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something wrong because I couldn't even do it. I mean,
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I could do it on the range, but I couldn't
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go out on the golf course with any pressure on
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me at all and pull off what I was trying
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to teach people to do. So I'm going, what what
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am I doing here? I mean, I can't even do
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this on the golf now. On the range, like I said, Okay,
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no pressure, two or three balls, no big deal. But
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it's out on the golf course under pressure with a
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shot that I was uncomfortable with, which is going to
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happen most of the time. All of that just went
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to hail on a hand.
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Is it a question of over just an overcomplication of
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telling people how to move their bodies that puts you
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in your head when you're on the course, you know,
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I mean, because I mean that I can honestly say,
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you know, like from my experience, anytime I'm thinking about
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my swing, like the other day, I could not drive
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the ball straight, and with every drive that didn't go straight,
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and I was hitting everything else great and the you know,
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and I really try hard not to think, and then
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I'd be trying not to think, you know, and I'd
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be so trapped and trying to figure out what the
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motion was to just get the ball in the fairway.
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Well, see, first of all, you made a mistake there
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with what you said trying not to think. You can't thin.
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What you have to do is you have to be
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thinking about the right things. So when you're trying to
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hit the driver in the fairway, you have to first
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think about the motion, and you have to tie motion
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to face control through the ball. See when I watch
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people make practice swings, they stand up and make a
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practice swing and I videotape it, and the swing looks good,
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But when I slow it down, the face through where
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the ball is is all over the place. So when
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they get up and they try to duplicate the field,
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they might duplicate the motion, but the motion's not tied
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to the face. Every time, every single time a tour
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player moves a club, I don't care if it's one hand,
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two hands, whatever they're doing, and I film them and
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I film myself.
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I make a swing right through.
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Here where the ball would be that club face is
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absolutely perfect. I film amateurs making practice swings and the
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face is all over the place.
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And as you know, it.
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Only takes two or three degrees with a driver to
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take a ball from forty yards this way to thirty
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or forty yards the other way.
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So is it?
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Yeah?
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Okay, So the next time plan you type motion into
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face control, talk.
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About that I'd like because I'm interested in now.
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Okay, So so you feel the motion that you want
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and then you say, okay, there's the motion I want.
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Now what is the club face? What does the face
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have to feel through the ball to get the ball
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to go where I want to go? And then once
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you go okay, there it is, then you walk up.
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And then that's when you you don't shut down, but
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you allow yourself to duplicate the motion that you just made.
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So you're very focused on the feel of the motion.
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So the next time you're out there, you know, you
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get a feel for the motion, and then you tie
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the motion to feel in the face through the ball.
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And then once you go okay, there it is, then
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you walk up and set up and allow yourself to
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stay really focused on duplicating the motion that you just produced,
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not positions, the motion and the face through the ball.
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Motion and face through the ball to make the ball
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be where you want it to go. See, this is
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what controls the face. So when they say take your
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hands out of the game, well, I understand what they're saying.
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You want to get to where you're swinging that you don't.
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It doesn't require your hands to do much to make
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the face work, but your hand or your only connection
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with the clubs. So you have to have a sense
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in your hands and fingers. Okay, what am I going
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to do with the face through the ball. And if