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The Plane Truth

Part 2 – The Matrix & My Profile – A revolutionary vision for online golf instruction

Jim Hardy’s lasting legacy will surely be The Matrix, the world’s definitive online library of golf instruction which acts as a master resource of both text and video for his worldwide network of accredited teaching pros. Meanwhile, as we also detail below, all golfers will shortly be able to draw on the same information through the interactive My Profile programme. Jim Hardy himself sets the scene:

Part 1 – Plane Talk – Interview with golf swing coach Jim Hardy
Part 2 – The Matrix & My Profile – A revolutionary vision for online golf instruction
Part 3 – One & Two Plane Golf Swings – A rough guide
Part 4 – Matt Kuchar – Natural Born One Plane Golf Swing
Part 5 – Leading Plane Truth certified pros in the UK give their verdict
Part 6 – In three balls you could cure your slice[octo_single_image image=”109833″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”]“The Matrix consists of 360 individual videos, most of them around three minutes long. As a first stage, we covered all the correct moves for both One and Two Plane swings in each of the categories of address, backswing, downswing, impact and follow-through. Remember, I talked about the two different motors in the golf swing: so, in each category, there’s a separate video for the correct moves of the arms and club (as one motor) and another for the body.

As well as these ‘correct’ moves, we also have videos on all the mistakes with either motor you can make in each of those places. It sounds complicated but the information is clearly set out so that it relates to ball flight, helping your coach to make an instant diagnosis, using a special menu of possible contributory factors for each fault.

Finally, for each of these mistakes there are usually four different drills that the instructor can quickly recommend for an instant fix.”[octo_single_image image=”26596″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”]While the content of The Matrix encapsulates Hardy’s 37 years of teaching experience, the user-friendly format of The Matrix is courtesy of computer wizard, Mike Crisanti, a friend of star Plane Truth coach, Chris O’Connell, from their days at the University of Notre Dame and himself a useful amateur golfer.

“My task was to set out a huge amount of information very logically, according to both swing shape and ball flight for both One and Two Plane golfers, in such a way that the instructor can quickly diagnose and fix faults in the golf swing,” says Mike, as he takes Golf International through some of the surprisingly uncluttered web pages structured on an intuitive flow-chart principle helping pros to home-in on a golfer’s problems and remedies.

We followed the example of a One Plane golfer with a shallow impact position suffering from a hook, starting with a summary page listing all the possible causes of a hook for this type of player: 11 of them at address, 6 in the backswing, 5 in the downswing and 6 at impact.

Through the accompanying videos of Jim Hardy in action and the refreshingly concise summary text, we can quickly see which elements apply to this particular student and be guided instantly to a selection of fixes (most of them designed to steepen his shallow swing) which the instructor would then deposit in the student’s Drill Vault in his personal My Profile.MY PROFILE

How golfers can draw on Jim Hardy’s Matrix via golf instruction’s answer to MySpace.

An extension of The Matrix and drawing heavily on that master resource, My Profile is a pioneering online vision of golf instruction expected to launch this September through a $99 annual subscription to The Plane Truth website.

This will include an initial internet lesson from a Plane Truth Certified instructor. The golfer simply sends in a video of their swing and answers a questionnaire about their game. In return, they receive a full critique, along with access to selected videos from The Matrix demonstrating the correct moves and drills appropriate for their particular swing faults.

A profile of your swing gradually develops as the various faults, fixes and drills are deposited into your personal MySpace-style area on The Plane Truth website which you can be access via the web, 24/7. Plans for an iPhone ‘app’ will allow you to take everything to the practice ground and apply it in context.

The whole site is designed to be highly interactive: the instructor can leave coaching notes elaborating on each drill, while the player can make his own comments, perhaps personalising the Fact/Feel entry for each fix which offers a colourful description of what the golfer might feel as he attempts unfamiliar fixes for the first time.

You can even transfer old videos of your swing, along with details of corrected faults, to an ‘Old Faults’ folder. In this way you are compiling are complete record of your game, where it was when you started the programme and how it has evolved.

“Golfers have access to a huge amount of instruction nowadays but most of them simply don’t know what applies to them,” says Mike Crisanti. “The My Profile concept is a way for golfers to home-in on exactly what they need in the most efficient way.”[octo_single_image image=”26597″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”]Once a student starts working with a credited Plane Truth instructor he or she is provided access to The Matrix – a vault of invaluable information based on Jim Hardy’s teaching experience that allows both the coach and student to identify faults and dial up the appropriate fixes.SHOT TRACKER

A further feature of My Profile is the Shot Tracker facility where you input data from your rounds of golf and gradually build up a complete scoring profile of your game. A neat touch is how the system calculates a separate handicap for each area of your game: driving, iron play, pitching and putting, showing you (and your instructor when he logs on before your lesson) where the weak spots are. “In this way your golf instructor becomes more than your teacher – he becomes your golf manager,” says Hardy. “He already knows what you’re doing on the range, but when he logs onto your profile, he can see what’s happening to your game out on the course itself. He can then focus his efforts for you to not just play better but also score better.”