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This month you will see how simple it is to master your fairway woods and hybrid clubs. They are super easy to hit, once you see what you need to do in your mind.

It seems like every week I am asked to do some more things on the Fairway Woods and the Hybrids. It never ceases to amaze me that golfers have so much trouble with these simple instruments which they all continue to carry in their golf bag.

What is the underlying problem with these clubs? What is it that gives you a case of diarrhea every time you pull one of these clubs out of your bag? Have you ever taken the time

to sit in your easy chair, as I continue to encourage you to do, and really think about these questions?

I am not attempting to look down on you or to talk down to you. I am merely trying my very best to encourage you to do some deep thinking on the subject, so you can find the solution to the problem.

Golf is no different than anything else you

Edition 11: “Be Your Own Golf Coach” Series

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Fairway Woods & Hybrids

WHAT’S ON THIS MONTH’S DVD

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do in life. If you will take the time to sit and think about the situation, you should be able to come up with a good answer regarding the real issue or problem.

I know that sounds all to simple, but it is truly the answer to your dilemma. Here is why I say that. If you really fully understand anything or any situation in life, then you can tackle it and defeat it.

About seven years ago I decided I would like to learn how to make things out of wood. My wife and I needed to purchase a couple of desks for our office, we needed a large bookcase for the family room in our home, and I thought it would be a lot of fun to learn how to turn pieces of wood into candlesticks and things.

I had never done anything with wood in my life. But I figured I could get a book or two on the subject and at least get the ball rolling. Seven years later, people come into our home and marvel at the two bookcases I have made, as well as the two beautiful desks we use every day in our office.

All of the doors and drawer fronts have raised panels. One three piece unit fits so well it is not glued or screwed, and it looks like it is one solid piece. We have several very nice fruit

bowls and decorative items I have learned to turn on the lathe.

I am not boasting to you. I am doing my dead level best to get you to see a very important picture. Any of us can learn to do anything we set our minds to do. All we need is s o m e v e r y b a s i c k n o w l e d g e , s o m e understanding of the matter, and the willingness to work on it.

Now I will get back to the subject of hitting the Fairway Woods and the Hybrids. I am going to share the information with you, both here in the written material, as well as in the DVD for this Edition.

Before you run right out to the driving range and struggle with the whole thing, I want you to take the time to sit and think about the information I am giving you.

Donʼt just sit and think about it, but take the time to analyze everything you read, hear, and see. Then while you are still in your easy chair, take the time to compare the things you have just learned with the way you thought about it in the past. Can you see the difference?

When you can understand why you struggled in the past and what you really should be doing, then you will have a very clear and concise picture in your mind of the real task at hand.

This is the art of learning! Do you think I simply ran to the garage and started nailing boards together? Not on your life. Once I began to see and understand the real task at hand, I drew a set of plans. Sure, they were crude, but they had all of the exact measurements, with explicit drawings showing me what to do and in which order.

When I looked at the plans I had drawn, my mind felt completely at ease that I could accomplish my task quite easily–IF I WERE

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So What’s the Secret?

I am going to tell you the problem you are having

these clubs. Are you ready for the answer? Here it is...

You don’t understand what you are supposed to do with them!

! EDITION 11

FAIRWAY WOODS & HYBRIDS! PAGE 3

WILLING TO TAKE IT ONE SIMPLE STEP AT A TIME. The overall plan sent me almost into a sudden panic. However, when I evaluated each small step, none of them seemed too difficult for me.

I have to share something with you that my wife brought to my attention. She asked me if I thought the members were actually reading through and spending adequate time to mentally process the information... or if they

just rip open the DVD, head straight for the TV, and then think that was going to make them into pros.

That somewhat shocked me, because I spend a lot of time writing all of this material, and I do it for a very good reason.

I want you to learn how to hit good, consistent, golf shots, and I want you to learn how to become your own golf coach.

The number one reason golfers struggle with the fairway woods and the hybrids is purely a lack of understanding. Golfers tend to look down at the heads of the clubs and all they see is “FAILURE.” They cannot imagine in their mind how to get the golf ball into the air, when there is such a small amount of loft on the face of the club.

Then, as they are trying to conjure a way to “get under the ball” in order to help it into the air, they realize you cannot get these big wads of metal to go into the ground. The sole of these clubs seem too large and flat, and all they seem to want to do for you is to bounce off the ground.

Well, things are looking up–and Iʼm not talking about you lifting your head. I am referring to the fact that the clubhead does have a tendency to skip and bounce off the turf. That is one of the most important parts of being able to hit the fairway woods and the hybrids successfully.

LET’S GET TO WORK...

The key to hitting consistently with Fairway Woods & Hybrids is to take advantage of the nice big, fat sole plate... as a result this club will bounce off the ground

I donʼt want to sound like some intellectual, or something, but I must once again go to a very basic physics lesson in order for you to begin to understand how to hit these simple

clubs. I am going to do my dead level best to help you get through this, once and for all.

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In physics there is something called “center of gravity.” Donʼt let the name scare you, because this is all very simple stuff. The center of gravity is nothing more than the very center of the weight of any given object.

For instance, because a golf ball is a perfectly round sphere, the dead center of its weight is in the exact middle of that sphere, or the ball. If we were to take a cube (a cube is exactly the same on all sides, like each of the die in a pair of dice), once again we would see that the center of gravity is in the exact center of the object, or cube.

That is easy for all of us to see, but what about an object which is not perfectly symmetrical? Where is the center of the weight on an object like that? For instance, if we were to take a look at any of our iron heads, we would not have a symmetrical object. In physics, we are taught how to take the measurements of the object and use them to calculate where in the clubhead the exact center of gravity might be.

This is one of the reasons why you will see slightly different configurations for all of the

various iron clubhead designs you might find out there on the market. Each manufacturer has developed what they believe to be the easiest clubheads to hit, because they have weighted the clubhead in a manner to place the center of gravity in the place they feel to be the best for any given level of player.

As an example, if a clubhead has a larger cavity in the back and a larger sole on the bottom of the club, then the manufacturer has dramatically lowered the center of gravity on that design.

Stay with me for a little bit here and you will see where I am going with it all.

Now, letʼs take a look at the shape of a fairway wood or a hybrid club. When the club is first designed, it is a hollow piece of metal shaped in a design we call a clubhead.

Think at this time of the clubhead still being hollow, and somewhere about half way up the face of the club and about halfway between the front of the face and the rear of the clubhead, you would find the center of gravity.

You can’t see it, but the manufacturers but weight in the bottom of the club head to lower the center of gravity. That extra bottom weight will make the ball get up and fly automatically .

! EDITION 11

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We can easily see in the design of a cavity back iron that the clubhead is much heavier at the bottom than it is at the top. We obviously cannot see that when we examine one of the fairway woods or hybrids. All we see is the outside of the clubhead, and we are not allowed to see the inner workings of it.

On the inside of the fairway woods and hybrid clubheads there is some weight laid into the bottom of the head, which lowers the center of gravity downward from the middle of the clubhead to a place approximately one eighth to a quarter of an inch from the bottom.

In order to create flight on a golf ball, all we are

required to do is to create some backward spin on the ball. You have heard me talk on this many times in the past. Without backward spin, a golf ball WILL NOT FLY. Period!! End of subject!

Too often golfers believe backward spin is the thing which causes a golf ball to spin back when it hits the green. They do not realize EVERY golf shot which is flying in the air for any length of time has backspin on it.

It will not fly with out it.

YOU HAVE GOT TO GET THAT ONE INTO YOUR MIND AND UNDERSTANDING!! It is probably the most important thing in golf.

You can hold the club any way you want, and you can swing the club any way that feels good to you. However, no one in the world can make a golf ball fly through the air without backward spin.

When a golf ball spins back on the green, the golf ball was spinning a little extra, and the green and fairway were in just the perfect condition to accommodate it doing so. That is the major reason even golf professionals donʼt spin many shots backward on the greens at their home

course. Conditions have got to be absolutely perfect in order to see that take place.

Going back to some very basic physics, whenever the center of gravity of one object is lower than the center of gravity of another, when they collide, the one with the higher center of gravity will have backward spin.

Therefore, the way we create backspin on a golf ball is to get the center of gravity of the clubhead lower than the center of gravity of the golf ball.

This is one of those places where you need to sit back and think about all of this information. Visualize in your mind seeing the center of gravity of the clubhead as being very low in the head.

Do your best to see the center of the golf ball as the center of gravity of it. Then see the golf ball and the clubhead resting on a table top, with the golf ball touching the face of the clubhead. When you are looking at this picture in your mind, try to see how (even though the clubhead is larger than the golf ball) the center

The COG of the ball is in the center of the ball. The COG of the club head is at the bottom sole plate. Therefore the ball has the higher COG and it will spin backwards.

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of gravity of the clubhead is lower than the center of gravity of the golf ball.

Once you can see this picture firmly in your mind. You are on your way to success with these clubs. There is one other area we must still take into consideration, and that is the small amount of loft on the club face. That always causes the average golfer to freak out, because they do not understand what I am going to share with you now.

Most golfers seem to have a picture in their mind of every club in their bag making golf shots launch at the same angle. They typically see every golf shot taking off like a 7 or 8-iron, at a relatively high angle.

This is not what actually takes place, though. Try to imagine what would happen if you were to take 13 separate golf balls and place them on a flat surface. Then if you were to shoot every club from the driver right on down through your sand wedge right along that flat surface, each one striking one of the golf balls, you would have 13 separate launch angles.

That information totally shocks most golfers. They just cannot see in their mind how a driver could ever fly as high as their pitching wedge, but it does–when hit properly and with the same amount of swing energy.

Believe it or not, it is the truth.

If a certain swing energy will make a pitching wedge rise to a height of forty feet in the air, the driver struck with the same swing energy will also rise to a height of forty feet. If that swing caused the driver to stay in the air for six seconds, then it will also cause the pitching wedge to stay in the air for the same six seconds.

Both golf balls will reach the exact same height and they will achieve that height at the same moment I time, if they were launched at the same moment in time.

Here is the difference. The driver will reach that height much farther down the fairway than the pitching wedge will.

The reason all of this is so important for you to understand is to try to stop you from attempting to help the fairway woods and the hybrids get airborne.

You must do your best to begin to see in your mind how the golf ball is launched at a much lower angle with these clubs. They do not have to take off at as steep of an angle as a 7 or 8-iron.

All you are required to do in order to get the ball up and flying is to make consistent solid contact with the back side of the golf ball. What is solid contact, and how do you achieve it on a consistent basis?

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Understand the every club produces a different launch angle:

For instance, a 10.5° driver would launch its ball at 10.5°, and a 40° 8-iron would launch its ball at a 40° angle. Then your 56° sand wedge would launch its ball at a 56° angle. They would not all take off at the same angle.

However, THEY WOULD ALL REACH THE SAME EXACT HEIGHT DURING THEIR FLIGHT.

! EDITION 11

FAIRWAY WOODS & HYBRIDS! PAGE 7

Solid contact is achieved when the clubhead contacts the golf ball in what we call the “sweet spot” on the face of the club. This is accomplished when we can get the sole of the clubhead to contact the ground at the exact moment the club face makes contact with the back of the golf ball.

That sounds easy, doesnʼt it? Yet, so many golfers struggle with this simple task. The fairway woods and the hybrids are basically the same configuration, and thus they are virtually the same thing. Therefore, we will approach them with that understanding.

In order to learn how to make good consistent contact on the ball with these clubs, you must first learn to make good consistent contact with the turf and ground. The main reason golfers struggle with these clubs is all wrapped up in that one statement, so this is one of those places where I would like for you to take the time to relax and think about that statement.

All you need to do to make good consistent contact on the golf ball is to learn how to make good consistent contact with the turf and ground.

This should be getting easier by the moment, if thatʼs all there is to it. For the entire forty-six years I have been teaching, I have seen golfer after golfer go from struggling with these clubs to becoming very good with them, so there is no reason you cannot do the same thing. All you have to do is to follow the instruction I will give you.

Mentally, golfers are fearful of not getting the ball into the air, so they are attempting to

help the situation by trying to lift it into the air. This gives them a mental picture of having to “get under” the ball with the clubhead in order to strike the ball on the way upward from the bottom of the arc of the swing.

Whenever our mind is focused on the golfball we will have some sort of problem with our golf swing.

GETTING SOLID CONTACT WITH YOUR FAIRWAY WOODS & HYBRIDS

As a result of that thinking, you either hit the ground too early, or you top the shot. Both are the result of trying to get under the ball in order to lift, or sweep, it off of the ground.

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That is why I want you to get your mind off the golf ball and onto the turf and ground. I have never found a golfer who cannot hit the ground with the sole of the club.

The problem arises because you have hit the ground too early on so many occasions, and therefore screwed up your shot, that you are now afraid to hit the ground at all.

This is why I said earlier your problem is nothing more than a lack of knowledge and understanding. Once I can get you to understand what I want you to do, you will have no problem accomplishing the task. Then your practice time will bring you great benefits.

STEP 1. Grab one of your fairway woods or hybrid clubs and get where you can take a few practice swings.

Before you take any of these practice swings, I want you to take your grip on the club with a very open club face.

The open club face is for the simple purpose of creating a ski effect on the sole of the club. This is so the club will not catch in the grass or dig into the ground. Instead, when you slap the clubhead onto the turf and ground it will bounce, or skip off of it.

Take several practice swings, making certain you bounce the clubhead off of the ground with each swing. This exercise will help you accomplish several things. First, it will help you begin to feel how to skip the clubhead off the turf and not dig into the ground. This will start to build your confidence, because most of you have hit the ground too early, a fat shot, so many times in the past. Now you are afraid to even touch the ground.

When we do that, it quite frankly doesnʼt feel good. It jars us, and can even cause us to sustain an injury. As a result of all of this, we naturally become very hesitant to allow the clubhead to make contact with the ground.

HOW TO PRACTICE FAIRWAY WOODS & HYBRIDS

To practice your Fairway woods, twist the club face to a very open position in your hands. (a slice position). This will help you bounce the club of the ground.

! EDITION 11

FAIRWAY WOODS & HYBRIDS! PAGE 9

However, it is that consistently proper contact with the ground that will become the salvation to our problem.

Once you become comfortable with slapping the clubhead off of the turf consistently, begin to see if you can feel how to skip it fairly gently off of the ground with your swings. All the while, you should still be holding the clubhead in an open position. It is so very important to do this exercise, because I want you to start to eliminate your fear of hitting the ground.

As you begin to feel how to skip the sole of the clubhead off the ground gently, then start closing the club face a bit at a time, trying to continue feeling the clubhead bouncing gently off the turf. Eventually, I want you to be able to skip the clubhead off of the turf with the same feeling.

I stated earlier that I want you to learn how to consistently skip or bounce the clubhead off of the turf or ground. By that I am referring to you being able to feel like the clubhead hits the ground with the same feel each time. You will not touch the earth lightly on one swing and then thump it severely on another swing.

You will not be able to hit any of your shots consistently until you can skip the club off the ground consistently. This is where it all starts. Everyone wants to hit consistent shots, but practically no one stops to think that it all starts with consistent swings.

STEP 2. Now that you can consistently bounce the club off the turf the same way, we are ready to go to the next step. That is learning to skip the clubhead off of the ground exactly where you predetermine to skip it. I started to say in the same place each time, but I really want you to learn how to skip it off the ground in a variety of places–just as long as it is where you intended to hit it.

If you can hit the ground right where you intend to hit it, then you are ready to go to the driving range for a little more experimenting. At the driving range, I want you to learn how to skip the sole of the club off of the turf exactly at the back of the golf ball.

I usually have my students begin this process with the club face open a bit. This helps give them a bit of security about hitting the ground intentionally with a golf ball staring back at them.

Golfers often say, “I can make great swings, until you put that darned little golf ball down there.” They think it is a cute saying, but it is actually a truthful statement. Studying the psychology of hitting golf shots and playing the game of golf, I discovered the golf ball has a great deal of power to influence our thinking.

When we take swings without a golf ball, practice swings, both the conscious mind and the subconscious mind are completely relaxed. This is because they are not attempting to hit a golf shot. However, just as soon as we place a golf ball down there, both the conscious mind and the subconscious mind go absolutely crazy.

T h e y s u d d e n l y h a v e t h i s i n t e n s e determination to hit the ball and make it fly through the air. I know we take our clubs to the golf course with the intention of hitting golf balls, however, that thought process will cause a huge amount of problems for us. That is simply because we are no longer thinking about merely swinging the golf club.

This is another one of those places where I would like for you to stop and think about what you have just read. Take your time and really do some soul searching. This is going to change the way you swing a golf club and the way you play the game, because it is so important.

When we are practice swinging we are focused on swinging the club, but with a golf

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ball down there we are suddenly tricked into trying to hit the ball. There is a huge psychological difference between swinging a club and hitting a ball.

If you stop to think about it, you can make great swings when you are swinging at a broken tee, a cigarette butt, or a whiffle ball. Yet, when you place a real golf ball on the ground, everything goes right into the toilet. This is part of the living proof that the golf ball is actually the culprit.

Just as soon as the human mind realizes that the object you are attempting to hit with the golf club is something which will potentially fly, a real live golf ball, it automatically goes into the panic mode. That is how it all works, and it isnʼt your fault.

I want to help you learn to overcome that automatic mental panic. That is why I have you focusing on striking the turf. Too often golfers who read my material miss the real meaning of the instruction. When a student is standing right in front of me, I can lead them through it in a manner which helps them to understand the importance of everything.

The real lesson here is to begin to learn how to get your mind off of the golf ball and onto the swing and the ground. The golf ball absolutely must become a thing of complete non-importance to you. That is the only way you are going make the improvement you are looking for so you can to take it to the next level.

When you can learn to get your mind off of the golf ball, you will then only be focused on making the golf swing.

I tell all of my golfers we were all born with a perfect golf swing, but we fail to use it for several reasons. Number one, we donʼt understand how to make our own personal, perfect golf swing; and secondly, we focus on hitting the golf ball MORE than we do on making the swing.

In order to have any chance of making good consistent golf shots, we must learn how to make good consistent golf swings. Good golf shots are impossible to repeat, however, good consistent golf swings are as simple as taking a drink of water.

At the driving range, you must learn how to focus on swinging the club and striking the ground right at the back of the golf ball. When you can start to do that, the golf ball will immediately start taking consistent flight for you.

When a golfer is standing right in front of me and making good consistent contact on the ball, it freaks them out to see the golf balls flying off in terrible directions. They are completely unaware of the fact that they came to the lesson telling me they couldnʼt even hit their fairway woods or hybrids.

Donʼt be concerned where the ball is flying at this point in the process. Just focus on making good consistent swings and striking the ground right at the back of the golf ball. You need at this point to merely begin to experience some good consistent contact taking place, and striking the ground right at the back of the ball will do that for you.

If you are not willing to let the golf ball fly where ever it wants to fly at this point in your progress, you will stop making consistent golf swings. This is where things start getting a bit more difficult, because we all want to hit good shots.

! EDITION 11

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Now they are hitting shot after shot with good solid and consistent contact, but they donʼt like the fact that the balls are not going on target. You better be paying attention to what I am trying to help you understand at this point in the information. You cannot concern yourself with where the balls are flying right now. Just work on making good, solid, consistent contact on the ball.

STEP 3. Once you have achieved consistent contact on the ball (by striking the ground exactly at the back of the golf ball), then you may begin to adjust the club face in your hands in order to start curving the shots in the direction you wish.

Stay with me here and do what I am telling you. At this point the ball still may not be going where you want it to go, but you should begin to see your shots curve the way you want them to curve. If you want to hit draws, then continue closing the club face in your grip until it starts curving to the left. Donʼt worry if you are also pulling your shots.

Finally, when you are curving the ball in the direction you desire, it is time to start feeling your swing traveling in the direction, or on the path, you choose. This is nothing more than swinging the club in a different direction than you are presently swinging it (if your shots are not already going down the middle).

Now I need for you to pay close attention again to what I am going to tell you. Whenever we swing a golf club, we automatically feel like we are swinging pretty much toward the target, even if we are pulling all of our shots. I need for you to understand the psychology of what I am sharing with you here. You will probably feel like you are swinging the club down the middle.

If you are pulling your shots and they feel like you are swinging the club toward the target, then you are going to have to start feeling as though you are swinging the club to the right of your intended target. Do not change

your alignment. Just try to learn how to adjust the path of your swing to the right. Iʼll give you a little hint: you will have to tilt your chest just a bit to the right at address and keep it there all the way to the top of the backswing.

This whole process might take an hour for you, or it might take a week of practice. Either way, if you will stay with it, once you have it, you will never forget it or lose it. If you will follow the steps I have outlined for you here, I promise you will not fail to learn how to hit nice crisp shots with these clubs.

But remember this....

When a student is standing right in front of me, I usually have no trouble at all getting them to do what I am requiring of them. However, when golfers get a DVD or information in writing, they tend to try to go off at their own pace and try to do it their way–and not my way. Those are the golfers who then send me an email telling me this doesnʼt work.

There is one other important bit of information I must give you. Do not attempt to mix anything I have told you or shown to you with anything else you have heard or read from other golf professionals. I donʼt care who they are, just donʼt try to do it. Trying to mix the information will only lead to confusion.

Now you have taken the time to mentally digest the steps to

mastering these clubs, how they work, and how to make some progress and some improvement... NOW you can get out the DVD and see all the drills in action.

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Do not attempt to add this information to what you already know and have heard, either. Adding ʻmoreʼ to this will only make your life harder than it needs to be.

All too often a golfer will write and tell me, “My golf professional, or so-and-so in the Golf Magazine, said such-and-such. What about that?” I boldly write directly back to them and tell them that professional doesnʼt know very much about teaching the golf swing.

Donʼt get upset at me for doing that. There is one major thing I do which is so very different than all of the other golf teachers. They address the topic or the issue, and place a bandage on it. I go for the root cause of the problem in order to repair it, permanently.

As an example, I recently did a couple of Editions on Faults and Fixes. Hundreds, if not thousands, of golfers have written to me about their struggle with “coming over the top” in their golf swing. They tell me they have taken numerous lessons and no one can fix them. I promptly tell them that is ludicrous, because coming over the top in your golf swing is nothing more than swinging the club toward shortstop on a baseball diamond.

I then ask then to swing their golf club to the right of second base, or to the right of the pitcherʼs mound, and they immediately perform that task perfectly. They also do it with a very clear and precise understand of what they are attempting to do with the golf club.

I then tell them, “Now you no longer are coming over the top in your swing.” The most common response I then get is, “Youʼve got to be kidding! Every golf teacher I have gone to see has worked on something in my swing, and I can never do it correctly. You didnʼt even say a thing about my golf swing.”

I hope you will take the time to think about that one. In other words, the only reason we would not like to swing the club over the top is so we can send the shot off to the right of our

target a bit, giving it room for some left curve to bring it back toward the target.

IN SUMMARY: In order to learn to hit your fairway woods consistently, you must first learn to hit the ground consistently. Then you must learn to hit the ground in the exact spot you have predetermined–right at the back of the golf ball. This is the process which teaches you how to get the golf ball flying consistently.

Your next step is to begin to tweak the club face position in your hands and your swing path, in order to start to create your directional control. If you are not willing to take it one step at a time, I promise you will FAIL to learn what I am teaching you. You must be willing to learn this in this exact process. Students who have obeyed my instruction have ALL become successful with these clubs.

When you begin using golf balls on the driving range, you should start with your most lofted hybrids or fairway woods. Don ʼt immediately go for the 3-wood, thinking you need more distance.

Now, go out and have fun with the process! I am looking forward to hearing about your new found success with the hybrids and the fairway woods.

Next Month...Edition 12 we are coving uneven and tricky lies around the fairways and then around the green. This is high level stuff that will save you a ton of shots. See you next time.

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