Can it be that Simple?

Hmm, starting with a rhetorical question...  But if it's correct...

So I'm thinking to myself, no sense doing that out loud, it would only upset Barb and I'd have to talk loudly enough and clearly not to be asked for repetition, which seems like a lot of work and I can be lazy...  But I'm thinking about the arc of a swing and the centrifugal effects that pull the club into the ball.  Yes, the isochronic stuff still seems to be a part, but that's still up in the air.

I didn't have a tee time today and I had a few things to do this morning.  I got all the stuff done and it was painting part of the house.  It's complete and all the stuff is put away and the brush is washed and I won't have to think about it anymore.  This is a very good thing.

Now I have more processing power for my golf swing.

The thought is that perhaps I should be thinking about a swing or whipping action and not any kind of hit.  I've struggled to take my forearms and hands out of the mystery of what happens at impact.  This is not as easy as it sounds.

The quest for speed is different than a quest for power.  I want the club to be fast, not powerful.  The difference between these two is not simple to realize, I think.  When the club strikes the ball there is a transfer of momentum.  The big deal here is the difference in masses between the ball and club.  What happens with this is that the lighter (smaller mass) object will be moving faster than the more massive guy.

The clubs are the more massive and the ball is easily accelerated in the collision.  I think the maximum is that the ball will move 1.5 times the speed of the club.  This is called smash factor in the current vernacular.

This concept is useful and has to be trusted.  Imagine we have a delicate pitch.  We are close to the green, but need to loft the ball just a bit and then let roll out.  We take back the club, we start the downswing.  The swing is short; we don't need the ball to go too far.  But the club is moving slowly!  Panic sets in and we do something at impact to add a little speed.  Oops.  Not good and the ball will probably be sculled since we have to "fix" the shot by flipping our hands at the ball.

But if you trust this to work...  We return to our slow swing or even a putting stroke, where the club is completely in sync with our arms and will not swing past them.  We come into the ball at a slow speed and we are trusting that the ball will launch faster than the club was moving.

Now the ball accelerates due to the collision and its speed is nicely controlled by our delicate swing.  There is no help provided, no panic and you too will be the envy of your playing partners.

Quiz: which club has the highest smash factor?  That being the ratio of the club head speed to the ball speed...  And the answer is the putter.  Why?  Because the lack of loft on the putter generates less loss of speed.  It's all going into driving the ball forward and not much to lifting the ball in the air.  The next up is the driver and then we move down through the bag.

The trade off for speed is loft and spin.  So those are close to zero with the putter and around 10,000 rpm and 20+ degrees of loft for the wedges.

I seem to have wandered in my thoughts here, but let's return to a whip action.

The idea is that we take the club back, let the wrists break and get closer to the body and then we just spin out and let the arms and club move out and impact the ball.  We don't try to do anything but spin.  Yes, we have to be in the proper position.  If we have moved the body then the brain will compensate to hit the ball.

This not a new thought, but I went out to the course to do this, not worry about score or direction or anything else.  If I have to start the spin slowly to stay in position, then I will.

First tee is a short iron as they have the tee moved up.  Until a week ago I normally bit a 6 iron here.  But lately the 7 is the club.  I've got a ball in the pond that led me to changing clubs.

I'm on the tee and I have to wait a bit.  There is a single ahead of me and I want to play alone and hit a couple of balls if I want to.  I try a couple of practice swings.  I notice that at the start of the downswing I'm doing something strange with my arms.  It looks like I've found an element that should not be there.

I kill the 7 iron and I'm 2 yards from the water.  It's a solid hit and felt great.  It was an effortless swing and impact required no adjustments.

A 5 iron to a back pin is next.  Pretty much the acid test expect for the driver.  I hit one and I push it.  I drop another and make sure I'm square, I suppress the little action at the top and off it goes like a rocket.  Well, this is fun.  A solid 165 yard carry and on the green.

Off to the second hole.  This is a par 5 and I've been known to hook one into the trees on the left.  Of course that's pretty true for my entire group, but I'm over there more than my share.

I give it a whip and by great golfing gods it's in the air and miles down the middle of the fairway.  I tee up another.  Bang, same thing.  I wander out and they are withing 5 yards of each other.

I can hit a 7 iron to get to the 100 yard marker - a good layup.  I push these, but hit them well.  Shots to the green are also effortless.

And off I go.  Shot after shot and I'm not working real hard.

---  It's now a couple of days later and a couple of rounds later.  The above stuff remains fairly true.  But I'm thinking about other things.  I don't want to bother finishing the story.  I'd probably just dump this, but there is a bit of work here and as I mentioned, it's not all garbage.  It may be of use to others or my biographer.  (Ha!)  So I'll publish and start on the next topic.