When I look into the golf swing there are two authorities that I trust.
One is Tutelman.com, written by Dave Tutelman, a physicist, and the second is Athletic Motion Golf, a YouTube site.
I trust the physics point of view as it has been proven in other fields and then applied to golf. I'm not sure that there isn't too much reliance on his model, but it seems to hold together well. If someone else proposes something in re the swing, I look for conflicts with Tutelman's point of view.
Athletic Motion Golf (AMG) comes from a different direction. They collect swing information from golfers and then look at the differences between the good and the great players. Frequently the differences are stark. AMG is not proposing a model for the swing, they just tell you what they see; the how and the why are left to you, the viewer.
While I vowed the other week to not change my swing, AMG put up some interesting videos about shaft and hand positions. This was one of their usual Pros versus Ams presentations. If I were to sum it up, the pros will get their hands almost back to the address position before losing the angle between the left forearm and golf shaft and the Ams will lose it earlier and the club shaft is parallel to the ground much earlier in the swing. (At impact the Pro's arms are ahead of the impact position, the Am 's is behind the address position. )
The next item was that the left shoulders of Pros will move downward towards the ball during the downswing, while amateurs return on the same path they got there. Ams become much flatter in their swing plane than do the pros. In simpler terms the pro is closer to the ball than the Am, this is even true in the backswing as a pro will get shorter and the Am will straighten up a bit. This distance is not huge, just and inch or two, but it may be more important for what is to follow, to note the direction of the motion. Pros are getting closer, Ams moving away from the ball.
Let me put some of this together and I'll pass on what I think is happening and important in these variables.
We have to start by recognizing that in either case, you have to get the club face back to the ball. There is not a lot of error that is available here. Thin shots and thick ones are a problem. Clearly the pro is more consistent in avoiding these extremes.
Secondly, if you are a pro, you need to "shorten" your club to get to impact. If you move away, you need a longer club. So how do the two golfers do this? They both start with a setup position where the club face is vertically aligned with the ball, but as they swing the pro makes the distance shorter and the Am makes it longer.
The answer is found on the AMG video when they talk of hand position at impact. The pro's does not match the Am's. And the pro's hands will be ahead of the ball at impact. There is more angle from arms to club shaft than the Am's. This in effect shortens the club shaft length. In fact all pros will have hand positions more towards the target than the address position.
What does the Am do? He loses the angle between arms and shaft earlier, which makes the club longer. If it's not long enough, he will raise his body up too and uses the flatter shoulder motion, another means to increase the space between body and ball, to allow the club to hit the ball. If our bodies were not as wonderful at making things happen, there would be a lot of misses. So the pro maintains wrist shaft angle, the Am loses it. The Am unloads the angle earlier, the pro wants to retain it.
AMG has measured the time available from the top of the backswing to impact and it's less than a quarter of a second. The Am and the Pro have the same time -- speeds are the same! But look what each of them is doing. The pro is basically just rotating his body to the ball with a slight lowering of the body, which occurs early in the downswing. The Am is opening wrists, lifting up and making room for the impact. AMG has often stated that pros do less work than Ams. The Am is spending time losing angle, raising the body, lengthening then trying to get out of the way.
The pro ends up with more club speed at the ball, a simpler motion and with less moving parts, more consistency.
Now does this stand up to what Tutelman has to say? Yes it does. His view of the swing is that the arms and club will swing out and strike the ball. The longer you can hold on the "90 degree" angle, the faster the club will be at impact. He sees the swing as the opposite of a figure skater doing a spin and pulling in her arms. As the arms come in, the speed increases.
AMG states that there is nothing that the pro does that is physically demanding, or requires exceptional strength or skill. They suspect that they found the proper motion early in life.
For some reason the sport of golf lends itself to improper actions. If the game were more dynamic and the ball in motion, it might be easier to swing well. But going from a stand still to a 100 MPH club head seems bring out the worst in golfers.
On a personal note, I've been working on keeping the arm club angle later in the swing, trying to not move the left arm up against my chest, and then getting my hands in front of the address position at impact. While this sounds like a lot of stuff to try, it's simpler than my old swing. I've been hitting the ball better and even the driver has shown signs of being a weapon of mass destruction.
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I dreamed of Einstein the other night and felt I should put it on record. He and I met and talked in German a bit, then we went out to a swamp and using our feet pushed down into the water. Einstein thought that the water motion was going to create an electrical discharge and he wanted to measure it. I think we had some sort of grid that lowered onto the water to pick up the weak electrical signals. The dream faded away at that point. But it is the first time I got to talk to him, so I thought it was worth mentioning.
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