The REAL Reason We Need Shaft Lean

When hitting shots with the ball on the ground it is simply imperative that we lean the shaft towards the target at impact in order to expose the sweet spot to the back of the golf ball. After watching this video you will know exactly why…

As you can now see if you’re not leaning the shaft it isn’t possible to hit the ball out the center of the face. Leaning the shaft and delivering the clubhead in a slightly descending fashion gives us the best opportunity to compress the ball and deliver maximum energy transfer. A leaning shaft at impact gives us:

• a delofted club face, thus improving ball speed and distance.

• a sweet spot that can now collide with the golf ball.

• increased ability to hit down on the ball, thus improving strike quality.

• an energetic and penetrating ball flight that sizzles!

I’m sure you’re wondering what you can do to start leaning the shaft more effectively for shots played off the ground. Keep in mind that an open face on the way down will corrupt any ability a player might have of leaning the shaft. Try these ideas:

• at address, feel that your hands are slightly ahead of the ball and that your weight gently favors the front foot.

• make sure your club face is in a neutral to strong position on the way down and into impact. Tip it down!

• practice hitting low, knockdown style shots on a regular basis. Punch the ball.

Give these ideas a try to start to improve the quality of strike, ball flight, distance, feel and outcome of your shots off the ground. I sincerely hope it helps!

A Lesson to Learn From...

I recently gave an old friend a lesson. Having not taught him for a few years I had an inkling as to what to expect, but things came together so well I thought the information might be beneficial to more than just one student.

This is why looking at still frames of an athletic motion can be deceiving. There are six different images/videos here that we will go through in a specific order. To get the most out of this post please make sure you go through this it slowly. Be sure you comprehend each image before moving to the next…

(The original/before is always on the right in all of the images/videos)

Image 1:

Notice how these two images appear to be somewhat similar. I think many of us would give them both a thumbs up! They might be somewhat similar, but the outcomes are very different due to the unseen forces being applied to the club. Do not be deceived!

Image 2:

The player at the top of the backswing. The yellow line indicates where the sweet spot is relative to the feet and the golf ball. Notice that in the ‘after’ version the club head is significantly further to the inside than the original. This is shown by the distance between the line and the golf ball.

Image 3:

At approximately lead arm parallel to the ground notice how the golfer has had to force the club head to lay down on the before side. This is indicated by the difference in gap between the yellow and blue lines. Not much difference here, but the force the player is exerting on the club is very different here.

Image 4:

This is where the difference starts to show. On the right side you’ll notice that the excessive, yet necessary, lay down force has bled over and now has the club head in a position where the path will be too far out to the right, strike quality will be compromised and the player is dealing with blocks and hooks. Notice how the gap between blue and red line on the left is greater on the left side. That’s due to the fact that the golfer is free to rotate instead of having to force the club head to the inside in the downswing. Who wouldn’t want to turn hard and fire in the downswing?

Image 5:

The original downswing! With this move the golfer gets the club head too far to the inside coming into the golf ball and will struggle with blocks, hooks and poor quality strikes. Success with this downswing is very much timing reliant.

Image 6:

The objective for the downswing! With this move the golfer will deliver the club with a more neutral path, will hit down on the ball appropriately and be far less reliant on timing coming into impact. A happy golfer and coach.

So how did we get it done? With a short-ish backswing the club head needed to be in a better position at the top of the backswing as the player had very little time to calibrate and position the club head for a proper delivery. Our goal was to improve the position at the top of the backswing in order to make the downswing free-er so the golfer could rotate hard left through impact. A good recipe for crisp strikes coupled with improved accuracy.

The results here were as intended - a more neutral path and better attack angle for straighter and properly struck shots.

Please don’t ever judge a golf swing by one picture.

Driver Test: Old vs. New

My wife encouraged me to clean out the garage the other day and I happened upon an old driver I used in college. I still remember how cool this driver was - it was the latest and greatest and even had a titanium shaft! When was the last time you saw one of those? Just for kicks I placed it up alongside my current Titleist driver and was shocked at the massive difference between the two - the older club looked smaller than my current three wood! How could I have possibly played well with this mini club? This got me thinking about a TrackMan test.

For the record the smaller club was a TaylorMade Burner Plus 9.5 degree with a titanium X flex shaft and my current club is a Titleist D3 8.5 with a Motore F3 70 gram graphite S flex shaft. There is a fairly substantial 1.5 inch difference even though both clubs were standard length in their day. I am not sure about the weight or the true frequency/flex of each club as I did not have the appropriate equipment to check those measurements.

For the TrackMan test I hit 12 shots with each club and deleted the data for the two worst shots. I noted that the attack angle, club path, swing direction and plane were very similar from club to club.

The primary differences seemed to be:

• Club speed 99.7mph vs 101.8mph - I believed that this difference would be greater due to the large difference in length of shafts.
• Ball Speed 145.7mph vs 152.4mph - I put this down to the fact that the smaller head led to more off-center hits and thus a decreased average ball speed and smash factor.
• Point of contact - there was a noticeable tendency for me to strike the bigger club in the heel. This led to more shots missed to the right due to gear effect and an increase in the spin rate 2455rpm vs 2895rpm.
• Height - even though the smaller club launched the ball slightly higher the apex height was lower due to less spin and ball speed.
• Carry and total distance - the smaller club carried the ball almost 17yards shorter, but with less spin and a flatter land angle rolled further to only finish just over 10 yards short of the bigger club.
• Dispersion - the smaller club had more shots finish further from the center line due to a much smaller clubface and substantially lower MOI.

Here are the TrackMan generated dispersion charts (yellow is the smaller club) and averages:

(click to enlarge)

I was amazed at how small the difference between the two drivers, total distance wise, there was. Going in to the test I would have thought that there would be a 15 yard difference at least. I expected the smaller club to spin the ball less and lower the apex which it did, but I was truly amazed at how little distance I lost with it. I did notice a much greater tendency to hit the ball outside the sweet spot with the smaller club and that led to some fairly aggressive gear effect draws and fades.

Driving is not my strong suit and I am always looking to keep the ball in play off the tee. Armed with this new knowledge I am going to try a shorter shaft in my current driver head and see what that does for my fairways hit statistic. I also plan on practicing with the older club - I think it is vital in improving ball striking to practice with smaller headed clubs.

I also think this test might also illustrate that the majority of the distance gains we see on the PGATour today are not equipment based, but primarily due to the ball.....your thoughts?