Entry 25.18

Before the 16th century, people believed that the earth was the center of the universe. Multiple Greek and Roman scholars had postulated different models of the universe as early as 6000 BC according to some records. The most widely accepted one in the 16th century was that the earth was the center of the universe because the sun revolved around it once every 24 hours. All the planets, stars and other celestial bodies were held in a series of glasslike spheres that acted like gears, keeping them in their specific place in the heavens during their constant dance across the sky. In the 2nd century, Ptolemy created a system where each planet was moved by two different spheres. This complex system explained how any given planet appeared to be closer or further away from the earth at different points in its orbit. Additionally, Ptolemy showed how planets appeared to slow down along their orbit, even move backwards and then speed up to its normal pace as it revolved around the earth. I cannot imagine how much work he did producing this concept. Surprisingly, it was correct enough to explain where the known celestial bodies would be for up to 1000 years! The sad part of the story is that Ptolemy was wrong. Not with his determination of where the planets and stars were, but with his underlying theory. In 1504, a Polish mathematician named Nicolaus Copernicus started his research into the heavens. He was given the task of plotting planets as they moved across the sky. As a mathematician, he worked his way through complex logarithms to predict where each planet would appear. He found that many times he was correct, but there were times when the planet would be just a few minutes off (Minutes as an angular unit of measure is primarily used by surveyors, navigators, and astronomers. One minute is equal to 1/60 of a degree. When I was a sniper, some scopes used minutes or MOA, but most were moving towards using milliradians or MRAD.) It would have been easy to ignore the fact that he was wrong by such a small amount. Instead, he continued to research and eventually created the heliocentric model of the universe, where the sun, not the earth, is at the center of our solar system. This isn’t the first time that a concept was at times accurate but at its core wasn’t correct. It happens in golf all the time. In my journey as a golf coach, I have learned that there are many times when a player doesn’t need to physically change their swing, they need to adjust the concept they have in their heads. Sometimes these mental adjustments are simple to understand and at other times they are extremely complex. Golf is full of incorrect concepts, and we are constantly discovering that mainstream concepts aren’t just wrong. They are what prevents players from improving. I want to dive into a few of these concepts and see if we can’t help you play just a little bit better.

I don’t think we can start off with any concept but the idea that the golf swing is a rotational move. Maybe it’s fairer to say the concept is incorrectly thought of as a transverse plane rotational movement. Rotation creates torque, torque creates angular momentum, angular momentum makes the ball go far. So how do we create more torque? And what plane of motion should that torque happen in? The formula for torque is: torque = force x distance. The two things we need to know are how much force is created and how far away from the axis of rotation that force is being applied. Just think of using a wrench to remove a nut from a bolt. If you hold the wrench close to the nut, you have to apply a lot more force than if you hold the wrench as far away from the nut. As humans, each of us has a limit to the amount of force we can create, so increasing the length of the wrench is how we increase how much torque we can generate. Now the key to correcting this concept is the plane of motion that we create that torque in. As upright beings, we tend to think of rotation happening in the transverse plane. Think of a top spinning. The length of the wrench in this case is how far apart your stance is. But your stance width is also connected to how far apart your hip sockets are. This limits your ability to create transverse plane torque. Now frontal plane torque is more like a Ferris wheel. Now the length of the wrench is the distance from your foot to your center of mass. Immediately much longer than the distance from your hip sockets to your center of rotation. This is why players with long legs look like they are hardly working yet can create so much speed. Look at the difference between Christo Lamprecht and Rory McIlroy and the speed at which they look like they are moving with the driver. Christo is 6’ 8” while Rory is only 5’ 9”. Christo looks like he is cruising, and Rory’s swing looks he is moving ridiculously fast. Yet they both hit the ball about the same distance. Christo averages 325 yards off the tee and Rory averages 326.3. The key is the length of the wrench. Christo can input a lot less force than Rory to create the same amount of frontal plane torque. The torque correlated with hitting the ball a long way? Frontal plane torque, not transverse plane torque. While we do need some transverse plane torque, it isn’t the torque we should be trying to use to create power. This faulty concept feeds right into the next one.

The golf swing is a throwing motion. Some of you may be going “Wait, I’m pretty sure that you’ve told me this in the past.” And you are correct. The fault here isn’t that the golf swing is a throwing motion, but that it is only a throwing motion. When we look at open and closed kinetic chains, we see that humans have two categories of kinetic chain motions. Throwing is only one of them. The other is the push. Both categories have positives and negatives. Let’s look at two motions that look similar but are in fact quite different even though they are both termed “throws”. First, let’s look at throwing a baseball. This is a classic throwing motion. A pitcher (any player really, but we’re going to focus on pitching) can create a ton of speed. My favorite pitcher of all time, Nolan Ryan, is thought to be able to throw a fastball upwards of 109 mph during games (unfortunately, he was before all the accurate technology we currently have so someone else holds the official record). Actually, let’s think of Ricky Vaughn in the baseball classic Major League. Dude could straight up hurl the ball, but he was known as “Wild Thing” for a reason. This example shows the positives and negatives of throwing. Tons of speed, but because the hand is moving along an arc, any minute difference in the release in time and space drastically changes the accuracy of the projectile. On the other side of the spectrum is throwing darts. Now darts are not actually thrown. Darts are pushed. The hand of a dart thrower moves linearly, not along an arc, which is how we differentiate throws and pushes. Pushing allows for great accuracy but not a lot of speed. The golf swing needs to be both. We need to be throwing the club head to generate speed, but we need to be pushing the club head to create accuracy. I tend to teach the throwing action first. A right-handed person playing golf right-handed needs to throw with their left hand, which is their non-dominant hand, and push with their right hand. However, in my case being left-handed but playing right-handed, I throw the club head well, but I don’t push the grip towards the target nearly as efficiently. We need both speed and accuracy in the golf swing, so it needs to be both a throwing and a pushing motion.

The combination of the last two concepts feed the idea that fades are easier to control than draws. Players who use lots of transverse plane rotation tend to hit fades. Frontal plane torque allows the club head to stay behind the golfer longer, promoting draws. Right-handed golfers playing right-handed tend to pull on the handle in order to throw the club head and therefore need more transverse plane rotation to match up the face and path. Players who push on the handle more use frontal plane torque to stabilize the face and path. With that understanding, it comes down to physics and the relationship of the face and path. If you hit a draw with a face of 1.5 degrees open to the target and a path in to out of 3 degrees, you will get the same curve in the opposite direction if you hit a fade with a face closed 1.5 degrees to the target and a path 3 degrees out to in all other things being equal. The real question of control comes down to your ability to control the face and path relationship. It’s easier to say fades are easier to control than draws because no one wants to say I don’t have control over the essential elements of face and path.

Ok, who’s right? Joe Mayo or Packer McLaughlin? Ahh the old steep versus shallow in the short game controversy. Being steep means digging and shallow means just bruising the grass, right? Wrong! This concept has been around for a long time, but it didn’t get mainstream attention until Joe Mayo started his crusade. And man, we should be so thankful for Joe and his search for short game answers. In short game, the question shouldn’t be shallow or steep, the concept needs to be focused on controlling arc depth. If you have watched any of Joe’s slow-motion videos of the club head coming into impact you will notice that he usually says the measured angle of attack (AoA) is somewhere between 10-12 degrees down, but the club head just brushes the grass. That is arc depth control. I prefer Parker’s “shallow” idea, but I found over researching on myself that I’m not shallow with my AoA like I thought. In fact, I float between 8-9 degrees down. In short game, it would be much better for you to focus on your arc depth than on your AoA. Think of it like this (or try it although it does make a mess). Just imagine that you are hitting short game shots off a stack of paper. You want to just move the top piece or two of paper and not the top twenty sheets. You can hit 10 down and only hit the top sheet or hit 1 down and hit the top 10. Arc depth can be shallow or steep just like angle of attack can be shallow or steep. Both variables are important.

The final concept has to do with distance wedges and was the catalyst for this Pondering. Recently, I worked with one of my PGM students who is graduating soon. He said he was struggling to hit distance wedges and felt like he was making the same swing, but one time would hit it 15 yards long and another 15 yards short. Or the miss was left and right. All I asked him for was his concept of the shot. Was his idea that the shot was a knock down iron or finesse wedge magnified? As soon as we shifted to the concept of finesse wedge magnified, his control changed. Not only was he able to control his distance better, but his lateral miss also tightened up as well. Then we added trajectory to the mix. He was hitting shots an unknown distance, changing his targets left and right and changing trajectory with ease. With zero change to his motion. Just a simple adjustment to the way he thought about the shot. It was so much fun to watch him make an immediate change.

The brain is an incredibly powerful tool. It has the ability to help us do exactly what we ask it to do. But sometimes what we ask it to do is based on a faulty concept. There will be times when you get exactly what you asked for just like when Copernicus was computing the location of planets in the sky. But other times things are just off. For Copernicus, the planet was in a different location by just a few minutes. For you, it might be the ball going 15 yards long or 15 yards short of the target. So often we focus on the motion when the mental model we are using is culprit. Sometimes the correct idea is known. Other times, like Copernicus, you may just have to build a new concept.