Golf Magazine: Power Angle Rubbish

[iacas]

Did everyone here see the "power angle" article in the April issue of Golf Magazine? What kind of rubbish is that?

Of course angles matter in the golf swing, but many of these were either forced or simply don't exist.



A: Who stands like this? This is not a natural position at all. Either that, or my power angle is 178˚ or so, as my elbows don't naturally bend when I put my palms out. In fact, I can stand with my arms at just about any angle I want here. Maybe you need to have arthritis?

And the text says "Stand with your feet together and your arms hanging freely at your sides. Now turn your palms so that they face directly away from you. Notice how this causes your forearms to angle away from vertical." They don't for me. Whose arms raise up nearly 30° when they turn their palms out????

B: Not only is the one angle not even 152 (they cheat by making it non-vertical), but c'mon. The angle between your spine and vertical and the arms and the club shaft will change with the club you've got. And a batter awaiting a pitch is often in motion, and almost none have the bat straight up and down.

C: Does Reggie look the same way on a pitch in a different location? From a different camera angle? When he's not posing? When he hits a ball up the middle instead of up the third-base line? An inside pitch versus an outside pitch? I don't buy it.

The whole article felt like a stretch. Angles DO MATTER in the golf swing. Just not most of these. Please, don't spend your time trying to get your softball bat to match your back thigh angle, don't pose with your palms out and measure the angle... etc.

C is the best picture, but the inclusion of Reggie and a baseball swing greatly diminishes its capacity to teach. All but the left arm-bat angle are good angles to measure, and I do agree that the ones on the body (not the one on the club shaft) should be close to each other, but we're shown this on a baseball player and a golfer, not a golfer in both locations. For that, you have to look all the way back to Lee Westwood where you'll see a DTL view of a golfer with right side/secondary axis tilt.

And BTW, the 155° lines drawn on Lee Westwood are kind of squeezed in there. If you look, a lot of the lines do something like go from the outside of the elbow to the inside of the palm, or the heel to the front of the knee, or things like that just to make the angle "fit."

In general, the whole "angles" thing makes me think this: if you gave me nearly any angle between 15 and 75 degrees (155 being a 25° angle), and a good golfer's swing from face-on and DTL, I could find six places in the golf swing where this angle shows up. I could probably find six places in a lousy golfer's swing, too.

Angles matter. Just not these angles, per se. Again, who stands like that?

[Chief Broom]

The golf swing is the same today as it was 500 years ago. Since the magazines can't fill every issue with equipment and course stories (the two aspects of golf that do change), they have to try and come up with something new concerning the swing itself. And so we get off the wall articles like this. I don't pay any attention to much that I read in the magazines. They do much better with photography, reporting, and interviewing.

[Randy4h]

It seems that almost every swing theory mentioned in a golf article will have an absolute opposite theory in the next month's issue.

[TD22057]

Couldn't have said it better myself - I was dumb-founded they could print something this stupid.

I'd like to see them repeatedly measure any of those angles to within 2 degrees.

[Dad-2-3]

This can be said of any sporting magazine IMO.

I'm a bowhunter and used to subscribe to a couple of "bowhunting" mags who will remain unnamed. After a couple years of hunting with a bow, I figuring out that the mags were full of so much BS written by so called experts!

[shortstop20]

Golf magazines - ruining handicaps all over the world!

[jamo]

It seems that almost every swing theory mentioned in a golf article will have an absolute opposite theory in the next month's issue.

Dind ding ding ding! We have a winner!