Lag for power...

[shortstop20]

You can have too much lag. Every club has an ideal launch angle and spin rate, and if you have too much lag you can create too much lag at impact, which changes the lauch angle.

I didn't mean it in the sense of at impact, I thought he meant during the downswing(pre-impact).

[Fatphil]

Why does it take hand strength to hold the lag set on the backswing?.

my own personal experience and watching desk jockeys whose hands look like they are swinging around a wet spagetti noodle. Then u see a guy whose a carpenter, a plumber or construction guy and they may not be the best players but they action thru impact is noticably stronger. Good players are always dealing with thumb & wrist trouble because if you make a proper swing the torque on those joints is significant. If you don't feel any stress on the thumb or hands (ie lower palm of your left hand and back wrist of your right) you probably have no lag.

[Dr. Strangeclub]

I think most of the things said about lag are truisms that just happen to be false.

Anything you do to apply power to the shot with hands or wrists will reduce clubhead speed. Distance comes from having the wrists relaxed and the hands not applying power laterally against the club. (Used to be "leveraging" in the old days.) The rotation of the swing itself whips the club through.

I'm not sure whether Iron Byron has any motors where the "wrists" are. It looks pretty "floopy". Anybody know?

[iacas]

Anything you do to apply power to the shot with hands or wrists will reduce clubhead speed. Distance comes from having the wrists relaxed and the hands not applying power laterally against the club.

There's a difference, though, between applying power WITH the hands and wrists and applying power THROUGH the hands and wrists. Whether you're a swinger, hitter, or something in between, our only connection to the golf club is through the hands, and three of the four pressure points described in The Golfing Machine are in the hands.

I agree that most people who try to apply power WITH the hands or wrists are doing it wrong, so long as they don't go to the other extreme and get so loose that they're flipping (and obviously you'd agree that flipping is bad). Lynn Blake (from TGM also) has a good video where he talks about DRIVING the hands, and applying a constant driving force through the hands. But again the distinction isn't that it's WITH the hands, but rather THROUGH the hands - using the arms, hips, chest, legs, etc. to apply the driving force (or, for a swinger, a bit more of a pulling force). Lynn's video makes the point that once you lose the driving force it's gone and you're not getting it back, so it's important to maintain it through the ball. Off-topic but related point: many people don't realize that as the club releases (naturally, not because you've manually "held onto the lag" or something) your hands slow down.