Flipping at Impact Master Thread

[Zeph]

Arrrgh!

No, turning the hands over is altering the clubface angle, often called rolling the wrists.

When it comes to flipping, watch the videos below. I believe he talks about rolling a bit too.

[alomar123]

No, turning the hands over is altering the clubface angle, often called rolling the wrists.

I really like the way he explains the role of the hands in the first vid.

[KEEPITSIMPLE]

I happen to be one of the lucky few who does not flip and from what I have seen the problem is 3 fold. First of all, most people can't feel the top of their backswing. They coil on the backswing but they start their downswing too late, so they drop their hands and arms first because the rebound of the coil in the backswing.Again,just to re-emphasis, IF you start the downswing late, the rebound effect of the coil will drop your hands first.I actually start my downswing a millisecond before I complete my backswing.To me,number one problem in golf,folks have long backswing to feel connected and wound up but their first downswing move is a negative move that let all the energy build up escape.

Secondly, the downswing has to start with the core. Once you time the transition correctly,if your start the downswing with your core,that will not only maintain the bow in your wrist but the right angle in your right arm as well.I use the core to get my arm to slot,without losing the bow nor the right angle of my right arm.

Last, your plane. If you are turning your core or moving it in a inside out matter,the body stays connected and swing in unison and you shouldn't flip.

BUT if you are an arm swinger,and you add a wrong move in the end,all bets are off. Also, I am assuming one has a decent backswing.

[JetFan1983]

I really like the way he explains the role of the hands in the first vid.

Agreed. Martin Hall is one of the best IMO.

[3 wiggle]

Man...this was refreshing. Im a dirty sweeping cupper by nature and i constantly fight it. Great post. I really enjoyed the video...thx

[TN94z]

This has actually been a problem I have been steadily working on for a year now. It is actually a fairly hard move to stop if it has been engrained.

Which video are you guys referring to?

[ERdiesel]

I'm asking because i've fought flipping in the past and without video taping every single swing, the only real feedback that i have is based on the feel i get when i impact the ball well and feel the ball compress and watch it "pop" off the club face with some zip, as well as the nice ball flight.  Is it possible to get that compression and nice ball flight while still flipping the club?  Or even chicken winging towards the finish?

[delav]

Certainly the ball compresses at impact even with a flip, but to a lesser degree, resulting in a feeling that is much less solid.  I'm sure you recognize this when practicing.  There are a few ways to work on impact without recording every swing.  Working with a impact bag will help, and these seem to be a great resource as well (although I have yet to try one).

http://pbstriker.com/

http://thesandtrap.com/forum/thread/41747/pure-ball-striker-great-training-aid

[TourSpoon]

Work on hitting the punch shot with half swings and you will start to feel the solid impact position you are looking for (ie maintain the wedge or right hand angle).  When you can reproduce that feeling and get the desired ball flight with your full swing you will know.  I have also fought the flip and even though I don't always know when it sneaks in a little, I can tell you when it is not there because there is no pureness on earth quite like it.

[ERdiesel]

Thanks.  @Tourspoon, I have hit those "pure" shots where you literally feel the ball squish and just take off with almost no effort.  I was just wondering if that's an absolute sign of forward leaning shaft at impact.................

[Zeph]

You always compress the ball, or it wouldn't have moved. The degree of compression is the important thing here, which is a direct cause for distance. More speed at impact means more compression, which means more distance. A good impact position is when you got the hands in front of the ball, which also makes sure you hit the ball first and ground second. Flipping is a major distance and consistency leak, I suffer from the same problem myself. You can look at some of the stuff I'm working on here .

It is possible to pick the ball clean and have what feels like a good hit without a forward leaning shaft, so I wouldn't use it as the only source of confirmation.

The divot is a often a good indication. On the picture below, Mike hit 17 shots and not only didn't he hit behind the line, he didn't even hit the line. I've drawn in a ball on the bottom to show where it was sitting. The red things show where the divot would be on a shot where you don't have enough forward lean on the shaft. If the divot starts right underneath the ball, you are very close to a situation where you sometimes hit the ground first and sometimes the ball. You can of course hit it fat even with a forward leaning shaft if you dip or in some other way move the hands lower.

If you have a video of your swing, we could look a bit more into what you can work on.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by Zeph

You always compress the ball, or it wouldn't have moved. The degree of compression is the important thing here, which is a direct cause for distance. More speed at impact means more compression, which means more distance. A good impact position is when you got the hands in front of the ball, which also makes sure you hit the ball first and ground second. Flipping is a major distance and consistency leak, I suffer from the same problem myself. You can look at some of the stuff I'm working on here.

While all that's true, you know what people are saying when they talk about "compressing" the ball.

So, the answer is "no, you cannot compress the ball when flipping like you can when not flipping."

The flatter you can make the face - the more perpendicular to the direction of force (3D clubhead path at impact) - the more compression you'll get. Now, that doesn't mean you de-loft a 5-iron 25 degrees to hit the ball with 0 degrees of loft... but nobody's saying that. :-)

[ERdiesel]

Originally Posted by iacas

While all that's true, you know what people are saying when they talk about "compressing" the ball.

So, the answer is "no, you cannot compress the ball when flipping like you can when not flipping."

The flatter you can make the face - the more perpendicular to the direction of force (3D clubhead path at impact) - the more compression you'll get. Now, that doesn't mean you de-loft a 5-iron 25 degrees to hit the ball with 0 degrees of loft... but nobody's saying that. :-)

Thanks Erik.  That's the answer that I was hoping for.  2 years ago, I had a horrible "flipping" motion, i got "average" distance for a guy my age (average only because i was a gym fanatic and would just muscle the ball into the air), but the ball flight was high and the ball had no "life" to it.  It wasn't until i started taking lessons last season, that one day, i literally had the ball just "pop" off the club face and the sound was ohhhhh so different, and the ball flight was ohhh so different and my teacher almost cried with joy, okay well maybe not him, but me.  Since then i've been working on ball striking and am able to "feel" when I strike the ball properly, but i just wanted to make sure without taping every swing, that the sound and feel and ball flight of a properly "compressed" ball at impact was a sure sign of proper impact position.

[Zeph]

You don't have to tape every swing, but it doesn't hurt to give it a check every now and then. If you check it and know the feeling, trajectory and distance when you got it right, you can use those feedbacks on the course to evaluate. Feelings can be difficult to remember, but you'll notice if the ball starts going shorter or higher.

[laxbballgolf]

Tangent here but I hope someone will respond and tell me if this makes sense. Sorry if I should have put this up as a new thread instead of writing it here - I wasn't sure and I didn't think it needed to be a new thread.

I think I had an epiphany about my lag. And the news for me isn't good, haha; I think I need to do some work.

I used to set up with the ball pretty far back in my stance.  I also used to kind of suck at greenside bunker shots, but I could hit the ball pretty far on full swings.  Now, I moved the ball to a more normal position and my short game is better - especially greenside bunker shots - but I don't think I'm compressing the ball as well as I used to on full swings.  My thinking is this: that change in ball position is enough that I'm losing some of my lag before the club gets to the ball, even if I'm swinging basically the same way.  Either by coincidence or because I subconsciously trained myself to do it, my swing is such that my lag is maximized for my old ball position - and that relatively small change in ball position is enough for me to lose some lag.  By lag I mean the timing of when my various power accumulators are released.  The reason the greenside bunker shots used to be bad is because I was making contact with the sand far behind where my swing bottoms out which is a recipe for stabbing into the sand like a chump.

Now, I have the task of getting myself to hold my lag later into my swing.  Does this make sense?  If so, should I take the easy way out and go back to my old ball position on full swings - and go around making massive divots all over the place, haha?  Or should I do the smart thing and work on holding my lag later into my swing?  Funny thing is, I've never taken very big divots even with my old ball position, so I must have been doing other things to compensate - jumping or straightening left leg or something.

[Zeph]

It's up to you of course, but I would try to make it work with a better ball position. How far back did you have it and how much forward have you moved it? It makes sense that you would struggle with bunker shots with a ball position far back. I usually hit the ball off the inside of my left heel or somwhere in that area from a bunker. In a bunker you want to hit the sand first with the bounce and let the club glide through the sand and blast the ball out. With the ball back in your stance, you'd have to flip a lot to get it going.

I think you just made that back ball position because you were flipping. Not consciously perhaps, but it sounds plausable. I could probably hit the ball first pretty well if I moved the ball back of the middle of my stance, but I don't want to do that. Fighting flipping is hard, especially when you've been doing it for a long time. If you got to a 9 with that motion, you must've hit some amount of balls.

[laxbballgolf]

Originally Posted by Zeph

It's up to you of course, but I would try to make it work with a better ball position. How far back did you have it and how much forward have you moved it? It makes sense that you would struggle with bunker shots with a ball position far back. I usually hit the ball off the inside of my left heel or somwhere in that area from a bunker. In a bunker you want to hit the sand first with the bounce and let the club glide through the sand and blast the ball out. With the ball back in your stance, you'd have to flip a lot to get it going.

I think you just made that back ball position because you were flipping. Not consciously perhaps, but it sounds plausable. I could probably hit the ball first pretty well if I moved the ball back of the middle of my stance, but I don't want to do that. Fighting flipping is hard, especially when you've been doing it for a long time. If you got to a 9 with that motion, you must've hit some amount of balls.

I feel like I have to defend myself here, haha.  This thread has a video of my swing right around the time I moved the ball further forward in my stance.  I really need to get some more recent video soon but I never seem to get around it for some reason.

http://thesandtrap.com/forum/thread/32176/my-turn-critique-my-swing-video#post_410042

I wouldn't say that I am or ever was a full-fledged flipper; I prefer to think I am just trying to optimize the timing of my lag to transfer power to the ball as efficiently as possible.  Right now I think my lag is maximized slightly too soon.  In other words, I think my swing is at its fastest slightly before I hit the ball, even though I haven't totally flipped.  And I'm talking about a pretty minor change to my ball position.

I think lag is a really fluid thing.  It's not as simple as "holding the flying wedge" after impact - what it really means is that you want to be actively engaging the stored energy from all your various accumulators through the impact event - ideally with some leeway before and especially after impact to be safe.  It can be really hard to figure out precisely what's happening because it's such a fluid action - a way to do it would be to measure for small differences in swing speed within specific portions of the swing just before impact, during impact, and just after impact.  Even looking frame by frame at a swing from face on to analyze the wrist and shaft positions isn't a guarantee that lag is being full optimized - the impact position could be perfect while some accumulators still aren't optimally engaged at the proper time.  I want to my swing speed to reach its maximum just after impact to be on the safe side, and right now I suspect that it's maximized a tiny bit before impact.  Some fine-tuning really, but it's very important fine-tuning and it's pretty tough to work on and to get feedback about for a given swing, other than the feeling of a very well struck ball and seeing good distance.

[Zeph]

I agree that you're not flipping, at least not a lot. The club is a big blur on your video, but the fact that you got so little wrist hinge means there is not a lot of angle to lose on the downswing. It looks like you drive the club well, but with that little amount of wrist hinge, it's hard to hold the lag for long enough to have the ball more forward. The wedge starts to increase at some point in the swing, regardless of what we do. It's the force of gravity and centripital force pulling the club down. If the angle is pretty shallow to begin with, you don't have a lot of room to work with. By moving the ball back, you can make it work pretty well. Swinging with little wrist hinge might be a good way to find a good feeling for driving the club. If you don't have any angles to give up, you'll be forced to hold it.

Judging by the position of your hands prior to impact, I think you could move the ball forward and perhaps make some small changes in the swing and hit it well. Your hips also don't move a whole lot forward, very little secondary axis tilt.

It would be easier with a better video, but with some changes I think it would work. Lag is in my view pressure and a driving force, like Lynn Blake talks about. If you kan keep driving the hands fast enough to be ahead of the ball at impact, you have held the lag well. Optimizing the "release" sounds like something you'd need pretty high tech equipment to do. Hitting the ball with a forward leaning shaft pretty much takes care of maximizing the speed. Optimizing the lag sounds like the PA5 stuff Dave and Erik is talking about, but for teaching purposes, it's mostly about getting into a good impact position.

I think your ball position is a result of your swing. With little wrist hinge and shallowing the angle early, you've put the ball there to hit it properly. If you have a chance to get a video with more FPS, it would certainly help.

Oh, and I would rather have the max amount of speed at the ball, not before or after. Still, if you peak inches before or after it doesn't matter a whole lot, I'd rather want a forward leaning shaft to make sure I hit the ball first every time and on the sweet spot.

More wrist hinge, more hip slide. Your head stays pretty still and you don't have a too active right foot.

And again, it's your swing, your call. I'm just pointing out things that I would recommend and probably work on myself. Not trying to talk crap about your swing dude.