moment of contact

[Frito]

I got a quick question. on the downswing, should the clubface hit the ball when its still going down , when its completly bottomed out or on the way back up slightly ?
thx

[golfro]

still going down. your divot should ideally start roughly 1" or so past the ball.

[out_in_30]

yea, down. it is ideal to hit the ball with a descending blow. divot starts after the ball like above said

[Joeyvee]

With drivers and wedges then yes, a descending blow. driver no. Just to clarify.

[RC]

Down... with all clubs, including the putter (remember, putters have loft, too.) It is true putters and drivers are shallowed out a lot more, so, for example, a downward angle of 1 degree or a bit more is (or feels) essentially flat. Most do not think they are swinging very slightly down with a driver, but the better ball strikers actually are still very slightly descending, even through the swing path has very nearly flatten out. Some putters can actually bottom out and swing slightly upward, but that is not optimal in my opinion. I would rather see the putter at its lowest at the center of the ball, so that a transition from down to up does not happen as contact is made. Why would you want a transition in forces before contact (which up swingers would have?) That would seem to require extra feel and introduce more opportunity for face angle errors.

[nevets88]

A video up close:

[jamo]

With drivers and wedges then yes, a descending blow. driver no. Just to clarify.

We've had a lot of threads on this, but not necessarily. No one doubts that the wedges-3W should be hit with a descending blow, but a lot of people say the driver should be hit on the upswing. The average angle of attack on the PGA TOUR is about -1 degree, which is 1 degree on the downswing, which means most PGA TOUR players hit the driver on the downswing.

[JML22]

Swinging up with a driver isnt always the case
its a very misapplied concept
WHen most people setup for driver they have so much weight back to get the "upswing" it leads to the biggest flipping slices in the world

[golfro]

A video up close:

omg i think that video just made it clear to me why sometimes tees fall backwards! Possible that the tee, at impact, bounces off the ground...then backwards? I;ve always wondered.

also...the lag in his swing in the video is awesome.

[Zeph]

Since we got statistics on them, let's use the PGA Tour players. This is taken from a chart made by Trackman, listing the average on the PGA tour through a year.

Here is the angle of attack for the different clubs they use. Angle of attack means the angle at which the club is travelling on when it hits the ball. A negative angle means the club is descending into the ball, a positive angle means the club is ascending into the ball. If the angle was 0º, the club would strike the ball at the bottom of the swing.

PW: -5.0
9 iron: -4.7
8 iron: -4.5
7 iron: -4.3
6 iron: -4.1
5 iron: -3.7
4 iron: -3.4
Hybrid: -3.3
5-wood: -3.3
3-wood: -2.9
Driver: -1.3

As you can see, the average is hitting down on the ball with every club in the bag. Of course, this is the average, so you will have some hitting up with the driver and some hitting down. Another thing to note is that the bottom of the swing for these guys, that would be the deepest part of the divot, is 3-4 inches in front of the ball. Only way to achieve this is by hitting down on the ball.

When it comes to the driver, there are different ideas, but I would rather recommend you try hitting the ball at the bottom of the swing, or slightly on the way down, than on the way up. Reason for this is that if you try to hit up, it is easy to flip and hang back with the weight. The difference of a -1 angle of attack and +2 with the driver is very hard to even notice.