Trackman slideshow - You can NOT derive club path and face angle from the ball flight - what?

[nevets88]

I was reading one of the slideshows from the Trackman website, I think this is from some European conference and there's this slide:

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Horizontal Ball Flight -Summary

•Can be described by two parameters

–Launch Direction

–Spin Axis

•But there are three causes

–Club Path

–Face Angle

–Impact location

• You can NOT derive club path and face angle from the ball flight

– The ball flight does NOT tell the reason for the ball flight

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I'm confused - If I hit a push draw, that means my clubface was open and my path was more in-out than than clubface, provided I'm sure I hit it near the sweetspot/center, no?

[xmanhockey7]

I think what it means is just because you hit a straight shot does not necessarily mean the club path and face angle were 0* at impact. Because if you think about it's possible that your club path and face angle were at 0* at impact but you hit the ball off the toe. That will cause a hook. At the seminar I attended we were told there are 3 ways to hit a straight shot.

[Yeri]

Also from what I understand, the amount of shaft lean at impact can also skew things a bit (d-plane)

[x129]

Thats a big provided. You can infer some stuff from the ball path (i.e. your push draw example) but you can't say you were in-out 10 degrees with a 5 degree open club. There will be a whole bunch of variations that will give roughly the same ball flight.  Heck maybe you were misaligned by 3 degrees so your push draw was really more of a draw. It is always good to figure out what is measured, what is calculated, and what is inferred.

Originally Posted by nevets88

I was reading one of the slideshows from the Trackman website, I think this is from some European conference and there's this slide:

Horizontal Ball Flight -Summary

•Can be described by two parameters

–Launch Direction

–Spin Axis

•But there are three causes

–Club Path

–Face Angle

–Impact location

• You can NOT derive club path and face angle from the ball flight

– The ball flight does NOT tell the reason for the ball flight

I'm confused - If I hit a push draw, that means my clubface was open and my path was more in-out than than clubface, provided I'm sure I hit it near the sweetspot/center, no?

[luu5]

Does Trackman provide that data for the user and if so, then how do they derive it?

[Stretch]

First answer was the right one. If you have off-center contact then gear effect can either exacerbate or counteract the influence of the face-to-path relationship. Golf is ludicrously hard!

http://blog.trackman.dk/?p=369

[Topper]

Originally Posted by Stretch

Golf is ludicrously hard!

This is the primary outcome of all Trackman (and other) research.  You can never know why your ball does what it does so you cannot make adjustments without a painful trial-and-error process that will likely lead to nowhere.

Trackman lesson #2 - Today's "fix" will be negated by tomorrow's slightly different swing and completely different ball flight characteristics that will re-start the trial-and-error process.  It's an infinite loop.