DQ Brandel Chamblee from the Golf Channel

[9iron]

sacm, what is disingenuous about that comment? The laws of physics have not changed, so what's the beef?

[Mr. Desmond]

Originally Posted by sacm3bill

I think Brandel has a lot of good insights in that article, but this is a tad disingenuous, at best:

Yes, that quote about ball flight laws had me scratching my head.

The beef is, that because of those "machines", we've changed our methods  of teaching. At least, that is one way of putting it. People who know can correct or add...

[Golfingdad]

Originally Posted by 9iron

sacm, what is disingenuous about that comment? The laws of physics have not changed, so what's the beef?

Because it is the equivalent of some scientist, back in the days just after it was proven that the earth was in fact a sphere, saying that can't be right because geography hasn't changed.

Anybody who understands the new ball flight laws knows that the "new" refers to the golfing worlds interpretation of the physics of golf ball flight, not the actual physics of golf ball flight.  The physics never changed, however, teachers had been interpreting it incorrectly in the past.

EDIT:  I liked that story, by the way.  I didn't really mind anything he said, accept the part about the ball flight laws and the "cult" teachers of today.  Thought it was ironic that he was criticizing them as a whole for talking bad about other teachers ... while he was talking bad about them.  I also thought he sounded a little cocky in his story about out-driving Phil, and a little self-serving in his story about how TV (something he's very good at, almost a natural) is a lot harder than golf (something he was not very good at).  But overall, it was an interesting collection of little stories.

[sacm3bill]

Originally Posted by Golfingdad

Quote:

Originally Posted by 9iron

sacm, what is disingenuous about that comment? The laws of physics have not changed, so what's the beef?

Because it is the equivalent of some scientist, back in the days just after it was proven that the earth was in fact a sphere, saying that can't be right because geography hasn't changed.

Anybody who understands the new ball flight laws knows that the "new" refers to the golfing worlds interpretation of the physics of golf ball flight, not the actual physics of golf ball flight.  The physics never changed, however, teachers had been interpreting it incorrectly in the past.

Yep, what GD said, plus I'll add that the new laws were *not* "semantics for things we already knew", in the sense that not many people knew that club face determined starting direction and swing path determined flight path - most believed the opposite until recent years.

Originally Posted by Golfingdad

EDIT:  I liked that story, by the way.  I didn't really mind anything he said, accept the part about the ball flight laws and the "cult" teachers of today.  Thought it was ironic that he was criticizing them as a whole for talking bad about other teachers ... while he was talking bad about them.  I also thought he sounded a little cocky in his story about out-driving Phil, and a little self-serving in his story about how TV (something he's very good at, almost a natural) is a lot harder than golf (something he was not very good at).  But overall, it was an interesting collection of little stories.

Agreed, you need to filter out the cockiness to enjoy the article, but once you do that it's interesting.

[9iron]

I'm not sure what everyone was teaching at different periods in time, so my comment was limited to "actual" physics. If there was some context in BC's remarks that I missed, my bad.

[teed off]

In terms of " who is most irratating to listen to;

Does Brandel Chamblee  =  Bob Costas  = Kelly Tilghman.........just wondering?

[MS256]

I could hook or slice a ball around a tree just fine before I ever even heard of a "ball flight law". I suppose the first instruction I read on it was the "old ball flight laws" because it said to point the club face at the target and the foot line in the starting direction and swing along the foot line.

I took me exactly ONE swing (and one tree hit) to figure out that I needed to either align my toe line more open or closed from the direction I wanted the ball to start or not point the club face at the end target, or a combination of both.

I figure that's what Chamblee meant by "semantics". Surely every golfer that ever played the game realized the same thing I did and took the instruction to merely be some sort of starting point (and one that anyone would figure out very quickly wasn't entirely accurate).

In that sense for me (and anybody else of like mind) the "new ball flight laws" actually are just semantics and just clarify from the start what we knew all along.

[Golfingdad]

Originally Posted by MS256

I could hook or slice a ball around a tree just fine before I ever even heard of a "ball flight law". I suppose the first instruction I read on it was the "old ball flight laws" because it said to point the club face at the target and the foot line in the starting direction and swing along the foot line.

I took me exactly ONE swing (and one tree hit) to figure out that I needed to either align my toe line more open or closed from the direction I wanted the ball to start or not point the club face at the end target, or a combination of both.

I figure that's what Chamblee meant by "semantics". Surely every golfer that ever played the game realized the same thing I did and took the instruction to merely be some sort of starting point (and one that anyone would figure out very quickly wasn't entirely accurate).

In that sense for me (and anybody else of like mind) the "new ball flight laws" actually are just semantics and just clarify from the start what we knew all along.

This is exactly what I thought when I first started reading about the new ball flight laws.  Exactly.  And, as far as your example about curving a ball around a tree, I still feel that way.  The idea that it is "wrong" to say to point your club at the tree and your feet and swing path along the line you want the ball to start is true, however, its only a big deal if you are never going to actually practice that shot.  Because, I, like you, would learn by trial and error.

However, that isn't really the issue with the old ball flight laws.  The issue is with teachers diagnosing students faults using the old laws.  Mike always gives the best examples, so I'm not going to try and replicate it here, but sufficed to say, they would lead a teacher to giving the opposite advice than what is required.  So its definitely more than semantics in that regard.

Back on topic though:  Had Brandel said something more like you said, I wouldn't have a huge problem with it, but he gave off the tone that science and knowledge is for dummies and scoffed at the idea of something innovative to help people get better.  He reminds me very much of the old baseball scouts from the Moneyball book.  Not exactly forward thinking there.

[MS256]

Originally Posted by Golfingdad

However, that isn't really the issue with the old ball flight laws.  The issue is with teachers diagnosing students faults using the old laws.  Mike always gives the best examples, so I'm not going to try and replicate it here, but sufficed to say, they would lead a teacher to giving the opposite advice than what is required.  So its definitely more than semantics in that regard.

I can see where that might be a problem.

I was strictly talking about my experience (and would have to assume many other's experience) in working the ball. To me at first the club face was just a tennis racket or a ping pong paddle. I didn't think much about it, just curved it.

I remember telling my son how to hit a hook and I used the old toe line, club face toward target story...But I also distinctly remember telling him that it didn't work exactly like that and to aim the toe line an extra 10 or 15 degrees right of where he actually intended it to start, and the club face about the same degree right of target the first time and see how it worked out.

Working the ball fairly accurately either direction came naturally to me from the first day, but it didn't for my son. He had to work at it.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by phan52

TIGER WOODS has been in love with the geometry of the golf swing for years now, and it's hurt him. The golf shot is more important than the golf swing. When your mind is consumed by mechanics, it puts a governor on creativity. The art stops, and the science takes over. So long as we see Tiger stopping his practice swings and checking his positions--something Phil has never done, by the way--we'll never see him at his best.

Tiger wins a lot more frequently than Phil, despite being on Tour for a shorter period of time and missing several majors in the past few years with injuries, etc.

Also, Tiger's always been a tinkerer. He changed his swing after winning his first major as a professional - by a record number of shots and tying Jack's record at Augusta National - because he didn't like that he looked laid off.

Originally Posted by Golfingdad

However, that isn't really the issue with the old ball flight laws.  The issue is with teachers diagnosing students faults using the old laws.  Mike always gives the best examples, so I'm not going to try and replicate it here, but sufficed to say, they would lead a teacher to giving the opposite advice than what is required.  So its definitely more than semantics in that regard.

Guy is hitting a ball that starts just barely right of the target and hooks well left of it.

Old ball flight law advice: swing farther to the right to start the ball farther to the right.

Old ball flight law result: ball starts a teeny tiny bit farther right, hooks even more.

That's why the "old" laws don't help.

[Golfingdad]

Originally Posted by iacas

Guy is hitting a ball that starts just barely right of the target and hooks well left of it.

Old ball flight law advice: swing farther to the right to start the ball farther to the right.

Old ball flight law result: ball starts a teeny tiny bit farther right, hooks even more.

That's why the "old" laws don't help.

Yeah, that ^^^^  Which brings me to ....

Originally Posted by Golfingdad

However, that isn't really the issue with the old ball flight laws.  The issue is with teachers diagnosing students faults using the old laws.  Mike (and Erik) always give the best examples, so I'm not going to try and replicate it here, but sufficed to say, they would lead a teacher to giving the opposite advice than what is required.  So its definitely more than semantics in that regard.

FTF Y me

[9iron]

Originally Posted by MS256

I could hook or slice a ball around a tree just fine before I ever even heard of a "ball flight law". I suppose the first instruction I read on it was the "old ball flight laws" because it said to point the club face at the target and the foot line in the starting direction and swing along the foot line.

I took me exactly ONE swing (and one tree hit) to figure out that I needed to either align my toe line more open or closed from the direction I wanted the ball to start or not point the club face at the end target, or a combination of both.

I figure that's what Chamblee meant by "semantics". Surely every golfer that ever played the game realized the same thing I did and took the instruction to merely be some sort of starting point (and one that anyone would figure out very quickly wasn't entirely accurate).

In that sense for me (and anybody else of like mind) the "new ball flight laws" actually are just semantics and just clarify from the start what we knew all along.

Well said. MS256.

I honestly never heard the phrase ball flight laws, but like you I did learn how to properly hook or slice a ball very early in my golf playing days. Line up to where you want the ball to start, point the club face back in the direction of where you want it to end up. Practice this a while until you get it worked out i.e. get the fell for exactly how much to turn the club face. Let the physics take over. Simple as that.

[Mr. Desmond]

Originally Posted by 9iron

Well said. MS256.

I honestly never heard the phrase ball flight laws, but like you I did learn how to properly hook or slice a ball very early in my golf playing days. Line up to where you want the ball to start, point the club face back in the direction of where you want it to end up. Practice this a while until you get it worked out i.e. get the fell for exactly how much to turn the club face. Let the physics take over. Simple as that.

Color me "confused."

This is a technique, the old technique.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by 9iron

I honestly never heard the phrase ball flight laws, but like you I did learn how to properly hook or slice a ball very early in my golf playing days. Line up to where you want the ball to start, point the club face back in the direction of where you want it to end up. Practice this a while until you get it worked out i.e. get the fell for exactly how much to turn the club face. Let the physics take over. Simple as that.

The problem with that is, that's not how a ball flies. It's incorrect. It's the "old way of thinking."

[9iron]

Originally Posted by Mr. Desmond

Color me "confused."

This is a technique, the old technique.

I don't know what is old or new, but I know enough about the physics to know what has to occur. Let's say I hit my drive left on a par 4 and I am sitting in the first cut 175 yards out from the hole. I can't hit the green with a straight shot because there are trees in the way as this hole bends to the left. I must then hit a hook shot to get the ball on the green. I can hit a ball that starts on a line towards the cart path about 25 yards right of the flag without hitting the trees. You'd agree that if I lined up with my target line to that spot 25 yards right of the flag, my feet, knees, hips shoulders etc. on a line parallel to the target line and hit a proper straight shot where the club face comes thru impact perfectly square then the ball will go to the cart path, right?

There are multiple ways then to make the ball start out on that line towards the cart path and turn left hard enough to make it bend 25 yards to end up near the flag, all of which require me to spin the ball such that it rotates in that direction. How do I do that? I close the club face at impact. I can do this multiple ways. I can flip my hands which requires timing, or I can simply close the face at address and take the normal swing towards the cart path. Whether this is old or new flight path rules I do not know, but I do know that the physics works and I can hook the ball doing this.

If I want to hit a ball that slices I have to basically do this in an opposite way. I once heard Tiger state that to hit a slice all he would do is get closer to the ball. OK, so what does this force from his golf swing? It forces an out to in golf swing where the target line is left, but the club face is still right. Old rules, new rules, I don't know. I know he spun the ball towards the target, and that is what mattered in making it move.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by 9iron

I know enough about the physics to know what has to occur.

That remains to be seen.

Originally Posted by 9iron

I can't hit the green with a straight shot because there are trees in the way as this hole bends to the left. I must then hit a hook shot to get the ball on the green. I can hit a ball that starts on a line towards the cart path about 25 yards right of the flag without hitting the trees. You'd agree that if I lined up with my target line to that spot 25 yards right of the flag, my feet, knees, hips shoulders etc. on a line parallel to the target line and hit a proper straight shot where the club face comes thru impact perfectly square then the ball will go to the cart path, right?

We'd all agree with that yes. If the path is "square" to the clubface the ball goes where the clubface is pointing and doesn't curve.

Originally Posted by 9iron

There are multiple ways then to make the ball start out on that line towards the cart path and turn left hard enough to make it bend 25 yards to end up near the flag, all of which require me to spin the ball such that it rotates in that direction. How do I do that? I close the club face at impact. I can do this multiple ways. I can flip my hands which requires timing, or I can simply close the face at address and take the normal swing towards the cart path. Whether this is old or new flight path rules I do not know, but I do know that the physics works and I can hook the ball doing this.

You can hook the ball doing this, yes.

However, your ball - if you actually had the face pointing at the target at impact - would start barely right of the target (i.e. still in the trees - nowhere near the 25 yards right you've aligned your body). If there were no trees there, and you truly swung 25 yards right with a clubface at the target, the ball would start a little right of the target and then hook quite a bit left of the target.

In other words, trees or not, you will not hit a good shot with your clubface pointing at the target at impact, and your path well to the right of that clubface.

The "old" and the "new" both agree on what makes a ball CURVE. The primary point of contention is what determines where a ball STARTS.

It starts closer to the clubface than the path, for all normally struck shots (I'm excluding sand, shots from glue, Jell-O, and other things I've heard).

[9iron]

Eric, I just spent 90 minutes reading the links found by doing a Google search of the phrase "New ball flight laws". Many of the links are to threads found here.

https://www.google.com/search?q=golf+ball+direction&ie;=utf-8&oe;=utf-8&aq;=t&rls;=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client;=firefox-a#fp=8f9ad9c84a97d3b0&q;=new+ball+flight+laws&rls;=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial

I read a few of those threads, and I read the entire first article which is quite lengthy. From what I can see the new flight laws are basically accepted as fact. I'm sure the science behind them are as sound as can be. They have super slow motion video and it all seems good. They say the ball moves initially 85 percent based on club face angle and 15 percent based on swing path. Fine by me. This noted, doesn't it still remain "spin" that actually makes the ball move from its initial flight path. In other words, to bend a ball you have to ;put side spin on it. Right?

According to the new flight rules as described in that first linked article, a good visual diagram that illustrates moving a ball occurs in this diagram.

http://perfectgolfswingreview.net/ballflight.htm

If you look at image 5 above, the swing path is a good bit left of the intended ending place of the shot, the green. The club face, while not all the way facing the green, is still facing back in that direction. In other words, it is open at impact. So when I wrote that if I want to move a golf ball I have to line up the swing and then move the face back towards the target, that is still partially true even according to these new flight rules at this link. I can accept the science being that the club face isn't tilted all the way back directly at the intended ending spot of the shot, but only partially back. That's fine. A ball that bends still has to have side spin on it, or it won't bend. Right?

One last thought. There are probably hundreds of thousands of golfers like me that have had all of their instruction 1 on 1 with instructors that don't pull out diagrams like this, that use language like Butch Harmon uses (and which I basically used in my post above) that may not be technically 100% accurate, and that still receive great instruction. There are many ways a good instructor can improve someone's game even if they don 't know all the physics 100%.

I bet my instructor would probably misspeak these new flight rules if asked about this topic. The guy is still a plus golfer (while hardly playing himself because he is so wrapped up in teaching kids, and a few middle aged guys like me) who has gotten many kids college money, has multiple students win state amateurs, gotten guys to the US Am and one guy to the US Open. If he asked me to hook a ball and I overdid it, he'd probably adjust the swing path slightly or adjust the club face slightly to alter the outcome, and then he'd tell me to practice it for a few weeks. The person who practices this the most, assuming they understand spin, will likely figure it out. This means figuring out how to hit the shot, even if they can't articulate the rules on command.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by 9iron

Erik, I just spent 90 minutes reading the links found by doing a Google search of the phrase "New ball flight laws". Many of the links are to threads found here.

Good. I'm glad. You could have also read this, btw: http://thesandtrap.com/b/playing_tips/ball_flight_laws . FWIW, I'm about as expert in this field as they come, shy of the guys who have multi-million dollar research budgets and who actually work for Trackman, Flightscope, PING, Callaway, etc.

Originally Posted by 9iron

They say the ball moves initially 85 percent based on club face angle and 15 percent based on swing path.

It can be as low as 55% face, but still, it's never more "path" than "face."

Originally Posted by 9iron

This noted, doesn't it still remain "spin" that actually makes the ball move from its initial flight path.

I already addressed this:

Originally Posted by iacas

The "old" and the "new" both agree on what makes a ball CURVE. The primary point of contention is what determines where a ball STARTS.

It starts closer to the clubface than the path, for all normally struck shots (I'm excluding sand, shots from glue, Jell-O, and other things I've heard).

Moving on…

Originally Posted by 9iron

One last thought. There are probably hundreds of thousands of golfers like me that have had all of their instruction 1 on 1 with instructors that don't pull out diagrams like this, that use language like Butch Harmon uses (and which I basically used in my post above) that may not be technically 100% accurate, and that still receive great instruction. There are many ways a good instructor can improve someone's game even if they don 't know all the physics 100%.

You can get a good lesson from someone who doesn't know very much about golf at all. You can get a horrible lesson from someone who knows a ton about golf. But I'd rather get the best lesson, and that requires knowing a lot of stuff, being personable and able to communicate, and understanding the student, etc.

There's a lot more to giving a lesson than having all of the right information, but if I had to choose between two people who were equally skilled in all of those other things but varied in how much of their information was actually correct, I'd choose the one who was "more right" than the other guy every time.

Originally Posted by 9iron

I bet my instructor would probably misspeak these new flight rules if asked about this topic. The guy is still a plus golfer (while hardly playing himself because he is so wrapped up in teaching kids, and a few middle aged guys like me) who has gotten many kids college money, has multiple students win state amateurs, gotten guys to the US Am and one guy to the US Open. If he asked me to hook a ball and I overdid it, he'd probably adjust the swing path slightly or adjust the club face slightly to alter the outcome, and then he'd tell me to practice it for a few weeks. The person who practices this the most, assuming they understand spin, will likely figure it out. This means figuring out how to hit the shot, even if they can't articulate the rules on command.

As was pointed out above, believing the "wrong" ball flight laws can lead to some awfully crappy lessons. I've watched a guy getting a lesson - he was hitting duck-hooks, and his instructor wanted him to swing MORE to the right. That is horrible advice for that person.

Nick Faldo won major championships with the "wrong" information (which he still spouts). His body hit enough golf balls to know well enough to ignore what his brain was telling him happened. That's all there is to it.

The correct "rules" for ball flight are dead simple to know, but knowing the wrong ones can screw you up pretty good, and are way, WAY more likely to lead you down the wrong path than knowing the proper rules.

---

Now, we have plenty of threads for discussing the ball flight laws, and this really isn't one of them, so let's put a cap on this discussion here. Feel free to resume it in an appropriate thread.