truthseeker

This was taken within the last month and seemed somewhat relevant.

Must be purely coincidence... ;)

All things remaining the same more speed will generate more spin. Yes, a soft seven will typically have less spin then a hard nine. What I am talking about is the severity of the axis tilt. James Leitz explains axis tilt and d plane really well so here is his video below: The more loft a club has the less effect face angle changes have on the d plane (spin axis tilt). That being said, sounds like your game is pretty sound clutchshot. If you have consistently good contact and enough power to play the courses you play you don't have to sacrifice accuracy to try and hit it further by swinging harder.

The more loft a club has the less severe the resulting spin axis tilt is from face to path variations, therefore a 9 iron hit 160 yards (assuming we haven't just de-lofted it) would typically be more accurate than a 7 iron hit the same distance due to less potential for curve.

Considering clubs are different weights, lengths, and are used in different situations with different margin for error it makes sense to swing them with different levels of perceived power. For example I am not going to feel myself exert nearly as much energy swinging a pitching wedge as I am with a driver. The swing speed is lower on the pitching wedge due to weight and lever length so the club itself is going to exert less force on the golfer. In turn the golfer will have to exert less power to control the pitching wedge. With driver the speed is much higher and corresponding forces higher as well. Also, when we swing driver the goal is often to hit the ball as far as possible while leaving ourselves an acceptable approach to the green; at least thats how most of the tour guys go about it... BOMB AND GOUGE BABY! When swinging an iron the goal is usually more target oriented making accuracy a bit more important. Below is a chart I found on another forum. It is supposedly from the trackman site back in 2010, however I could not find it on there. Nevertheless the numbers look fairly accurate. Your probably only a half club short, so if finding those extra few yards is going to compromise your accuracy I would tell you that your 7 iron goes plenty far. I am curious, are you carrying 7 iron 155-160 or is that total distance? The top line is driver swing speed. I would also mention the way you go about hitting your driver 278 effects what your iron numbers should be. If you are swinging 110+ mph and have a steep aoa and high spin you should probably be hitting your irons way further. Conversely if you are swinging more in the realm off 100 mph and hitting 2+* up on driver your irons would be going plenty far. Driver distance is not always the best benchmark to use in determining how far your irons should go. Swing speed is far more telling. Hope this helps

Tiger Woods -12 Justin Rose -9 Brandt Snedeker -10

Can't compliment the contributors to posts like these enough for shedding a little light on commonly misconstrued topics.

I would say the thought of the triangle might get you in positions that correlate to consistent contact. Colin007 makes a great point with the right arm folding at some point in turn wrecking said triangle, as well as the hands back, in and up all solid info. Having the arms extended at impact and connected with pressure against the ribcage throughout the entire swing creates stability which would aid in consistency.

Absolutely I was just itching to go into the physics of forces occurring during the different releases... :P

Just realized I accidentally cut out the portion regarding whether or not releases are natural or conscious. To keep it simple since I have already gone way too in depth for your one sentence question. Some happen naturally and there is not a whole lot we can do to alter them and some can be consciously altered to achieve certain things in our swing. Among the ones we can consciously alter we do some appropriately for what we are trying to accomplish and don't need to think about them, but with some we may need to change how and when we perform them to make changes in our swing.

"is the release of a golf club a conscious act or does it happen automatically through a good swing?" I think the first question you need to ask yourself is what is the release in the golf swing? To answer that we must first define the term release. Assuming Merriam-Webster is a reliable source, the phrase "to let go" is the most applicable portion of the definition when referring to the golf swing. Okay, so what are we letting go of? Certainly not the club... I don't know about you but I try not to let go of my club. I'm sure we could release the club and still hit the ball, but I don't think it would be very efficient or repeatable. I would say we let go of energy. In my opinion there are many releases in the golf swing, only one of which resembles the traditional understanding of a release. The ultimate release in the golf swing is impact. We strive to let go of as much energy as needed from the club head to the ball while being able to project it to a target. Other releases in the swing involve letting go of the energy in specific components such as the wrist angles or shoulder rotation. When we form those angles or rotate those components and move the club we generate potential energy, reconciling those angles or the rotation converts our potential energy to kinetic energy. Releases can be termed in groups such as releasing ground forces (the potential energy created by downloading multiple components) or Homer Kelley's power package (the four power accumulators and four pressure points). Sorry to get so uber scientific on you but this topic is a big pet peeve of mine. Now about that traditional release. I like to call that the rapid turning of the forearms and changing of the wrist angles(both up and down as well as side to side). Understand this, if these components change at an excessively high rate coming into impact the face to path relationship becomes very unpredictable making it harder to generate a repetitive ball flight. As the forearms rollover the face de-lofts and closes, the toe of the club turns down, the heel moves out and the toe in, the handle of the golf club actually goes backward, and the path of the center of gravity turns aggressively out to in. That is a lot of things happening at once so I like to call the traditional release chaotic. If you're looking for advice for what to do with the arms and wrists on the through swing I would say work on getting the arms extended and the lead wrist close to flat at impact. The longer they remain in this position just before and after impact the more predictable the face to path relationship should be.