natureboy

As viewed from above, Hogan and Palmer have both made an effective rotation of the trail hip away from the target line. This is large effected by the knee / shin moving away from the toes to a more vertical position as the inside of the trail foot is pressured. Palmer may be extending somewhat, but based on the pic below still from his younger days, I doubt Jack is much. To the extent that the trail leg retains flex for that amount of turn away from the ball-target line the trial hip will be further from the target line on an arc as viewed from directly above (more effective degrees of rotation), while more trial leg extension will elevate the hip relative to the ground. I don't have an opinion on which is better. I don't disagree with the premise of the thread, but all else equal and with feet nearly perpendicular to the target line, the less you extend the deeper / further from the target line the trail hip will be. I'm not saying that's better, just more effective degrees of rotation as viewed from above. Rory has a great swing, but so did the guys below. If he extended it was by a very small amount. Both approaches seem to have worked very well. One thing I thought about that might be different in our descriptions is that I expect you turn out your trail foot a lot more than me. Given the inherent limitation in how much one can turn around the ankle the more your trail foot is turned out the more that trail leg extension can work to push the trail hip toward the target as it also pushes it up away from the ankle. I turn my trail foot out similar to Nicklaus and Palmer in the pics above (significantly less than the lead foot). But at your full turn position with the same angle in your shins, if you were to add flex in the leg your hip would be further away from the ankle. Not saying it's better. But the length of the thigh is what it is. It doesn't change length. Anyone who thinks about it a little bit can deduce that for a given orientation of the shin bone, more knee flex leads to a horizontal thigh, which means the hip that it's attached to is farther from the foot. I'm not saying that it's a better position, but just in terms of rotation moving the trail hip further from the ankle isn't the same thing as moving it farther from the ball target line. As data / science oriented guys I would think you'd want to be precise about why your methods work or are better. Could a higher hip position be beneficial? Very possibly. It could be that going higher as well as around helps with balance or something else. The above is an assertion, not a fact…even if no great golfer has exactly maintained their address position flex. The question is maintaining a lot of flex or allowing a lot of or actively seeking extension in the trail leg. I don't think there's a universal law on this. I don't care about your arbitrary requirement to jump through hoops for your amusements. Enjoy deleting my last post .

At the top level the men may still be much better than the women at putting. Paige McKenzie once talked about how she played against some college guys who destroyed her on putting and she thought she was pretty good relative to her peers. I expect the best pro women ballstrikers have to work even less on putting to compete successfully than the guys where every edge is crucial just to get a card and make cuts. I love to watch Rory and DJ crank it out there. But I also get a kick out of Jim Furyk and Mo Martin's precision oriented play. It's all good. If they want to make accuracy more important for PGA players, all they have to do is grow the average event rough up a bit more so there's more of a penalty on every errant shot on the loss of spin and swing/ball speed reduction. Those are real issues for the sport...at least for facilities that don't cater to higher income golfers.

I'm not positive, but I think there may have been some consideration about the softness of the ground closer to the creek / further down the bank where the water table would get closer to the surface. Basically, the downhill lie is what got him. He knew he needed height to stop it in the shallow green and he likely fought going with the slope with his swing. A damage control shot might have been to go with his most lofted club and just go for extra height while going with the slope to try to stop it somewhere on the green, at or past the pin, two-putt and move on the the next hole. Golf is hard.

This is looking like a good chance year for DJ, Rory, and Jordan. DJ's putting and short game seem much sharper than in years past, and Rory's resurrected his putter. Should be interesting!

Hey Randall. Just wanted to say cheers, and thanks for the fun discussions about stats. Hope your progress continues apace!

Based on the mud ball example above it would appear that while the spin rate is clearly measured with their patented tech, the spin axis is calculated/imputed based on the lateral movement of the ball even if the axis isn't tilted. For practical purposes, though, mud balls and uneven dimple wear shouldn't be much of an issue.

Gotcha. Fair enough.

I thought I might be getting an increase in characteristic time or forgiveness sort of like a flex face driver. That's encouraging, then. I guess I can attribute the extra distance to technique improvement. True enough. I have a permanent ding in the toe of my 7-iron from hitting a buried rock trying to play out of a hazard.

Yeah, knowing your swing and how it affects ball flight relative to ball flight laws is great for making the most of any ball flight monitor, I'd think. I'd agree that a few calculated parameters (if the science/numbers are good) isn't a killer either...depending on what information is crucial to you and your particular faults. Certain systems may be more insightful for readily available bits of info than others. Here's an interesting thing I just noticed on TM re spin axis. Their new patent may give them a direct measurement of spin rate, but it seems that the spin axis is imputed based on the ball flight (where the ball starts and ends up). I don't think in the Titleist video that the spin axis actually tilted much off horizontal. The ball curved primarily due to differential lift/drag on opposite sides of the ball, which I expect is what's happening with mud balls (dimples covered on one side).

Players' is an extremely competitive event in terms of field depth and quality. Course is tough too. I'd put it close behind the Majors, but because the Majors are more desirable to most players to add to the CV it typically adds more psychological pressure to win them so they typically remain a bit more important on that factor alone...to me at least. I'm not as sure about the WGCs. I haven't looked at them all, but the size of the field matters as well as the number of top ranked players. The 150th in the world has less of a chance to win than the top ranked guys, but IIRC it's in the range of 15-20%. That's not chicken feed in evaluating win likelihood or the challenge of making the cut or winning the event. There are more potential highly skilled players who could get on a hot streak to contend with in full-field (140+) events like the Majors that are also highly competitive to get into. Also, in comparing the PGA Championship to the Bridgestone one year, the PGA Championship had more of the top players within the field size of the WGC (i.e. more of the top ~75 players). And it was a full-field event on a course prepared for a Major. I don't know if it's a year-to-year trend, but that year's Bridgestone event watered down the field somewhat because of the exemptions for top players from worldwide tours who wouldn't have gotten into the PGA based on world ranking. I'd agree he's not an all time great, but I also think he came on tour a bit late in life and his total wins column (albeit at weaker events) is pretty strong. Even for a PGA pro the open championships in South America aren't shoo-in wins. Really? 30+ wins and 7 Majors after starting golf relatively late in life? I personally disagree. For me his total aggregate of beating strong fields consistently across multiple years plus bonus for Major wins is enough for ATG. He didn't consistently beat the field in enough regular tour events IMO. I disagree. The Majors are important to the players themselves. This was true going way back before Jack and Tiger. But total victories and winning percentage and average finish (Top 10s etc.) are also important and valid statistics. I would add cuts made and 'beat the field' statistic to that too, though I think that would be reflected in average finish. Money is worthless as a comparison because purses have grown faster than inflation across all eras of golf. Rickie Fowler is a great kid, but not more of a 'great' golfer than Ben Hogan or Byron Nelson. Do you think Bill Haas would trade his Fedex Win for a Major? Which ones? Did you look at the world rankings of each person in the field? To some degree the Majors tally is a snapshot of a full scope of a player's career work. There are only 4 a year so to get a nice tally you have to play well across multiple years against very deep fields on courses that are often conditioned tougher than normal events. If you get the career grand slam then you've played well in majors that demand different things from your game, which is why it's somewhat rare as an achievement. Good point about the Western Open. Some say due to the strength of the field, Hogan's 'Hale America' win was Major equivalent. Even back then the pros were very aware of when most of the best players were in the field and valued those wins more.

That matters though in your average distance with each club because while pros have much tighter impact patterns on the clubface, they aren't perfect either so they still benefit from a certain amount of forgiveness too, particularly with longer clubs. The improvement in MOI and distance with I've seen somewhat unbiased comparisons put the difference in the range of 5 yards across several swings for a skilled golfer. Modern irons have the same general shape as old pre-1980s blades, but they are still quite different. Design tech has advanced significantly with improvements in MOI and lower center of gravity that can even help the pros. They have an impact dispersion pattern too. It's much tighter, but they don't hit the exact center of the clubface on each swing. A couple yards here and there add up.

That's not old tech. This is old tech: The Big Bertha was part of the revolution with larger volume clubheads. The ball was also part of it with new materials and design starting in the 80's. The old balls spun a lot more than modern balls and it affected distance. Here's an interesting, anecdotal comparison: http://0to300golf.blogspot.com/2013/03/persimmon-balata-v-titanium-pro-v1x.html

I've read that TM also uses (or used) the 'silver dot' method too, but that may only have been indoors because the limited space typically didn't give enough revs with a driver to get a good reading. This interview with Fred Tuxen indicates that they can measure just from a ball (outdoors at least). GC2 (and I assume quad) also directly measure the ball spin. Measured Data (Flight): Ball Speed; horizontal & vertical launch angles; spin & spin axis

Have you played with trying to bow your lead wrist through impact at all?

This happened to Rory McIlroy so you might want to research info on his diagnosis and recovery. My own experience with a rib fracture was in the range of 2 months with no stressful activity to give it time to heal.

If you're not hitting marked balls, do the doppler units directly measure spin rate or calculate it based on the measured parameters?

With the ankle relatively fixed in place and a point of rotation (if you load rightward anyway), the thigh is essentially the radius of the circle. Think about it. The closer to horizontal the trail thigh is, the larger the effective radius around the trail ankle. It's very basic geometry. Pushing the trail hip back with a more extended trail leg will definitely raise it higher than rotating with a flexed knee, but not necessarily more angular rotation. Trail leg extension may help you make a 'better' turn or a better swing, but not due to more degrees of hip rotation around the relatively fixed point of the ankle...unless maybe you let the pressure in the trail foot shift way back behind the heel. That sounds imbalanced. Why would you need to push into the wall in this scenario? Does being able to apply backwards pressure help a golf swing if you can just make a big turn with your hips rotating past a point on that wall? I haven't encountered the need to hip check anyone in my backswing, yet so I don't see the benefit of your scenario vs. just being able to rotate the hips past that point on the wall on which you would be pushing.

I wonder if the relative heat of that locale was easier on his back - at least relative to Torrey Pines if not Dubai. Even if his back is truly healthy and he's not doing stupid stuff in the gym I'd expect it will take a while for his nerves to accept that his back isn't still damaged and not go into overdrive and shut down the muscles if there's a twinge or an awkward swing.

I have an old lowish end model driver (Walter Hagen) that I use as a practice driver early in the season or working on a swing change to avoid grounding my better driver. I replaced it because after a couple of years of range balls the weld on the bottom/sole portion of the cup face split/ruptured and it switched from a pleasant metallic ping sound on contact to a harsh crack. What does this sort of defect do to ball flight typically? Would it help or hurt performance? This is cup face in case some don't know:

Here's some perspective on possible sources of the back spasms, and some thoughts about how he looked physically in Dubai. http://www.golfchannel.com/media?guid=tJFQK5izjTPWU87kcYweGtLUFYm_L7F3

A Texas boy found a rattlesnake in a toilet. Then a snake catcher found 23 more. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/02/03/a-texas-boy-found-a-rattlesnake-in-a-toilet-then-a-snake-catcher-found-23-more/?tid=sm_tw_ga&utm_term=.2eda32f4de2e

That's a good clarification of terms. Good leg movement probably contributes to good sequencing and positioning to use generated arm speed and preserved wrist angles most optimally. Also the legs are essential to providing the stable framework against which the upper torso muscles work to generate force. For someone swinging from their knees or a seated position, they are still connecting their lower torso to the ground in some way. The funny video of the golfers swinging on the frozen pond shows how much every golfer needs that equal and opposite reaction to remain in balance and actually deliver the club to the ball. While those forces are available to anyone who's standing upright, it's possible that if you don't have good leg muscles it may limit how hard you can turn against them with enough stability to deliver an accurate strike on the ball. I personally think that the vertical ground reaction forces are probably less about base/raw clubhead speed than helping squeeze some extra percentages out of the basic swing or possibly helping to help time the release at a point when the clubhead is moving relatively fast with a lot of momentum and big muscle in the glutes / legs (vs what's available from the shoulders down) are required to give it any extra oomph even if it's a relatively small share compared to what's been generated earlier.

You don't indicate your relative skill level. If you've achieved a decent HCP level even with your poor contact, you have some consistency, but your 'picture' of how impact or your swing is supposed to be may be off. Have you tried using the intention to hit it out of the toe more?

I'm not understanding your scenario. Diagrams? Now I wasn't looking at shoulder turn which may be inter-related to amount of flexion between torso and legs. My trial was to see how much my trail hip rotated away from the target line with ~ retained flex vs. a mostly (not completely unflexed knee). Looked only at hip rotation and with the flex maintained the trail hip moved farther away ('deeper') from the target line, which makes sense if you think about the geometry. The right ankle does have degrees of freedom - not a ton, but some. I didn't say Hogan's trail leg / knee was 'extended' as in straight. It straightens a bit during transition which is consistent with a gentle 'push off' the inside of the trail foot a bit like Nicklaus' 'sprinter in the blocks' image / analogy. Jack's move was probably more 'sprinter like than Hogan. With Hogan, I agree there was also likely some 'tipping' / 'leaning' / 'falling' onto the lead leg as well that he termed 'enough lateral movement to get to the lead side' and others call a 'bump'.