You wrote-: "I'm 39 until the 26th of this month. I'm aware that some use age as an excuse, but I won't put up with that garbage. Tell them to get in the gym, take a lesson, or stop complaining."
Phew!
I have seen that attitude among many golf instructors. It is a great pity! The problem is not age per se, it's age-related physical inflexibility problems. Many elder people don't suffer from age-related flexibility problems - like Gary Player. However, others do - like Arnold Palmer. He has such poor torso flexibility at present that he virtually has to stand erect to execute a torso rotation. The age-related torso inflexibility problem is not remedial with gym workouts if the problem is genetic - an increased age-related genetic predisposition to calcification of spinal ligaments and/or increased fibrosis of the intervertebral discs and paraspinal ligaments that causes a major loss of disc/ligament elasticity.
Wow, when I glanced at the photos before reading the text, I was going to give you a big atta-boy on the pictures. I thought you were showing me your Impact pictures. They are great pictures, no matter who it is.
Some of my students have had or have polio, MS, stroke victims, birth defects, etc. Not one complains about what they can't do. They are proactive in learning what they can do. That's the attitude that I want in a student, and that's the attitude that I have as a teacher. It's always about the positives. If you don't think you can succeed, stay home. If you live by the motto "I can't", then you won't.
When my guy with a polio ravaged right arm takes your money on the course , you'll stop feeling sorry for him.
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For those less fortunate, Swinging is an option.
Last edited by YodasLuke : 01-18-2009 at 09:55 AM.
I never "feel" the sweetspot and I always hit the sweetspot when I hit a golf ball. Off-center hits are not one of my problems. I don't think of the sweetspot or the clubshaft when I swing - I primarily think about my "hands". I want my hands to produce an i) on-plane swing, and ii) forward shaft lean at impact - which requires a flat left wrist and a bent right wrist at impact.
When you state that you "feel" the sweetspot - when do you "feel" it?
Yodas Luke
I don't know why you have gone off on a tangent by writing about "motivation". I was only stating that golf instructors have to understand human biomechanics and teach golfers to swing efficiently within the framework of their biomechanical limitations. It is my experience that many golf instructors are near-clueless regarding the topic of biomechanical limitations and their "effects" on the optimum execution of the golf swing.
Jeff.
Last edited by Jeff : 01-18-2009 at 01:25 PM.
Reason: added a question
You wrote-: "I'm 39 until the 26th of this month. I'm aware that some use age as an excuse, but I won't put up with that garbage. Tell them to get in the gym, take a lesson, or stop complaining."
Phew!
I have seen that attitude among many golf instructors. It is a great pity! The problem is not age per se, it's age-related physical inflexibility problems. Many elder people don't suffer from age-related flexibility problems - like Gary Player. However, others do - like Arnold Palmer. He has such poor torso flexibility at present that he virtually has to stand erect to execute a torso rotation. The age-related torso inflexibility problem is not remedial with gym workouts if the problem is genetic - an increased age-related genetic predisposition to calcification of spinal ligaments and/or increased fibrosis of the intervertebral discs and paraspinal ligaments that causes a major loss of disc/ligament elasticity.
JEFF.
Jeff,
You know what the irony of that statement is? Sure enough Yodasluke will be the one in his group that develops age related physical problem.. arthritis something ... he will be striken. He acts all high and mighty now, while he's barely into middle age but you watch... when life dishes out some of its lessons to him (and its surely will with such a self-righteous attitude... karma) he'll be screaming excuses at the top of his lungs to some young know-it-all punk telling him to get to the gym and quit making excuses .
Anyway Jeff, you're doing fine given your age and late taking up of the sport. Congrats..
That's the point ! Hell knows why aren't there face balanced clubs, but IMO not because someone wanted to make golfer's life harder.
I would risk to say that because of tradition. Backing to the middleages when golfers played with wooden stick bent at one end (looking similarily to a walking stick for elderly people)...and it was much easier to manyfacture it instead manufacturing a center shafted club.
Sir Winston Ch. could be right - we are playing with tools that are wrongly designed to this goal...
Cheers
I agree... Its because golf clubs are "supposed to look that way". So many sub optimal things we get stuck with because of decision made long before. Someone mentioned the standard keyboard which was deliberately "de-tuned" to slow typists down to avoid jamming in ancient mechanical devices.
I'd like to see someone risk it ... at least for the driver which bends every which way due to inertial forces.
I see no reason why the club face would open/close on its own as a result of interial forces.
The club is on a tilted plane, and thus has the 'out' of down, out and forward built into the physics of the machine and the design of the club.
IF
the machine is perfectly on plane - the line of pull.
The design of the club will pull the toe 'out' for proper impact. Try swinging a hockey stick, or any number of aids that exagerate the 'toe' of a club, they force that shaft to turn around the COG - sweetspot.
A perfectly on plane swinger, or machine, doesn't need to cause the out. Realistically, nobody is that perfect, so the release is often 'caused' by the golfer (release swivel).
the design of the club, and the physics of the COG plane, require that the shaft rotate around the sweetspot (per Ted's baseball bat example).
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Take a dowel rod... that represents the shaft. Take a push-pin or nail and put it in the end. Find a hex nut and tie it on a string then tie the other end to the nail or push pin on the dowel. The nut is the COG of your "club head. Take it out side and swing it every which way...up, down inclined... it doesn't matter. The Nut will never move off the plane of the swing (as defined by the dowel). The nut dutifully follows the shaft (unless/until it "releases" in the plane of the swing not perpendicular to it). There is no physical force/torque which causes the club face to open and close besides that which is supplied by the golfer's hand. Golfing machines use gears to achieve what the golfer's hands do naturally.
The club is on a tilted plane, and thus has the 'out' of down, out and forward built into the physics of the machine and the design of the club.
IF
the machine is perfectly on plane - the line of pull.
The design of the club will pull the toe 'out' for proper impact. Try swinging a hockey stick, or any number of aids that exagerate the 'toe' of a club, they force that shaft to turn around the COG - sweetspot.
A perfectly on plane swinger, or machine, doesn't need to cause the out. Realistically, nobody is that perfect, so the release is often 'caused' by the golfer (release swivel).
the design of the club, and the physics of the COG plane, require that the shaft rotate around the sweetspot (per Ted's baseball bat example).
Could you please expand on your belief that the clubshaft rotates about the COG of the clubhead?
When I swing a golf club or a hockey stick across the front of my torso, I can see the clubface closing so that the toe of the club eventually passes the heel. I can also see that the clubshaft hosel has a rounded arc motion. However, I cannot see the clubshaft rotating around the COG of the clubhead. Where should I be looking to see that phenomenon happening?
Could you please expand on your belief that the clubshaft rotates about the COG of the clubhead?
When I swing a golf club or a hockey stick across the front of my torso, I can see the clubface closing so that the toe of the club eventually passes the heel. I can also see that the clubshaft hosel has a rounded arc motion. However, I cannot see the clubshaft rotating around the COG of the clubhead. Where should I be looking to see that phenomenon happening?
Jeff.
Suspend an iron vertically waist high holding the grip end gently with two fingers ( thumb and index). Spin the grip around with your wrist and fingers.
Watch the shaft rotate around the sweetspot.
I cannot clearly understand your experiment. Do you have a small flexible piece of string of finite length (eg. 3") between the nut and the peripheral end of the dowels stick? If yes - then I can imagine the string following the plane of clubshaft movement with the hex nut dragging behind in the same plane. However, what happens if you attach the hex nut to the peripheral end of the dowel stick with a piece of rigid metal about 3" in length and then move the dowel stick in a rounded arc - as if you were swinging it like a golf club across the front of the body?
I have no problem seeing the clubshaft hosel rotate around the sweetspot in your example - where the grip end (fulcrum point) remains stationary and the clubshaft hangs vertically, and the sweetspot remains in the same spot in space while the club is being twirled.
However, the clubshaft's grip end is moving continuously in space along a rounded arc of motion during the golf swing, and while it is moving the clubshaft's grip end is also rotating in direct proportion to the degree of rotation of the flat left wrist/hand. While this is happening, I cannot see the clubshaft hosel rotating around the sweetspot. Can you?
, you'll stop feeling sorry for him.
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