Looking at a Steep Attack Angles on Tour

After watching Understanding Torques and Forces in the Golf Swing (https://vimeo.com/ondemand/forcesandtorque), I started to ponder what was going on with some of the players on Tour that had the steepest attack angles. As Dr. MacKenzie notes in Understanding Torques and Forces, out of the 30+ Tour winners he studied, only 1 of them did not get the Center of Mass below the Net Force. Dr. MacKenzie wasn’t telling who that was, but did note that he was known as a poor driver of the ball (I think I know who it is).

 I wanted to see the commonalities of these steep attack angle players and I started to see a common theme. One that didn’t surprise me after watching the video and the other that I didn’t think about, but made sense.

One player I looked at was Trevor Immelman. Golfers rave about his swing, but his ballstriking has been very poor for quite some time. Look at the YouTube comments and most golfers think he has an ideal swing.



However, here are his key radar metrics that are the best indicators of attack angle:

Carry Efficiency is Carry Distance divided by Club Speed. Immelman during these years has been either last or second to last in launch angle and is one of the worst on Tour in Carry Efficiency. I have a proprietary algorithm to project attack angle and from 2012 to 2015 his Attack Angle projected at -7 degrees with the driver in competition.

(Click the picture to enlarge)

This is something that Dr. MacKenzie and Joe Mayo mentioned in their video; a player can flatten out the shaft in the downswing and not look ‘over the top’, but if their hands are traveling on the same angle as the club head is traveling, they are not getting the Center of Mass below the Net Force. This means a steep attack angle and leftward path.

One thing I noticed about Immelman’s swing was the clubface angle. Immelman came originally from the Leadbetter school of teaching which wanted the toe straight up at P2 (when the shaft is parallel to the ground in the takeaway)

That makes for an open clubface at the top. While I don’t always agree with the concept that slicers slice the ball because of an open face, I do believe that there are many golfers that will react to an open clubface by swinging more left like Immelman does to get the ball to start on-line.

Here's another steep attack angle player in Ricky Barnes. Here’s Barnes’ radar metrics over the years:

Again, one of the lowest Launch Angles and Carry Efficiencies on Tour. His projected attack angle using my algorithm in 2016 was at -8.4 degrees.

What I see is the same symptoms….he flattens the shaft out in the downswing, but it’s basically on the same angle as his hands are traveling.



(Click the picture to enlarge)

And like Immelman, we see the similar issue of the clubface being open in the backswing.

I know other instructors have been teaching the dangers of an open clubface in the golf swing and have also been teaching how it forces steep attack angles with Tour level talent for the reasons I had mentioned. I think for the average reader that is not in the know, they can see that an open clubface in the backswing presents many problems which includes hitting the ball lower than having a closed club face because the attack angle can steepen.





3JACK