Pitch Shot Variations

Chuck Evans on pitch shot variations.










3JACK

Swing Update 5.28.10

I figure I'll go back to showing swing updates on a weekly basis. I plan on getting a Casio camera soon so I can tape my swing in super slow motion.

Here I'm hitting my Apex PC 2-iron which has an ultra stiff shaft in it. The DTL swings I flushed both of them, probably hitting it as well as I can hit the club. One of those shots you hit so well that you barely feel the club making contact with the ball. The Face On shot was a push.

The swing is getting better. I'll probably start working on ABS Module 3 come Saturday if I play pretty decent. I noticed from the Face On view the ball position is a bit back for a 2-iron. My guess is that I probably naturally did that over time to compensate for the excess axis tilt and the head hanging back on the downswing. For now though, I hope to keep the backswing pretty much the same, work on Module 3 and see where that takes my swing over time.












3JACK

Shaft Spining

I've discussed getting your shafts spined before, but I thought I would expand upon it in this post.

As this video shows, each shaft has a 'spine' and that's where most of the weight is and here they show how to find the spine and then align it.



The reason why you want the shaft to be aligned is so you don't get what's called 'shaft droop'


Problem is, getting your shafts aligned isn't not cheap. It can cost up to $50 a club if you were to go to GolfSmith.

Fortunately, there's a bit of a way around it. This great video by Sevam1 and Steve Elkington shows how to figure out the effects shaft droop have on your impact.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ELK & SEVAM1 VIDEO

This is also a good way to figure out what lie angle works for you. Get a rough estimate of what lie angle you play at (say, 2* flat) and then get each club bent 2* flat. Then use the dynamic lie fitting that Sevam1 and Elk are using in the video to tweak your clubs.

However, you really cannot bend the lie angles with today's modern drivers, so I would suggest if you are very serious about the game, get your driver shaft aligned.






3JACK

Another Hogan Video

Ho hum, just perfection again. Really love the elderly Hogan swings in this one.










3JACK

It's All About Impact Book Review

I finally picked up Andrew Rice's book 'It's All About Impact' and read it today. It only took about an hour to read as it's only 122 pages and I purchased it via the e-book for $15.95.

Rice is a former Leadbetter protege and played golf at University of Central Florida (which is about 2 miles from where I live now, beautiful campus). Rice also credits Mike Bennett and Andy Plummer, founders of the Stack and Tilt golf swing, for giving him the idea of creating his book (he admits to have never meeting either Bennett or Plummer).

I was a bit skeptical coming into the book as my dealings with Leadbetter's teaching and teaching of his disciples has usually been disappointing as far as information goes. Plus, I understand D-Plane pretty well and compression pretty well. But I figured I could possibly learn some new things or some insights about impact. Furthermore, if the book is everything I've ever read before but provides information in simple, but a detailed manner...it could be a good book for my blog readers to pick up

One of the major problems I have with pop instructors like the ones that tend to come out of the Leadbetter camp is that they usually focus on the backswing and the backswing plane, which can make the swing look pretty, but still result in poor ballstriking.

Unfortunately, my premonitions were accurate as despite talking about 'it's all about impact', he goes quite a bit into the backswing. One of the things Rce talks about is somethng he calls the '84 degree secret' which is a line he draws at the top of the swing from the right foot. Rice claims that almost all of the great ballstrikers are either on the 84* line or within a degree of it. My problem is that it's drawn off a camera angle and camera angles can deceive. Don't get me wrong, I'm a believer in getting video camera, but using stringent lines to follow off a camera can cause some major problems.

Rice does believe in a backswing very similar to the Stack & Tilt with a steep shoulder turn on the backswing. He also claims that every good ballstriker at P3 (when the left arm is parallel to the ground in the backswing) has the right arm higher than the left arm when looking from the face on view. I've actually got a swing sequence of Trevino and Corey Pavin showing a different story.

Rice also claims that the golfer should hit down with EVERY club in the bag and points to Trackman's measurement that the average PGA Tour pro hits -1.3* down wit the driver. However, that's the average and somebody like Bubba Watson hits about 9* upward with the driver.



I'm more of a believer that one can hit up with the driver and be very accurate. In fact, the average attack angle with the driver on the LPGA is +3*, and there are many LPGA golfers who do hit it very accurately off the tee. Furthermore, it's really a trade off between distance and accuracy.

And that's kind of the issue I have with the book. Most of his conclusions are not quite true and Rice doesn't even get into the effect that clubface angle, attack angle and clubhead path have on the ball.

The good part is he does talk about compression and hitting the ball first and it's really underrated as to the amount of golfers who have no idea that you hit the ball first and then take a divot. But other than that, I didn't find a lot of use out of this book and I don't think the blog readers will either and they would be better off sticking with Bennett and Plummer's 'The Stack and Tilt Golf Swing' book if they want to understand impact better.







3JACK

Blades vs. Cavity Backs, the Debate Continues

Good debate and posts going over on Brian Manzella's forum about using Cavity Backs vs. Blades and I wanted to share my thoughts.


I'm a believer in the blade style iron. I don't think it's a coincidence that the great ballstrikers all used blades and the best rounds in the history of the game were almost all done with blade style iron.

I'll name off the top of my head, the ten best all time ballstrikers I can think of:

- Ben Hogan
- Moe Norman
- Sam Snead
- George Knudson
- Johnny Miller
- Lee Trevino
- Nick Price
- Tom Watson
- Mac O'Grady
- Jack Nicklaus

I'm pretty sure all of them used blades. Knudson is questionable since I don't know of his endorsement deals.


With the cavity, it's a more forgiving when it comes to the effects that the clubface, clubhead path and low point have on the ball. Now we are seeing more of a 'player's cavity back' iron involved with the game.


Manzella's contention is that he can hit some cavity backs better than any blade iron available and test it out on Trackman's 'combine' application.



My contention is that after reading Michael Lavery's book 'Whole Brain Power' (see Lavery in the pic above), I believe that people who do not test their motor skills usually see them erode.

So, when you have a set of irons like cavity backs which allow golfers to be less precise with their clubface, clubhead path and low point control...they'll eventually become less precise with those facets of impact.

Here's what Manzella mentioned:

That science is called the Moment of Inertia—the measure of an object's resistance to changes to its rotation.

The higher the MOI, the harder it is for the club to be "twisted" by an outside force.

The lower the MOI, the easier on purpose, during the swing, twisting is.

Blade irons, with all of their mass distributed more or less evenly throughout the head, have a far lower MOI than say a hollow-headed 460cc Titanium Driver.

And much less than a cavity back iron.

So, for the highly skilled golfer, the ability to "twist", or manipulate the clubface during the swing, is "scientifically" easier to do with a blade iron.

But what about a higher MOI twisting less on off-center hits?

Well, if the ball is contacted on the sweetspot of a blade iron, not a big problem for the Hogan's, Nelson's, Snead's, Nicklaus', Miller's, and Eldrick's of the world, that resistance to twisting during an off-center impact, is not a big benefit to them.

So, why would anyone play with a cavity backed club?

Why would anyone play with a hybrid?

Because, mere mortals don't hit the sweetspot like a David Toms, and can't control the clubface like a Lee Buck Trevino.

What some point to is that the majority of golfers on the PGA Tour use cavity backs. In fact, I did a look a few months ago at the top 50 ranked players in the world and 17 of them played blades at the time, 30 played CB's and 3 played a very mixed set.

And when I think of great ballstrikers on the PGA Tour, I think of Kenny Perry, Heath Slocum, Hunter Mahan and Joe Durant...all of which use cavity back irons.

So what gives?

Well, the courses (like I've mentioned in the past) have become more 'carry oriented' and you have to hit the ball higher and longer than in the past. Ryan Moore uses Scratch Golf's SB-1 blades, but for the Master he switched over to their cavity back irons because he felt he needed to hit the ball higher for Augusta's greens. Anthony Kim recently said he liked the Nike VR blades over the old Nike blades because he could get them up higher and they would land softer on the greens.

Plus, the course are certainly longer and that's a big thing, particularly on par-3's where one could feel more comfortable hitting a 5-iron into a green instead of a 2-iron.

But, there's also endorsement deals which are far stricter than they were only 15 years ago. Now less and less OEM's are willing to design a set of irons after another OEM's line of clubs and stamp it with their logo and call it a 'prototype.' 15 years ago that happened more often than not. Now, it's pretty rare to see.

Getting back to Trackman. I do believe that many golfers could do the Trackman 'combine' and find themselves performing better with the cavity backs. The problem, IMO, is that OVER TIME with the CB's the golfer can be less precise with their swing because they are not being challenged to be precise with their clubface, clubhead path and low point control.

So *over time* with CB's they could take the Trackman 'combine' test again and find that they still perform better with CB's than blades, but their Trackman combine performance slipped from before. Had they stuck with blade style irons, I think their Trackman performance over time wouldn't slip or wouldn't slip as much (or even get better).

Of course, you need pretty good coaching and dedication to put the time in to building your swing. Like Moe Norman once said, you simply cannot buy a golf swing, one must work for that.

It runs along the same problems I have with irons becoming longer, lighter, lower lofted with more upright lie angles. Over time most golfers develop swings around that. And then when they start hitting shots off the toe, the clubmaker tells them they need more upright clubs.

It's really up to golfer in the end, but I think they need to be fully aware of the risks and rewards of both styles of irons.







3JACK

The Swing Of A Champion

Who do I think has the best golf swing going today?

There's plenty of really good ones out there, but as of now I'll take Matteo Manassero. And here's the crazy part, he's only 17!







This guy is good!






3JACK