[BerntR]

In 0.5 ms, the sound travels about 17 cm in air, 70 cm in water and 250 cm in iron. What's sound got to do with it? The speed of sound equals the speed of mechanical forces running through the same medium. As in: How long does it take after you started pulling the rope until it is stretched in the other end, ready to carry a bigger force?

The golf shaft is made of iron or some other material with very similar mechanical properties. The impact shock that the ball imposes on the clubhead will reach the grip of your club after about 0.2-0.3 ms. Then add another 0.05 ms or so to get through the rubber "insulation" of the grip and to the hands. All of this means that your hand will be "talking" directly to the ball for about half of the impact interval.

The brain may not receive a "minutes of meeting" before the ball has left the club, but that doesn't mean that the meeting didn't happen. And it doesn't mean that the ball, the clubhead and the hands weren't "communicating" directly.

There are people who believe that the golf club head is on its own during impact. They are wrong.

We can see on the impact videos that something else makes a difference. The shaft lean and the delofting that we see in some of them is due to a combination of moving mass above the sweet spot (shaft, hands, arms) and lag pressure (forces) that the golfer imposes on the clubhead through impact. 0.2 ms is a lot of time to get some work done. How you move the butt end of the club before impact will make a difference, so you can do some "impact work" beforehand that is delivered prompte. And in addition there's time to add more after the meeting has started.



However...

The mass speed being produced prior to impact really wants to keep moving forward. That's due to conservation of energy. What happens then when the ball slows the clubhead down dramatically? Imagine what would happen if the ball was infinitely heavy and you let go of the club. The ball would then work as a hinge pin and the grip end would start to spin around the golf ball. But we don't want that to happen. We want as much of the kinetic energy that the hands, arms, shaft and clubhead is carrying to be directed at the ball. Therefore we really want to resist the tendency towards increased shaft lean through impact.

We want the geometrically flat left wrist to remain flat. Bending and throwaway is the enemy before ball contact. But during impact, bending is not the eneny. Arching is. Arching during the impact interval means that we let some of the mass-velocity of the club shaft move the hands in stead of forcing all of it to move the ball.

If the rope handling has slack in it -

(and it will have a slack if you approach impact with a bent left wrist. And it will have slack if you're practically freewheeling through the ball. And it will have slack if you're disconnected somewhere between the ground and the hands. Well - I guess compared to the sudden increase of force at impact it will have some slack in any case, but the point is to minimise it)

If the rope handling has slack in it your left wrist will arch as a response to the reverse throwout condition imposed by the ball on the club. How to avoid it? Make the power package structure as rigid as possible. As resistant as possible against this happening. Maximise the push-pull efforts by the hands. As much rope handling (pp#2) as you can carry - from the feet up - combined with linear force, type pp#3. You basically want that rope to be as tight as you can get it before you contact the ball. So there's no giving in during the impact interval.


[/ Super nerd mode off]