[Jeff]

Consider this series of capture images of Yodas Luke's swing.




During the backswing, he didn't shift planes. He stayed on the elbow plane during his entire backswing. Therefore, if gets back to the same elbow plane by impact, then there should be no plane shift during the downswing.

However, he did shift planes temporarily. Note that his left hand (and therefore clubshaft) moved to a higher plane (sweetspot plane 2) in the early downswing - see image 3 - before he moved his left hand back down to the elbow plane by impact. That shifting of planes to a higher (steeper) plane and then back down to a lower (shallower) plane normally never happens in a "real" golf swing. That is equivalent to having a slight up-loop during the downswing. A golfer who has a plane shift in the downswing always shifts planes from a higher (steeper) plane to a lower (shallower) plane - and never the other way around.

So, why did it happen? I have a theory.

Normally, a good TGM-golfer directs PP#3 towards the ball-target line (base of the sweetspot plane) during the downswing - because he is trained to think that he must direct the orbiting sweetspot towards the ball-target line (base of the sweetspot plane). I think that Yodas Luke was thinking along those lines when he started his downswing - and the red arrow in image 2 represents the direction that he intended to direct PP#3. That caused his hands/clubshaft/sweetpot to go OTT - because they were directed at the base of the sweetspot plane. If he continued on that path then he would have hit the ball near the hosel of the club. He therefore had to make a "corrective" looping move a moment later to get the clubshaft back to the elbow plane by impact. Under usual circumstances this OTT problem doesn't happen. However, it becomes a "real" problem when the base of the clubshaft's inclined plane at impact is 9" away from the base of the sweetspot plane (because the actual distance between the hosel and the sweetspot is 9"), and a golfer aims his PP#3 at the sweetspot plane at the start of the downswing.

Jeff.