Gravity, momentum and the club

Gravity is the most significant motion force on earth and moves objects at a rate of 32 feet per second squared.

The hands are 3 to 4 feet away from the impact at the top of the backswing with the arms, elbows and shoulders all closer.

If gravity were the only force acting on the arms, hands and club, they would return to impact alignment in about 1/10 of a second. That is a rate that could be called blurry fast, and without any effort from the player.

When the sound swing changes direction and starts down plane, players should notice how slow and smooth this transition is. In fact, a change of direction - when a motion stops going back or up and then starts going down or forward, in all throwing or striking skills - is quote slow (example: When a baseball pitcher or bowling ball changes direction).

Ask any Olympic track star what is the slowest step of a 100-yard dash, and he or she will tell you, of course, it is the first.

Perhaps it can help your visualizations of the golf swing as having two first steps - one at the start of the backswing and one at the start of the downswing. They are both slow. Now add this visualization to the picture and feel of downswing moving no faster than the speed of gravity.

Try this small exercise: Stand erect and hold your arms straight out from your sides and parallel to the flow. Now exhale and let them simply fall until your hands slap your legs.

You will notice how tension free you must be to create any speed at all. Now imagine the weight of the golf club and the extra distance it must travel and you will begin to realize how to swing blurry fast with no effort at all.

Trivia question: Who is the winningest American professional golfer of all time. No fair Googling.

Answer to last rules teaser:

A&B both have balls lying in the same bunker next to one another in a heel print. A moves his ball under the rules and B obliterated the heel print with his shot. Ruling? A must recreate the lie as closely as possible, even the heel print.


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