Last month, I published a tip on Timing The Bump (Lateral Left Shift), and it generated a number of comments from the Surge Nation including this one from Skipperbill:
"Dear Mr. Trahan,
Many years ago I read a book by Ben Hogan, I was trying to learn the secrets of the then golf swing. One of the items in the swing was doubling the head speed. If I recall this meant breaking the wrists. The idea was to have your wrists straighten as the club head approached the ball. I know you have said in the past not to break the wrists, but in your swing, how does the club head double in speed?" Skipperbill
Within a short time, our VFC (Very Frequent Contributor with over 4,000 comments since I started this blog) Steve Smith answered with what I think is a really good answer.
"I doubt if Hogan would have had access to equipment that could measure whether something "was doubling" in speed if taken literally. It was probably what he felt. It may have doubled at release or may have been something more or less than doubling. What he did know is that the proper release of the club, maximizing the use of the lag created in the swing made a tremendous difference. We don't cock our wrists intentionally and keep the back of the left wrist flat but that doesn't mean there's not lag. It would be impossible to swing a club properly with any speed at all without creating this lag. Learning to release this lag at exactly the right instant is the key to maximum club speed at impact." Steve Smith
Steve is absolutely right--there is a significant amount of lag in the Peak Performance Golf Swing but it is not created by cocking or hinging our wrists at the top of the backswing. Rather, we create lag through a combination of rapidly moving our hands down and along the toe line and by rotating our hips to bring the club head square just before impact. At the same time, our arms rotate from the shoulder socket so that as we continue past impact the club head rotates toe up, mirroring the same position that it was in during the initial portion of the backswing. As we have discussed many times in the past, the benefit of staying behind the ball until impact is more consistent ball striking and increased accuracy.
And don't be fooled by all the hype that rotational instructors create about how their wrist cocking method "maximizes lag" with the implication that this also maximizes club head velocity. The truth of the matter, as proved by scientific studies, is that the club head velocity of a vertical swing at impact is the same as that of rotational swing. The big difference is that a rotational swing is actually decelerating at impact because of the need to slow down the forward movement of the hands to allow the club head to catch up and become square. By staying behind the ball with a vertical swing plane that actually gets the club head on the target line sooner, we don't need to slow down our hands; in fact, we actually have positive acceleration at the moment of impact--the only time when club head velocity really matters!
Keep it vertical!
The Surge
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