if the heavy hit is a myth, can you...?

[birly-shirly]

...hurt your wrists taking chunky divots?

 

[Brian Manzella]

Sure you can.

 

[Mike O]

You'd have to define exactly what you mean by heavy hit- in order for it to be a myth. I can think of a number of different contexts where a heavy hit is a very real thing in golf.

 

[birly-shirly]

In terms of the heavy hit being a myth, I'm thinking of what I take to be a consensus now that during impact, the clubhead and ball collision takes place as if the clubhead were a free-moving object in space. There is no prospect of transferring any force to the ball from your body via the shaft.

I think it holds that the opposite must be true - that if you can't apply force to the ball via the shaft during impact, then the ball can't apply force to you. I suppose the key here must be during impact - since the feel of impact is certainly transmitted through the shaft.

Nevertheless, I think I'm right in saying that at impact the clubhead applies more than a ton of force to the ball - but on a sweet strike you don't feel the tiniest fraction of that force.

So the question is - if ball-club impact can't apply much or any force to the golfer's body, can a normal ground impact creating a healthy divot transmit enough force to cause injury?

Conventional wisdom would say yes - but then conventional wisdom also says things like get your weight behind the ball to hit longer drives.

I don't have strong views one way or the other. It just struck me as a logical question to ask given what we know about impact.

 

[natep]

Yes. Impact with a golf ball lasts 0.004 seconds, during which the clubhead is essentially a free moving object, disconnected from the shaft, if you will, because of the flex of the shaft and the deflection. By the time you feel impact the ball is already gone. When you take a divot, it could easily last far, far longer, like if you buried the club and it completely stopped. In that case the clubhead and shaft would become "connected" again, and you could definitely hurt your hands/wrists. Or something like that.

 

[birly-shirly]

speaking hypothetically, natep?

I agree that the answer must lie in the time interval that you spend carving out a divot. Equally, I'm kind of intrigued now in the extent to which a clubhead - orbiting at 80 or 90 miles an hour - can collide with the ground, scrape 4 or 5 inches or turf, emerge and continue to a full-ish finish, and create a physical trauma at the other end of a 3 foot long flexible shaft.

I remember Harrington hurt his wrists, but not his prospects at the Open, on an impact bag - but that's a dead stop like you describe. There are also a few cases of people injuring themselves in tangley rough. I can think of one case in which a tour player blamed a particular swing method for his wrist injuries. But can a good golf swing put more strain on the wrists than a game of tennis?

 

[natep]

One time I took a full swing under some trees and hit and underground root while taking the divot. It didnt bring the club to a dead stop but it hurt like hell and my right wrist was sore for several days.

I dont think you could hurt your wrists on a normal shot taking a standard divot. Maybe after a lot of reps.