Virtuoso
New
Brian, I have read Jorgensen's stuff and think it's great. I've also spent some time with Cochran, who doesn't suffer fools gladly--which I found out when I tried to explain to him one of my early opinions of how I think the golf swing should be described (not in terms of the math but how, as a golf instructor, I would go about optimizing a student's swing). He only partially lit up when I adjusted my explanation to include the analogy of the hammer thrower. At least he told me I was on the right track, and I think I have a better handle on it now....some 9 years later.
Firstly, I'm a broken down old range pro, not a scientist, so even if I tend to use some scientific terminology to communicate what I'm thinking, I don't presume to use any scientific method, nor do I feel that Jorgensen's assertions are the absolute gold standard, so it's likely that I'll appear to miss them. But I think you may have missed my point also.
Jorgensen took the two-pendellum model and adjusted it such that there was a linear shift factored in at the center pivot or "hub", and by doing so, his calculated clubhead speeds and the actual clubhead speeds were in very good agreement. But, he readily concedes that, in reality, the hub is displaced along a curved line or arc, which is to say that the hub is merely displaced, in the horizontal plane and vertical plane.
This type of displacement, combined with the fact that it starts with a positive acceleration and is abruptly followed by a negative acceleration, is starting to make it sound like a kind of third pendellum. In other words, he is modeling the left shoulder joint which is moving in a curvilinear fashion toward the target, but mostly rotating.
Now, he attributes the left shoulder motion (the linear portion) to an overall shift of the golfer's body toward the target, which I have no problem with, and happen to think is a very optimized way to hit the ball, but I don't think this is the main function of weight shift, especially since all it has done is add to potential clubhead speed by %10 or so but has done nothing for precision of clubhead/clubface delivery. If we move targetward with a large portion of our mass, then our weight is shifted incidentally, but so what?
On the other hand, if our main goal in the golf swing is to create large angular momentum through a kinetic chain and the only way to do that is too control very precisely the movements of the large proximal segments, then we can only do that if we can use the friction under our feet. For example, we can only brace/stall our left leg such that the pelvis slows down and tranfers energy to the shoulders, and arms, etc, IF the left foot won't slip. In order for the foot to not slip, we must have some amount of pressure/force downward to get the static friction high enough for the purpose. How do we raise the friction? Move some weight on top of it.
Brian, what say you?
