Monday, June 18, 2007

Hit Down on the Driver Damnit...

Every time I walk past instructors who tell their students to hit up or sweep their driver, fairway woods and long irons, my hair stands and I feel like throwing up.

1. A golf swing is a circle...there are no flat spots for you to 'sweep'. This leaves us the option of only hitting down or up.

2. Newton's 3rd Law states that for every action that is a reaction that is equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.

This means that if you hit up, the ball stays down. You hit down, the ball goes up.
This stuff is so simple that you would need a golf pro to help you screw up and misunderstand it.

As ardent readers of this blog will know, Justin Tang comes across as a brash and cocky guy (which those who know me know I am not) and teaches very differently.

I seem cocky because I have conviction that what I do WILL help change your golf swing and your life. Few if any people in general have my conviction. I am sold out.
Secondly, I am extremely PASSIONATE about improving your game!!! I have spent 3 hours with students who paid for only 1 lesson because they were so keen!

I teach differently because traditional instruction is extremely flawed.
It doesnt consider learning psychology and for the most part its based mainly on what someone thinks the golf is.

If you keep doing the same thing, you will keep getting the same results. I want you to ask yourself this...if hitting up on the driver works then why do your drives suck?

Thinking something is so doesnt make it so. The first three emails to justintang@medicusgolfinstitute.com will get a free Video Swing Analysis. Finally, you will know what on earth is going on!

Anyway...look at all these videos. Even a blind man can see that these real PGA pros are hitting down on both driver and fairway woods.



7 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're clueless... That's a complete perversion of Newton's law. You should stick to psychology.

Justin Tang said...

Newton's 3rd Law states that for every action, there is a reaction that is equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.

Can you please tell me with reference to the video clips and Newton why my statement is a perversion?

And do leave your name behind instead of being anonymous. This is a friendly place...:)

Anonymous said...

Justin, I cannot believe you have an engineering degree that is unless it is one of those pseudo-degrees of the Homer Kelly variety. Your mistake indicates you do not know much if anything about Newtonian mechanics. But you seem like a nice, intelligent chap who is trying to do good so I'll try to point you in the right direction.

Newton's third law pertains to bodies in contact. It says they share the same "line of action" or vectorial direction of the "contact" force which is equal but in opposite directions. (You push on me... I push back on you ... equal but opposite... get it?) What it does not say is: "if you hit down, the object being hit will go up".

Newton's second law says F=MA. If there is resultant force on a particle then it will accelerate in the direcion of that force. If you hit down then the object will accelerate DOWN! (not up). Think of an ordinary hammer and nail. Which way does the nail move when struck by the hammer? Its the same thing when a driver contacts a golf ball... well sort of anyway (we must consider the loft on the club).

This is why ALL long drivers tee the ball high and try to strike the ball on the upswing... In plain ordinary physics what that does is minimize spin (spin increases aerodynamic drag) and optimize the ballistic trajectory.

"My driver heads have anywhere from 3 to 6 degrees of loft, which doesn't sound like much. But I try to hit the ball slightly on the upswing, and the shaft kicks the head forward before impact, and that adds even more loft. It takes serious swing speed to take advantage of those factors. The average player would be lucky to hit anything more than a line drive with one of my clubs. -- Sean Fister"

Justin... If you want to know golf then you need to learn some basic physics. Go to your local college bookstore an find a vector mechanics text in the Mechanical Engineering section. Study Forces, moments and study collisions. Having done that you will begin to understand why Mr. Kelley (who was a Boeing drafter not engineer) book never gained widespread acceptance. Your young, you can learn this stuff... do it right starting today!

Anonymous said...

Consider this from BrianManzella.com (BM is a TGMer... machinist) in a discussion about Bobby Clampetts's misgueded (Hit Down Driver) advice... Don't let your eye deceive you!

In an earlier thread Brain mentioned that camera angles can distort what a picture shows. He noted that he and Mikestloc have done on lot of work in that regard. Brain mentioned that he was going to post some photos showing the effect of parallax. According to Brain a bad camera angle can produce an incorrect conclusion. Give me a bad camera angle and the ability to draw lines incorrectly and I can show that the world is flat! These long drivers are very dedicated. They work day in and day out on hitting the ball as well as they can. They try every ball position and every angle of attack. They have the resources of the the shaft and clubhead companies. They have the best equipement for their swings. Many of them have 10 or more drivers at any given event. Many use a different driver and shaft during the event depending on the wind conditions and the firmness of the ground. They know and understand equipement. They tee the ball well forward and hit up on the ball. I go to the long driving events and I practice on the range and play with the long drivers. Tom Wishon is a highly respected club maker and advisor to the PGA of America. He advocates a positive angle of the attack with the driver. Two time World Long Drive Champion Sean Fister told me in front of two AI's that he tees the ball high and hits up on the ball. I used to tee the ball down and have it further back in my stance. Three long drivers (two of them former World Champions) were nice enough to take me to the range. We hit balls together. They showed me what happens when you hit down compared to hitting slight up. I tried teeing the ball higher. My driving improved greatly. I drive the ball much better. Period. David Mobley doesn't hit down on drives. I have stood five feet from him when he was on the range. He doesn't play the ball back in his stance like the camera angle incorrectly shows on the pictures that Brain posted. I have visited with him about the golf swing. These long drivers are great guys and the are true professionals who love to win. Many of the are good golfers. David is one of the best golfers of the long drive tour members and he has played on mini tours. Many of the other long drivers are good golfers. They take what they do seriously and they study shafts, clubheads, launch angles, spin rates, ball positions and angle of attacks. If hitting down on the ball helped them they would do it. Heck they would stand on their heads to hit it 5 yards longer. Lynn Blake (G.S.E.D.) correctly stated that you can hit down on drives, level, or up on drives. Any of the three are ok by me. If you hit down with a driver, you can use a very similar motion with the driver and the irons. However, you will lose distance. Long drivers on the Long Drivers Tour do not hit down on with their drivers.

Anonymous said...

One last think (since I'm bursting your bubble anyway...) That first statement is niave (and wrong) too. The golf swing is not a circle.

Where the clubhead goes, the path that it takes, depends entirely apon what the linkage driving it is doing.

That linkage consists of club:lead arm:shoulder girdle and any translation the shoulder girdle may be experiencing. The motion of said linkage can generate straight-line club head paths. It depends on velocities and angular velocities. Where the clubface is pointing is not an indication of path either....

Justin you've been drinking too much cool-aid. The little yellow book is fiction. Justin... Google: "golf and Nesbit" ... professor Nesbit is getting at the TRUTH which so eluded the Boeing Drafter Mr. Kelley.

Justin Tang said...

Hi Anonymous,

Sorry I had to refer to you as that since your identity has still not been revealed though from your spelling, grammar and ip address I can make an educated guess about your identity.

I really appreciate your efforts and generosity in sharing your information and knowledge.

Here is my take on it if you will...

A "lever assembly" has a Low Point. Anything struck BEFORE that point dictates that it will be still be moving downward UNTIL Low Point.

Hold a golf club from your thumb and forefinger and let it just
hang downward. The vertical line represents the Low Point - one straight line.

BUT, while keeping the
top in place reach down and pull the clubhead to the right - away from the Low Point.

If you now let go you will notice that the club moves DOWNWARD.

Since the golf ball is positioned BEFORE Low Point, for the vast majority of shots, this simple demonstration shows how the club MUST move down to make contact BEFORE Low Point.

This of course takes no engineering
degree to figure out - it's a law of force and motion.

The only reason we don't take a divot with a driver is because it is on a tee, otherwise we would.

There are of course players that THINK they swing up with their driver but video and still pictures clearly
show they do not.

Swinging up would produce a backward leaning shaft. NOT a vertical OR forward leaning one.

Since we do NOT hit straight down on the top of the golf ball but rather the back side THIS produces the lift necessary, along with the loft of the club.

For a brief moment in time the ball is compressed onto the face of the club as well as the ground.

These combined rebounding forces are what gives the ball launch and spin.

Do you teach? Maybe you could fly over to Singapore and tell my students (who have been hitting down on the driver gaining an average of 25 yards) not to hit down?

Thanks for considering that. You are the best! (But then again maybe I am niave (oops...n*a*ive) to even think that.)

PBH said...

I think parallax has more to do with
swing plane than low point.

In the video with Arron Baddeley it is very obvious that the clubhead is moving down through impact.