Welcome to the StrongerGolf Blog

Hi There,

You've reached the StrongerGolf Blog, my outlet for golf-related thoughts. My name is Mark Strong, a Canadian PGA professional here in Vancouver, BC. I'll be periodically blogging about random or requested golf topics, a very common subject being ball flight. If you like what you read (or even if you don't), follow my blog, comment on posts, and let me know your thoughts.

Thank you for reading; I hope you enjoy your time here.

The D-Plane: New and Old

Golf Instructors: What is it about the D-Plane that seems to split the golf teaching community into two camps?

This blog isn't really about the D-Plane, as much as it is about what seems to have happened in the golf instruction industry since it's reference has become more commonplace.

It doesn't make you a bad teacher if you don't know the D-Plane right now.  It doesn't make you a good teacher just because you do know the D-Plane.  However, knowing the D-Plane, just like knowing anything else, will make a teacher better than he/she was before.  At least, it can't make you worse.  How a teacher chooses to use the information is up to them, and is where the real skill in teaching likely lies.

New information regarding the golf swing is coming out at a pretty steady rate these days.  While the D-Plane isn't really "new" since it's been published for a while (Ted Jorgensen, The Physics of Golf. 1993), its measurements (Angle of Attack, Dynamic Loft, etc.) are now more commonly referenced since we have machines (Trackman and Flightscope) that can measure them.  There are even more advancements coming out in the field of biomechanics for the same reasons; we now have machines (K-Vest, AMM 3D, etc.) that measure what the entire body does during an elite golfer's swing, as well as have common access to slow motion cameras capturing in video in 1000 frames per second, so that few images are missed.  Several researchers, including Dr. Rob Neal and his company, Golf Biodynamics, have measured thousands of swings, and have enough data to make some very concrete assertions about what kinds of things happen in good golf swings.

For example: during the release of the golf club, before the clubhead impacts the ball, the point between the hands is actually moving upwards, helping to release the club downwards.  This has been now been measured over and over again.  You may have known that, taught that, or both.  You may not have known that.  It doesn't mean that telling a student to drive their hands "down and through the ball" couldn't help them, it just means that it doesn't actually happen in the most efficient, effective golf swings.

This wave of "new" information does not mean that anything taught beforehand was wrong, but might help explain why the things taught beforehand that worked did so.

My point in this blog is that simply knowing this information or not doesn't necessarily reflect at all on the instructor's ability to make his/her students play better golf.  Some instructors have surely used a feel like this with students to try and help their swings.  While something like this is fact, and not really up for debate anymore, it doesn't mean that instructing your students to swing your hands "down through the ball" couldn't help them.  Many differences between "feel and real" in the golf swing are referred to all the time, and since the goal of instruction is to have the students improve, in my opinion the better teacher is the one who gets the student to improve more, not necessarily the one who told the student the most correct information.

I don't meant to pick on anybody out there, but - to the guy who tells his students that the ball will start to fly along the path that the club was moving on when it hit the ball, and will curve and end up where the face was pointed at impact- if using that phrasing helps your students more than a more correct explanation would, then you've done your job.

By the way, ultra-simplified ball flight explanation: The golf ball will launch roughly 3/4 of the way between the face of the club and the path of the club head through impact, and spin in the direction away from the path.  You can get WAY more specific than that, in many different ways, but hopefully that one sentence will be accepted as fact.

Personally, I don't see why, as a teacher, knowing the correct information could ever hurt, but:

1. What the teacher wants the student to do
2. What the student was told to do
3. What the students tries to do
4. What the student actually does

you gotta admit that there's a lot of chances for information to change, and getting #4 to be good as possible is the achievement of an excellent teacher, regardless of what #'s 1, 2, and 3 were.

Those are just my opinions, which sometimes change...but not usually.
:)
-Mark
@StrongerGolf

The use of video in Teaching

Is video analysis overused in golf instruction, or is it an invaluable tool to the professional teacher?

Video has been in common use for quite some time now, and I think it's fair to say that most teaching professionals use video in their teaching, at least from time to time.  

While it can be very useful to help catch certain happenings of the swing that cannot be seen by any naked eye, I think it's important to be aware of a few of the pitfalls a teacher can experience when using video.

Parallax / Consistency: It's important to make sure that, if you are going to be comparing before and after shots or shots between two different golfers, you have the camera in the exact same position relative to both the student and the target.  Otherwise, you might see differences or similarities that aren't necessarily there.  I've seen examples of the same, exact swing satisfying two teachers with opposing philosophies just because of a difference in camera placement.  


Wikipedia's definition of Parallax: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax

For example, let's say a student strives to have their club shaft parallel to the target line in their takeaway/backswing when it reaches level with their hands/parallel to the ground (the clubhead could appear to cover the hands at this point).  Well, a camera placement very slightly to the left will give the impression that the clubhead is more outside the hands (RH golfer), while a camera placement a little to the right would make the takeaway look much inside than it actually is (again, RH golfer).

Method of screen capture: My technical information on cameras isn't all that great but, the way I understand it is that a camera takes each frame in a "wipe" method from top to bottom.  This means that the lower part of the image is actually very slightly delayed relative to the top portions.  In some older 30 frames-per-second video, this shows up as the clubhead having way more lag than is revealed in high speed video (240+ fps), and other distortions ("rolling shutter" problem).  Interestingly enough, this problem can be somewhat countered by turning the camera upside down when filming, and then flipping the image back the right way afterwards.

In short, I believe that video (especially 240+ frames per second, High speed video - very smooth in slow motion) can be very valuable, but is often overused.  I often caution against drawing too many lines on the screen, because it could encourage the exact re-creating of those lines by the student.  "Isn't that what the student and teacher both want," you might ask?  Well, only if you have properly accounted for the pitfall phenomena mentioned above.

If you rely on video too much, and draw lots of lines for your students, you might find that you occasionally "prove" your own teachings to be wrong when they're actually right, or convince both of you that a change is there, when it actually isn't.

Those are my thoughts, take 'em for what they're worth.
Thanks for reading.

-Mark
@StrongerGolf