Ball Flight Laws and the Club Face/Club Path Relationship
Striking a golf ball is a dynamic event that requires remarkable coordination and precise control over a clubhead that accelerates from zero to upwards of 100 mph in the span of a quarter-second. A lot can go sideways in such a brief period of time, but understanding two basic ingredients of your swing - club face angle and club path - is the key to controlling where your golf ball flies and how it travels on its journey.
Before the rise of launch monitor technology, skilled golfers knew that by opening and closing the club face, and adjusting the direction in which they swung the golf club, that they could change the initial direction of a shot and the way it curved through the air. But they couldn't quantify how they shaped shots. Hitting draws and fades was largely a matter of feel and lots of trial and error.
We now understand this club face/club path relationship in much greater depth and we know exactly how much the club face contributes to the characteristics of a shot and how much the club path contributes. We know how different combinations of face and path tilt the ball's spin axis and how this phenomenon impacts ball flight.
When you learn how different combinations of face and path result in different shot shapes - draw, fade, slice, hook, push, pull - you'll have a cookbook containing recipes for any shot you can imagine. You just need to remember and apply one simple concept:
The Face Sends It. The Path Bends It.
Before the rise of launch monitor technology, skilled golfers knew that by opening and closing the club face, and adjusting the direction in which they swung the golf club, that they could change the initial direction of a shot and the way it curved through the air. But they couldn't quantify how they shaped shots. Hitting draws and fades was largely a matter of feel and lots of trial and error.
We now understand this club face/club path relationship in much greater depth and we know exactly how much the club face contributes to the characteristics of a shot and how much the club path contributes. We know how different combinations of face and path tilt the ball's spin axis and how this phenomenon impacts ball flight.
When you learn how different combinations of face and path result in different shot shapes - draw, fade, slice, hook, push, pull - you'll have a cookbook containing recipes for any shot you can imagine. You just need to remember and apply one simple concept:
The Face Sends It. The Path Bends It.
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