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The Measured Golf Podcast
Mass, Pressure, and Technique: Rethinking How We Chip
The debate about optimal short game technique has heated up in golf instruction circles, with many coaches advocating for the "double-digits down" approach to chipping and pitching. But does this technique really deliver the promised results for all golfers? Michael dives deep into the biomechanics of the short game with scientific precision and measured data.
Using sophisticated equipment including Swing Catalyst dual force plates and TrackMan launch monitors, Michael demonstrates the actual effects of different attack angles on ball flight and spin production. The findings are eye-opening: increasing attack angle from 7.8 to 11.5 degrees downward only added about 150 RPMs of spin while significantly decreasing landing angle from 30.4 to 23.5 degrees. The result? A ball that actually rolled out further despite the steeper attack—precisely what most golfers are trying to avoid when seeking more spin.
What makes this analysis particularly valuable is the clear distinction between center of pressure and center of mass—concepts often confused in golf instruction. The data reveals that pressure distribution (83% on the lead foot with steeper attack angles versus 64% with more neutral setups) is what creates the difference in club delivery, not body position. This has profound implications for how golfers should approach their short game technique based on their individual biomechanics.
For players who struggle with vertical force production—which includes most amateurs—staying heavily on the lead side through impact creates significant challenges. It restricts the backswing, steepens the club too early, and requires precise timing that many find difficult to master consistently. Michael makes a compelling case for tailoring your technique to your physical capabilities rather than following trends that might work beautifully for tour players but poorly for your unique body.
Whether you're a coach looking to better understand the science behind different short game approaches or a player trying to find the most effective technique for your game, this episode provides evidence-based insights that cut through the noise of competing instructional philosophies. What matters isn't which technique is "right"—but which one is right for you.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Measured Golf Podcast, where you, the listeners, sit down and join me, michael, as we discuss all things golf, and today's going to be a fun one. We are going to sit down, get into the weeds, look at some really cool swing catalyst and trackman data and talk about some of the concepts surrounding short game and how some of these concepts really have some benefits for certain players, and how some of these trade-offs that we're making may not work for us the way that we hope they do. So without getting too far ahead of myself, I would like to start off by saying that I, in the past, have been a subscriber to Mr Mayo's Patreon channel and I really admire, as an animal lover, what Mr Mayo is doing with his proceeds from that channel and donating it to help animals in need. I think that's wonderful. I think Mr Mayo is a fantastic golf coach. The work he did with Pat Perez widely was unpraised. The work he did with Victor was was seemed like it was very good as well. Um, I think Mr Mayo isa great golf coach. I've learned a tremendous amount from him. Um, I've certainly appreciated having access to the things he shares, but I also think that there's more than one way to skin a cat, and I know that Mr Mayo said that as well. Um, I'm not saying that he hasn't, but it does seem to be a narrative in the golf space that everybody has to chip the golf ball double digits down, and I like double digits down. I don't necessarily have a problem with double digits down. I don't think you're going to hit a fat. I don't. I know you're not going to hit it fat.
Speaker 1:I think it does a lot of good things for a lot of different people that have certain problems within their pitching and chipping motion. However, there are a lot of people that, attempting this technique are just simply not going to be able to pull it off very well, and when I kind of think about this, I kind of go back to my time with Mr Mike Adams, and when we're talking about double digits down, I kind of think of what Mr Mike Adams would call a front post player or somebody who is staying on their lead side throughout their chipping and pitching motion. A lot of people are doing that throughout their chipping and pitching motion. A lot of people are doing that. A lot of people are attempting to do something maybe that they don't completely understand, and there seems to be a giant disconnect between the separation of center of pressure and center of mass, and there's a lot of confusion out there about how the hips move and the pelvis moves, and I just I think that there has been a little bit of a confusing narrative that surrounds this. That's all, um, I personally wish that I wouldn't have shared the messages from Mr Mayo online.
Speaker 1:However, I don't think, under any situation, that two professionals that are trying to help golfers should speak to each other that way. I also don't think that it matters personally. I'm not personally invested in this. I'm not, um, I'm not personally invested in this. I'm not, I do not. I do not worry about me in this situation because, at the end of the day, I work in the golf industry and I am simply trying to take the information that I've gathered and share it with people.
Speaker 1:Simply trying to take the information that I've gathered and share it with people, and I've had success with every type of player that there is many different ways, and that's the beauty of golf coaching and that's what is so cool out there is that there are so many amazing young men and women who are coaching and coming up with their own thing and like coming up with some application and it's awesome and it helps a lot of different people. The issue tends to be, I think, that a lot of people are constantly chasing techniques without understanding whether that is going to help them or not. And when one one technique is really kind of beaten into the subconscious of the industry, a lot of people start kind of falling into that box and look once again. I think VSP, steepening the VSP is wonderful. I think managing your spin loft is wonderful. I think all these things are very, very good, but there are also some trade-offs and that's kind of what I want to talk about.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I'm going to kind of do here is I'm going to share a little bit of information. So stick with me. I apologize, I am not the most technology technology proficient person on the planet, but we're going to give this a go. So I'm going to share my screen now and we've got a shot up, okay, and what we're going to do is we're going to look at a couple of these shots, so we're going to start with this one here. So we can see that the angle of attack is 7.8 degrees downward when I'm hitting the ball. Ok, we can see that the club path is a little bit left. The face to path is a little bit open relative to that about half the amount. So that should work out relatively straight, which we see still a little left of target, but not too bad. And we see that the VSP, the swing plane, is 84.7. So we can see that we're getting that club nice and steep and using VSP.
Speaker 1:Love VSP. I think it's a great thing. We play golf, or I should say we're trying to keep the hands and the arms in the frontal plane during the golf swing. So I 100% love a good VSP. The worst thing out there is a flat VSP for chipping and pitching, in my opinion, and I definitely agree that the VSP is good. So, interestingly enough, when we look at this shot 7.8 degrees down and the ball launched at 28.2 degrees and landed at 30.4 degrees. Okay. So when we look at the spin rate 38, 69, and the land angle of 30.4, and we see that the launch angle and the land angle are mirroring themselves fairly well, that ball is going to have a decent amount of stopping power. I'm not saying it's stopping on a dime it isn't but it is going to land softer and want to come to a rest quicker.
Speaker 1:Now, when I look at this next shot, interestingly enough, I went double digits here. This is me hitting these shots. I was absolutely not inclined to have anybody else hit these shots for me. I wanted to do it myself. I did it this morning. By the way, I did this on the swing catalyst dual motion plates. I did this with a Mira Y grind 58 degree wedge and a Titleist RCT Pro V 1x. That's the equipment that was being used. I also had a TrackMan 4 measuring this data, obviously. So this is the data as it comes, and this is me doing it.
Speaker 1:I am not a touring professional. I am not the best golfer on the planet. I am none of those things. I am a golfer who plays to about a one to handicap. I don't get to play that much and I am a fairly decent golferfer and I have been known to have a very good short game. And this is me hitting these shots to the best of my ability and trying to show you guys exactly what I see and think.
Speaker 1:So this one here, double digits down. Okay, club pass a little bit more neutral. Face to pass a little bit more neutral and what we see is that this ball because I was double digits down which pulled the spin loft down, okay, or yeah, pulled the spin loft down. Let me rephrase that I'm sorry I'm saying that wrong Pulled the dynamic loft down. Excuse me, sorry, I was saying the wrong word there. I'm very aware of that, but because it pulls that down, excuse me, sorry, I was saying the wrong word there. I'm very aware of that, but because it pulls that down, we see that the launch angle now at double digits down 11.4 degrees down the launch angle is now 21.8 degrees.
Speaker 1:Now, if I go back to the previous shot, you can see the previous shot was at 28 degrees and the land angle was 30. On this particular shot, it was launched at 21.8 degrees and landed at 23 and a half degrees. Now that all to me doesn't really change much, right? Yeah, one's higher, one's lower. Big whoop, mike. What's the deal? Well, the deal is is that what has really transpired between these two shots is that if you start looking at the data and you compare the two, there really aren't a lot of things that are different. They're very, very similar in a lot of ways. The only real exceptions here are the attack angle, the launch angle and the land angle. Very interesting to me.
Speaker 1:Now, when we start talking about what are we gaining? What are we losing? When we look at the shot, that was 7.8 degrees down and launched at 30, it had a spin rate of 3,869 RPMs. Now we know that by hitting down on it, we're trying to spin it more and by going double down we should have plenty of spin. And when you know it, we have absolutely increased our spin. When we went to 11.5 degrees down, it launched at 21, and we can see that the spin rate increased from 3869 to 4017. So we've basically picked up about 150 RPMs of spin on that shot. Now, 150 RPMs compared to 4000 total is really just not a big percent of change. It isn't. But the thing that's very interesting to me about this is the spin rate hasn't changed much, right, but when we look at how far the ball is traveling when it lands, that gets really interesting to me. So, yes, we increase the spin and we would think that, well, that ball stops way sooner because it has more spin, but, as we said, it only has another 150 RPMs of spin.
Speaker 1:Now, if I was a better golfer, maybe I can make it spin more, maybe I could improve my technique by practicing this more. Those are all hypotheticals and they are all very real and they are all potential, but as it is me hitting these shots seven shots in total, picking two of them to compare that are the most similar, this is kind of what it is. So I gained 150 RPMs of spin, but the trade-off was that I went from landing at 30 degrees to 23 and a half, so I've lost like six and a half degrees of land angle. Now, six.5 degrees on 23.5 is a big percent of change. So, yes, while I did pick up the spin, I lowered the land angle.
Speaker 1:Now I'm not giving you all the information here. I'm sure a lot of people will be like oh, you're hiding data, you're hiding data. So full transparency. I have the track man right here and what I want to do is I want to talk about something, so I'm going to put it up there. Hopefully you can tell that that's all the same data. And what I want to show you is that my total so not my carry, but my total for the shot that was 7.8 degrees down. Now, keep in mind, trackman isn't counting on this hitting a green in this, in this setting that I'm in here on TrackMan, it's just pretending that it's hitting like a driving range, like the ground at the driving range. So take this with a grain of salt. I can promise you that this would not be the rollout on a green, that's a given. But I'm sure a lot of people are just going to tell me I'm a hack and just scull it. So that's fine too.
Speaker 1:But generally speaking, at 7.8 degrees down, my total was 24.3 and my carry was 12.6. So we can see these two numbers here, okay, and we can see that that ball, in total, at 7.8 degrees down, at 3869, traveled a total of 24.3 yards. Now, if I go to the next shot, which is my double digits down okay, my 11.5 down, launching at 21.8. When I look at my carry 11.5, carry less, rolled out to 27.3. Interesting. So just to show you that again, okay, shot 6. Okay, carry, 12.6, rolled out to 24.3. Okay, double digits down, 11.5, rolled out to 27. We have lost stopping power. That's what's happened. So in an effort to increase the speed, to increase the stopping power of the ball, we have essentially robbed Peter to pay Paul.
Speaker 1:Now I think this is really interesting because, as different as these balls behaved relative to one another one rather low, one a little bit higher but everything else other than the attack angle kind of staying the same what is really interesting here is how we got to this point. So for all my data freak and nerds out there, let's look at this, because I think we're going to find this very interesting. So we've got a couple videos here and this one. What we're looking for is we're just going to watch this thing play out a little bit and we're going to kind of talk about some of these things. So if you are watching this online, what you can see is that I am chipping a golf ball here at Measured Golf. Inside I'm standing on the swing catalyst dual force plates. I have a track man that is capturing things. Unfortunately you can't see it in this photo, but it is behind me and there is a Foresight Sports launch monitor in front of me as well. So there is a green vector coming up from the swing catalyst plates that a lot of people like to talk about.
Speaker 1:But one thing that I kind of want to do is I want to play this through once more and I want to show you some really interesting things. So the big thing that I think is interesting about this is when I am trying to stay quote unquote more neutral with my setup and keeping my center of mass more in the middle throughout the motion, one thing that we can see is that I don't create very much torque. I create almost no vertical torque, and that works really well in chipping and pitching, because vertical torque is one of those things that creates another moment arm and, like we said, we're trying not to have all of these moment arms. But the funny thing about this is that when we start comparing some things, okay, so that's the middle, and this is obviously me trying to stay more leftward. Sorry, I apologize, I'm not great with the tech, like I said, okay, but here we go with this one, okay, so we're going to let this one play through. We're going to see a whole lot of similarities, right? So, interestingly enough, if I'm able which I think I am to kind of pull this one up here, if we kind of look, both graphs are not showing very much vertical torque, which is good. We don't want it. So I 100% love VSP I do. I think it's good. I don't like VSP through cocking the wrist that tends to create the moment arm, but I do like getting some VSP to happen and I think that Joe teaches a lot of good things when it comes to VSP and I think that if you haven't already looked into that, subscribe to his Patreon channel and check it out, because I think that stuff's really really good.
Speaker 1:But there is a noticeable difference in these two videos and the noticeable difference is a little bit hard to find if you have a untrained eye. But what we're going to try to do here is we're going to take these to impact. This is my plan If I can get this to go. So let's get this one to impact here for us. So that's pretty close. So there we go. We got that basically at impact. Let's take this one it's at impact and what I. This one it's at impact and what I want to kind of show. You are some similarities here, so you will notice I'm wearing a dark sweater. You can see that there is a dot which is representative of my center of mass. So there is a dot that you can see that I have the cursor over right here. There's a dot that you can see that I have the cursor over right here. There's a dot that you can see right here. In both cases the center of mass is still stacked up on top of the vector.
Speaker 1:The only difference really is how I did it, and the thing that's very interesting to me is that I have spent a fair amount of my life under loading and not hitting the ball as far as I should, and I am very good at standing on my left leg and making a golf swing. There's a lot of reasons I can get into that from my early childhood development, but that doesn't really matter. I'm good at doing that and I feel comfortable doing that, so it's not that hard for me to perform this. I can do this Like this is this would be a strength of mine and, to be honest with you, every now and then I do like getting a low zipper, because I'm not a professional golfer, as everybody likes to remind me, and you know, every now and then I just want to hit the shot. I want to hit because it looks cool when I want to try it, so at the end of the day I can hit this shot.
Speaker 1:But once again, I had to make some changes to pull this shot off. Now, interestingly enough, if I slide this one down and we look I've got quite a bit of vertical force happening at impact. Now, in a full swing scenario that would be very, very late, very late. But, like I said, we're not really creating a moment arm within chipping and pitching. We're not trying to separate this dot that represents the center of mass, from the bottom of this green vector, which separate, which represents the center of pressure. We're really not trying to separate those and we can see that they're pretty stacked up in this photo, just like we can see that they're also stacked up pretty good right here, both at impact. Now that they're also stacked up pretty good right here, both at impact. Now the difference is is, if you look at how my body is standing here on the bottom versus up top, I'm significantly more towards the target in the upper picture. Okay, so, because I am significantly closer to the target with my body, what's happening is I'm having to figure out a way to keep that face from wanting to close Anytime I start kind of moving left in the golf swing.
Speaker 1:Generally speaking, we're going to want to get steeper with the club. Like I said, I am a fan of steep. When it comes to chipping and pitching, I am. Now the thing is is if you're going to be steep when you're pitching and chipping the golf ball, then you're going to have to figure out a way to create a break that allows you to keep the face square through the strike or at least pointed towards where you want the ball to go. I understand we don't always play with a square face when we're doing short game. So, long story short, the way that I had to go about breaking is completely different. It's completely different Because when we look, as we've mentioned, we have no vertical torque to speak of in either one of these motions.
Speaker 1:So what we're really trying to do is we're really trying to pair the vertical force with the horizontal force. We have to make that recipe taste good so that I can get the golf ball not only to launch appropriately, but also online. So when we look at these two things, we tend to see that I'm way more left here. And when we look, when we're looking at this purple graph, this is horizontal force. So this is my side to side. A lot of people call it sway, because when I am just moving my body side to side, that is sway. But what we're talking about is the push that comes before the sway, because force precedes motion. So when we look at this, these are really kind of the big changes in what's happened in these two swings.
Speaker 1:So if we play this one a little bit farther, what we're going to see is that the purple is way underneath the zero line and that's kind of where we're really throwing and pushing ourselves back and away from the target, because obviously if we move towards it we have to move away. So we can see here that I'm using roughly 10% that number is right here out of my lead leg, pushing back away from the target. And when I push myself back and away from the target it tends to cause the club to want to kind of lift a little bit and it tends to want to keep the face more open versus the dreaded letting the club come across low and left with the head leading the way, which tends to be a closed face which creates a hot shot, which raises a smash and gets us getting the ball going way past the hole. So when I look at this, I see that I was pushing away with my lead foot with 10% of my body weight essentially in force. Okay, that's how we read that. When I look down here at the other video. Okay, we can see that I was pushing back 15%, so I'll show you that too. So we can see the purple was way below after the ball and we can see that the maximum amount was the equivalency of 15% of my body weight. So we can see that I pushed back 15 one time and I pushed back 10 the other.
Speaker 1:Now the thing that's crazy about this is that most golfers are very, very, very dependent on their horizontal force. Most golfers have a real tough time creating torque. That's a toughie. So when it comes to torque, we don't really need it that much. In the short game, a little bit's fine. I've got several people that create a little bit of like AP. Ap is fine. I'm not talking AP, I'm talking vertical. I just don't really like the vertical torque because, like I said, it adds a moment arm and it's something else we have to manage.
Speaker 1:So, with that being said, what I really don't like is that if I have a player who I'm trying to help with their chipping and I'm going to take away the one thing that they do well, which would be their horizontal force, then they're going to have to get really good at timing and using vertical force and of the forces that people tend to really struggle to use in the golf swing, the one that leads the charge really struggle to use in the golf swing, the one that leads the charge tends to be vertical force. It tends to happen very, very late. Now, late could be good in the short game. It could be very good in the short game because, like I said, there's two shots here. Both of them are fine. I can play them both on the golf course and they're both very late. They're both happening at the ball. I can play them both on the golf course and they're both very late. They're both happening at the ball.
Speaker 1:However, I'm dual, purposing my break. I am using vertical force with horizontal force to do that. You can't just simply move in a linear fashion. It doesn't work that way. So we're three dimensional people. We have to move in three directions. That's kind of how it works, and one of the things that we got to be aware of is how we are stopping the golf club, because, generally speaking, when most people try to stop the golf club, they go into extension throughout all of their body segments and when you're going into extension, that tends to create a lot of face closure, which is once again going to increase our ball speed and make a hot shot which is going to get past the hole. We don't like that.
Speaker 1:So when we look at this upper picture, the one where I am attempting to stay more forward, as prescribed, what we see is that I lose a good amount of my horizontal force and I have to really be good with my vertical force, because if that vertical force isn't happening right here, that club is in the ground and I'm sticking it straight in the ground and nobody's happy when we stick it in the ground. So I don't want to have to 100% time that perfect because, as somebody who has struggled in the past to load efficiently and to move well, I struggle really badly with getting the vertical force correct. As a matter of fact, my vertical force with my full swing tends to be late because, like I said, I don't move all that great. Force with my full swing tends to be late Cause, like I said, I don't move all that great. Now it's a real godsend and it's why my short game is so much better than my full swing, because with it being late in the short game, it creates a nice bottom to the arc to where the club. I have no fear of the club sticking in the ground. It's not going to do it, okay, because obviously I'm using vertical force. If I'm using vertical force, then we know the body is going to go up after that. So I'm literally kind of pushing my guts. I'm not raising my skeleton, I'm kind of pushing my guts up after the ball. That's that twisting that occurs throughout the human body. So, long story short, what I'm having to do here and I know there's not a lot of differences here and I apologize, but this is what people claim that they wanted to see, but when we look at this, there's just not a lot of differences.
Speaker 1:Now, when we look at the pressure, there are massive differences. So we've went through some of the forces, we've talked about some of that. I'm not going to get into the braking mechanisms and all that because, quite frankly, it's just going to bore everybody to tears and it's not going to do much to help our conversation. But one thing that I do want to talk about is how significantly different these pressure shifts are. And the thing is, is that on the one where we were going double digits down, okay, we can see that the pressure shift isn't really much different. The actual trace, this dot moving, it's just hanging out on the left plate. This never goes to the right plate. This barely gets to the middle, okay, but it's not going to the right plate.
Speaker 1:In both of these situations I have kept the center of pressure on the left foot lead foot for me, by the way. Now, when we look at the amounts of pressure, we see a completely different story, even though it looks very, very similar. We see that in one I have 83% of my pressure on my lead foot and we can see on the bottom one I have 64. Okay, I have way less pressure on my left foot in the second photo than I do the first, but the first photo is the one where I actually was double digits down. So what am I saying? I'm saying that if we look in both pictures, the center of mass, the force production and the actual movement of the ball all looks very similar. Okay, the center of mass is there, the center of mass is there, the center of mass is there. And neither picture is the center of mass significantly forward of my middle. It just isn't Okay.
Speaker 1:Now, what has moved forward to get me to the double digits down which some of us are wanting to do is I had to get my pressure more forward and we can see that Now it's not much. But once again we're not making a lot of motion, and movement because of the lack of the moment arm in the golf swing. I'm not trying to really accelerate this golf club via moment arms that human beings have to create to make forces and torques. I'm simply trying to use gravity. That's why I love VSP.
Speaker 1:If you can get the club to go up vertical, it has to fall, and at the end of the day, that's what we really want to happen, is we want the club to fall into the ball. That is magic, because now the bounce works with you. You can get center strikes, you can get your spin rate appropriate and now you can actually focus on mirroring up the land angle and the launch angle and getting an understanding of hey, if I launch it here and get it to land here, that's going to roll out so far, and now we can kind of start building a little bit of a kind of short game Bible for ourselves and start understanding like, oh, ok, I get this. Like, if I got that, I do this, if I got that, I do that. Ok, cool, it's just really trying to understand, right, what are these small differences?
Speaker 1:These differences are so small, like I've had so many people in the past 18 months reach out to me and want me to share this kind of stuff and, as you can see, there's just not a lot of smoking gun material here. The only real smoking gun material here is the fact that it wasn't the mass that created the more downward angle of attack. Rather, it was the pressure. And going back to my initial point, we as an industry have a difficult time separating center of pressure from center of mass, and so many people are saying that the mass is where that center of pressure is and that just could not be farther from the truth. Now, in short game, in this example, we see that the mass and the pressure are relatively the same.
Speaker 1:Now, when we play these through, looking at the actual pressure as it moves, looking up here, looking at the actual pressure as it moves, looking up here, upper right, what we're going to see is that as it moves, it's very, very little. There is not a lot of movement there. There's a micro moment arm that I'm creating there, but it is not much and it's not really doing much for me, but when I look at this one here sorry, when I look at this one here and I take it back, oops, sorry once again, sorry, not great with tech. Okay, when I take this one back and we look at this one, what we tend to see is that, once again, staying much more neutral and letting the club quote, unquote do the work, letting it fall, and the easiest way to do that is to literally let the arms fall as the body kind of stays stationary. It's the easiest way not to hit the ground. The ground is not a constant Gravity is Gravity is constantly pulling us down. We have to use vertical force to keep from getting pulled to the ground. So are we needing to use vertical force and chipping and pitching? Yes, 100%, I strongly agree with that.
Speaker 1:The skeleton to go significantly down and up, because when I start that, I start creating extension patterns, and when I create extension patterns throughout the body, the issue not maybe for me, but the issue for somebody else could be that they start hitting everything low and left or they just start blading it. Okay, If they're not good at that. Most people are not great at doing this, and the reason is is that most people have really poor thoracic mobility and most people have such a bad left hand grip that they can't ever create any arc width. And I hate the fact that staying left is great for VSP but it's also bad for width, because if I stay left I can't get my left shoulder to rotate over to my trail side and create that nice width that we're looking for. So I'm not saying that I want a super wide width arc. I'm also not saying that I want a super narrow arc width, but I think it would be good for most golfers to have both, because if you can learn to manage that, now all of a sudden, when you hit it into the deep rough, you know how to get the club onto the ball. You can just steepen this thing right up, make your arc a lot narrower, and away we go. You're going to have less grass, get between the ball and the face of the club, create better spin, create better launch angle. All is well. However, if I'm trying to kind of hit that floaty, softy, elevated shot, then I'm probably going to want a little bit more arc width. That's going to help with that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's very, very important, not that you subscribe to my model or anybody's model. It's just important that we understand that we all do this slightly different. However, we all have to honor the fact that we are a human being first, and a human being really can only do so many things when it comes to making emotion. And we have to move in three dimensions and understand all three dimensions. Because, whatever you want to think, there is a direct correlation between this pressure and the way the golf club moves.
Speaker 1:You can see that on the shot here where I was double digits down. Let me get that one up here, okay. So that's this one on the top where I was double digits down. Let me get that one up here, okay. So that's this one on the top. Okay, we can see that. Let me pull up the photos again for us here. So the double digits down Okay, we can see that the smash factor was actually higher than the shot that had a lower attack angle. Okay, quite a bit.
Speaker 1:0.93, 0.96. Not huge, but we can see that when we start hitting down on that ball and pulling down that dynamic loft and spin loft, what's going to end up happening is that ball is just going to move a little quicker because it's coming out lower right. It's coming off more of a straight face, less loft. It's going to want to go, more of a straight face, less loft. It's going to want to go.
Speaker 1:And all I'm trying to say is that I 100% think that there are a couple of different ways to do this, but seeing everybody stacked up on their left side, I don't, I don't think is going to help everybody, because for so many people, when they get stacked up on their left side, what we're going to see I'm sorry, I'm kind of demonstrating now a little bit if you're watching this online, but one side, what we're going to see, I'm sorry, I'm kind of demonstrating now a little bit. If you're watching this online, but one of the things you're going to see is if I stay over here and kind of set up this way and then kind of take it back, okay, my left side doesn't really want to move to the right, it just kind of wants to hang out on the left side, and now I have to find a way to pull myself up and out of there. Now where I think this could be better is that I think that we can actually get the left side to kind of move a little bit which allows me to move the golf club. That would be super good for us. And that's where so many people really, really struggle is that they have a very short, restricted backswing when they try to stay more on their lead side, and then what ends up happening is, is they're steep. So if they are hanging out on their left side and they didn't get much of a backswing and they're steep, how are they going to shallow that? And the problem is is that, because the club head is already outside of their hands because they're steep, what they're going to have to do is they're going to have to figure out a way all of a sudden to get really good with vertical force and push up out of there. And that's just where I think a lot of people are going to struggle with that particular technique, where I think a lot of people are going to struggle with that particular technique.
Speaker 1:So I would love, love, love to get you know, at the very least, more pressure kind of mats out into the, into the community, because I think when you actually sit down and measure a lot of this stuff, you find out that you know there's only really a couple different ways we can chip and pitch the golf ball without creating too much speed, and I think that we tend to know what those things are. I have no doubt about that and it's just a lack. I think what's going on is that there's just this lack of conversation and there's this lack of sharing information and there's a lack of telling the full story. And, like I said, I don't have 3D motion capture up here. I don't really use it much, not because I don't believe in it, it's just it's not the way I like to coach, it's not my thing. I'm not saying anything bad about it. I think gears is a great system, I think koalasis is a great system, it's just not my thing.
Speaker 1:But when I look at the 3D motion capture provided by swing catalyst and I look at that center of mass, which I feel is fairly accurate, and I don't see it moving all over the place as described, and then I see pressure kind of being the key, well, I think that's where the juice is worth squeezing, you could say, and it's always the lowest hanging fruit that's worth squeezing. And I think that's why getting into forces and torques when it comes to short game, not saying there's not valuable information there, but you know, generally speaking, I think it's a little overkill and I think by kind of understanding where their pressure is throughout the motion, then you have a better understanding of what the mass is trying to do. Generally speaking, force precedes motion and we know that these forces have to happen before anything moves. So, long story short, what we're seeing in real time has already happened, and that's where the big disconnect lies is this lack of being able to understand that there is a separation in dynamics of the center of pressure and the center of mass. So I don't know what I accomplished. I feel like this was interesting, but I don't know. You know, it's just one of those things.
Speaker 1:I, um, I, like I said, I don't have a personal thing here. Um, I'm in business, I work as a golf professional, I work as a professional Um, this isn't an attack piece. This is not meant to be that. This is just meant to add a little bit of insight as to where I have been coming from with this. And once again I want to make this crystal clear I think Joe Mayo Mr Mayo is a great golf coach. I know he has a lot of good information and I'm not here blasting him and saying he is wrong. I am quite certain that a lot of times with the players he's worked with, he's probably been right because they've played better. I mean, he has evidence of that, so it's hard to argue with that, and I'm not here to argue with it. I'm not even trying to say it didn't happen. I think he probably is owed more credit than he's gotten.
Speaker 1:But, with that being said, I also want it to be professional and I want the information out there. And I'm not going to engage with Mr Mayo, um, in a personal level, nor am I going to engage with anybody who is a fan of Mr Mayo, who sends me messages. Um, I've engaged with every message that's come to me. Um, to be honest, most of it has been fairly positive. Uh, there have been some comments that asked me to go and kill myself, that asked me to, you know, ask me a lot of things about my wife, about my deceased father, a lot of stuff like that, and I don't get it. Like, I mean, I guess if that makes you feel better, I'm glad I could help. But at the end of the day, man, this isn't personal and this isn't even my stuff.
Speaker 1:Like I don't know what's going on in the world, but you know, like, a lot of the things I'm talking about pertain to the myofascial system, which you can learn about from Dr Thomas Myers, who wrote this book, anatomy trains, and it talks about the myofascial system. Right, that's really important in the golf swing and something that I think you know I'm obviously super underqualified to talk about, but it certainly has helped me understand the golf swing quite a bit better and has brought me back to a place of peace where I understand that, at the end of the day, you're simply a human being making a motion on planet Earth and we can try to own as much of that as we like, we can try to explain as much of that as we like, but at the end of the day, it really isn't on the golf profession to describe any of those things. It's really on the golf profession to adhere to those things, because there are laws and scientifically reviewed, peer reviewed research that covers all that we know about the planet Earth, we know about the human body, we know, like, about motion, we know physics, like. There are a lot of very, very, very, very smart people who have been very kind and shared their time with me and have helped me understand some of these concepts because, like, I'm a golf pro, you know, but I had to learn about the body because I wanted to be a better golf pro and, at the end of the day, I am just trying at my best to share information, trying at my best to share information and I really am somewhat sad at how this has all went and for all the people that are like, well, you shouldn't have shared messages and you shouldn't have done this and you shouldn't have done that. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. I can't. I've not tried to argue with a single person online about that.
Speaker 1:But, as I said, I don't think to professionals who are trying to be professional and have positioned themselves out front in front of everybody. I just don't think there's any place for that and I wish it wasn't that way, but it's that way and if it helps golfers, great. But, like I said, I am here simply to share the information that I have. Um, a lot of people maybe don't know me, but I am a, you know, I'm one of the few like force plate guys that is also a track man master. So, when it comes to kinetics, when it comes to kinematics, I do pride myself on having very good information, but at the end of the day, I have to understand the human body, because the human is what's moving.
Speaker 1:The golf club I'm not saying the golf club doesn't create forces and torques that act on the body. Of course it does, but we have to counter that with our forces and torques, and that's the key. And the key to understanding all that is twofold One, there are no constants other than gravity, and two, you're a human being making a motion on planet earth and you have to adhere to those laws and peer reviewed science. That's just all there is to it. So thank you, you know. To those that reached out to me, um, I really appreciate it. Even the people that you know had terrible things to say to me. Like I try to say nice things back to them, that generally doesn't help, but anywho, thank you, you know. I mean if this helps, if this resonates, if this makes any kind of sense, wonderful. If it helps you play better golf, wonderful. If you have questions about this, please reach out to me, like if if you are legitimately interested in talking about or in discussing in a in appointment, and like that's how it works.
Speaker 1:But I'm not going to be engaging anymore with people who are sending me personal attacks and commenting on my wife and commenting on my deceased father and commenting about whether, uh, my, my sexual orientation, uh, any of that stuff, I, I, it's just it's embarrassing. That's what it is. It's just flat out embarrassing. Um, I don't like having that kind of stuff on my social media for people to see and I have just made the decision, for my own wellbeing and for the wellbeing of others, that this is not professional and I'm just going to hit the block button. So if that makes me more of a um, if that makes me less of a man, or if that makes me a punk or whatever, that's totally fine. But I'm not going to engage. Um, I'm happy to have a discussion, I'm happy to talk, I'm happy to throw some people on force plates together and and sort it out and go through it, and I'm more than happy to, you know, bring a couple biomechists who understand some stuff, and I'm sure Mr Mayo has a ton of great people. I know he does. He's got, you know, the team at Ping.
Speaker 1:I mean, this is this is the magic, right, like. There's no reason this group of people shouldn't be able to like figure this out. It's just, it can't. It can't be personal. So I appreciate you listening. I'm sorry, um, if this wasn't the most entertaining podcast ever, but I just wanted to share some information and, uh, I really appreciate everybody, uh, who's interested in the information, who wants to get better.
Speaker 1:Golf is the greatest game ever. It's not close, and I love it, just like you love it, and we all love it for different reasons, but I like to think that golf is pure and I like to think that golf is still a gentlemanly game, and I would like to see the profession become a little more gentlemanly as well. And, before anybody beats me to the punch, I understand that some of that falls on me as well, but I have a track record of not really doing this, um, so, once again, don't feel great about it, but did what I felt had to be done and it is what it is. So thank you so much for listening. I hope you got something from this. Once again, please reach out to us If you have any specific questions about anything that I've shared here. I'm always happy to engage and have a conversation that's meaningful, um, and I hope we have a lot of those.
Speaker 1:I that's why I do this. I don't like I said, man I, I just I'm in business for myself, I own my own facility, I work for myself and this is what I'm trying to do. So if this helps, great. If this isn't your thing, I'm sorry. And uh, we'll try to do better next time. So thanks again for tuning in. Make sure that you are taking care of each other out there, love one another and remember like it's always darkest just before the dawn. So we're all going to get there and we'll all be better for it. So thanks again and until next time, keep grinding, thank you.
