“PRO” File – Touring Professional Marilyn Smith
From The USGTF Pro Shop
Editorial – Is Slow Play Really A Problem?
Reach Over 25,000 Golf Teaching Professionals!
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Heavy Matters: Swingweight
When it comes to clubfitting and club building, swingweight is one of the most enduring aspects of having a consistent set. If you go to any club manufacturer’s website and click on the specs link for their clubs, you will see the swingweight of that particular club listed.
Exactly what is swingweight, and what role does it play? Swingweight is the ratio of the weight of the lower end of the golf club compared to the upper end. A swingweight scale features a fulcrum point 14 inches (35.6 cm) from the end of the grip. The club is placed in the scale, and a sliding weight with a mark on it is used to balance the club on the scale. The mark on the sliding weight will correspond with a reading on the scale which is a letter/number combination, and that is the swingweight of that particular club.
Swingweights are designated from A0 to A9, B0 to B9, etc. For men, typical swingweights are in the D0-4 range, and for women in the C2-5 range. Club manufacturers try to get the swingweights of their iron sets to be consistent, but due to manufacturing tolerances, there may be a slight variation in swingweight from iron to iron, but would be undetectable to most golfers, even touring pros.
Changing the weight of the clubhead, grip, or shaft will change the swingweight of the club. The general rules are that a two-gram change in clubhead weight will change the swingweight one point (heavier = higher swingweight); a five-gram change in grip weight will change the swingweight one point (heavier = lower swingweight), and a nine-gram change in shaft weight will change the swingweight one point (heavier = higher swingweight).
When it comes to changing the weight of the shaft, this gets to be a tricky matter as some shafts have proportionally more weight nearer the grip end than they do the clubhead end. So merely changing from a 60-gram shaft in a driver, say, to a 70-gram shaft doesn’t necessarily mean the swingweight will be increased approximately one point. If the 70-gram shaft has proportionally more weight towards the grip end than does the 60-gram shaft, it’s possible the swingweights of both shafts will be the same. So the nine-gram rule of thumb for shafts assumes the weight is distributed the same throughout both shafts.
A change in the length of the club plays a role in swingweight. Adding or subtracting a half-inch (1.3 cm) to a club’s length changes the swingweight by three points (shorter = lower swingweight).
Wedges traditionally were proportionally heavier than the rest of the iron set, the belief being that the higher swingweights would allow for a more rhythmic swinging of the club. However, many wedges today are being built with similar or even lighter swingweights than in the rest of the iron set. The thinking here is this allows for a more surgical touch on the partial shots that are typically hit with the wedges.
There is also a school of thought that matching swingweights throughout the iron set actually isn’t ideal, as the longer clubs will feel heavier than the shorter clubs. The concept of “moment of inertia” of the entire club is used by some club builders. Under this concept, from the shortest irons to the longest, the club’s swingweight is reduced by one-half swingweight point from club to club, which MOI proponents say results in a set of irons that truly feels the same, weight-wise, throughout the set. Ping, for example, has shafts that get progressively lighter as the iron gets longer, as do True Temper’s Dynamic Gold AMT shafts. Whether this trend will continue remains to be seen.
Matching driver and fairway wood swingweights to the irons is something that may or may not be necessary, depending upon the golfer. Titanium drivers have lightweight graphite shafts, while irons for the most part still have heavier steel shafts. With the length of the driver being so much longer than an iron, a clubfitter needs to fit the driver separately from the irons in terms of swingweight.
The static weight of a club should not be confused with the swingweight of a club. Remember, swingweight is the ratio of the weight of one part of the club to the other. A club can be extremely heavy overall but have a light swingweight, and vice versa. Goldwin Golf, a now-defunct company, tried this years ago with extremely light static-weight clubs featuring heavy swingweights in the D7-8 range. While their premise was logical, it was likely too radical of a departure from what most golfers were used to. Dave Pelz went the opposite route in the 1980s with his Featherlite clubs, with swingweights in the B5 range. Again, while the science behind the idea may have been sound, golfers also preferred what they were used to in this case.
Swingweight is one aspect of what goes into making a golf club, but it’s an important one. If you or your students are unsure whether their clubs are matched for swingweight, a quick trip to the nearest club repair shop is in order.
Patching Up A Slice
It’s the bane of many golfers worldwide, and one that frustrates them to no end the dreaded slice. On courses far and wide, slicing reigns supreme, especially preying upon those with double-digit handicaps.
Every golf teacher knows that the slice is the result of a clubface angle that is open to the clubhead path to a much greater degree than is desired. A clubface angle that is only slightly open to the clubhead path results in a fade, a much-sought-after ball flight among many skilled golfers.
Dustin Johnson, for example, became dominant when he was able to consistently fade the ball into the fairway with his driver. The difference between a fade and a slice is sometimes difficult to discern, but in general, a fade features a ball flight where one part of it is mainly straight. You might see a ball go up to its apex in a fairly straight manner and then curve gently on its downward flight, or curve slightly going up and then falling straight down. A fade is a ball flight that is in control and lands gently. A slice, on the other hand, features the ball constantly curving throughout its flight, and when the ball lands it tends to roll out.
Let’s review the setup first as it relates to a slice (we will assume the golfer is right-handed for the rest of this article). Most slicers have a left-hand grip that is too weak, with the V pointed to the left of the chin, and sometimes the club’s grip is held in the lifeline of the palm. Ball position tends to be too far forward, which results in a clubhead path traveling outside-in through impact in comparison to the stance line. Stance alignment may be either open, resulting in a clubhead path traveling left of the target line through impact, or closed, resulting in an over-the-top move during transition. Shoulder alignment for a slicer also tends to be quite open in relation to the stance line, a likely result of the ball position being too far forward. But even with a proper ball position, most slicers still have open shoulders, so this needs to be corrected.
Once the slicer is in a proper setup position, he now has a fighting chance to hit the ball straight, or at least with a manageable fade. The key now is to swing into a position at the top of the backswing (actually a position within transition) from where the golfer can have a more correct clubhead path and clubface angle. Most slicers and double-digit handicappers, for that matter start the downswing with their arms and hands instead of the lower body. No less than Ben Hogan wrote in his book Five Fundamentals that the hands should do nothing active until just above hip-height on the downswing, carried there by the turning and movement of the hips.
Most golfers would be surprised if they could feel what a good golfer feels at the start of the downswing. A good golfer’s arms and hands are literally doing nothing at all, just falling and moving in response to the action of the lower body. This is a key element that must be learned by a slicer, or else they will continue to struggle. The “pump” drill can be effective here. In this drill, the golfer starts the downswing by keeping the angle intact between the lead arm and club shaft until the hands are just above hip height, then bringing the arms and hands back to the top of the backswing, “pumping” the club down again before returning the club to the top of the backswing a second time, and then swinging through and hitting the ball.
Many slicers also overuse the right hand and arm during the downswing, throwing the clubhead outside in an over-the-top manner and perhaps early releasing before impact. These golfers are dramatically underusing their left side. Two drills that can help are swinging one-handed with the left arm only (holding the upper part of the left arm with the right hand), and letting go with the right hand at the moment of impact. This helps train the left side to do its fair share of the work. Swinging one-handed with either hand also helps train the correct clubhead path into the ball, as golfers should find it impossible to do anything but swing the way they are aiming.
Another problem slicers have is they tend to open up their shoulders too quickly on the downswing. The right shoulder needs to move more downward instead of out towards the target line. A golfer may feel the shoulders dramatically tilting by doing this, but this is the correct feel if they open up their shoulders too quickly. It can also help if the golfer tries to keep his back to the target on the downswing as long as possible, as this helps to deliver the clubhead from the inside.
The root cause of all of this, of course, is failure to start the downswing properly with the lower body. In the USGTF Technical Committee’s experience, getting a golfer to more properly use his lower body to start the downswing is a difficult chore for the teacher. Golfers who started the game as kids tend to use the lower body effectively, because when they started playing the club was relatively heavy to them and they naturally used and trained their lower body to start the downswing. Golfers who take up the game as adults mostly find the club relatively light, hence their propensity to have an arms-and-hands-dominated swing. But training the lower body is still encouraged.
As for squaring the clubface to the clubhead path at impact, the most common problem is failing to allow the clubhead to release properly through impact, where the clubhead rotates counter-clockwise. Golfing legend Tom Watson advises players to feel the left hand rotating from palm down before impact to palm up after. A golfer using a split-hands grip and making some practice swings will find that the clubhead will rotate naturally through the impact area. There are also training aids on the market that will give the student a feel for this, but swinging a broom also achieves the same aim. Finally, the teacher can physically move and rotate the student’s arms and hands through the impact area to give the student the feeling of proper release and rotation through impact.
Some teachers will tell you that the release should just happen naturally, the result of the lower body leading the downswing and the upper body, arms and hands following. This is technically correct, but if a student is not allowing the clubhead to rotate through impact, whether from tension or for any other reason, this movement must be trained. And how do we know that a slicer is releasing the clubhead properly through impact? Video won’t lie, and virtually everyone has a smartphone today with high-speed replay capability. Another way of knowing the player is releasing the club properly is if they are now hitting at least a gentle fade. A straight ball or a draw is not necessary in order to know the release is more correct.
There is debate among teachers whether the club-head path or the clubface angle must be addressed first, and this leads to an interesting observation. While ball flight laws tell us that the clubhead path must travel reasonably close to down the target line to hit a fade, draw or straight ball close to the intended target, many times a student is able to square the clubface angle to the clubhead path while pulling the ball to the left, and it may be impossible to get these students to swing parallel with the way they are aiming. In these cases, it may well be desirable to have the student simply aim right and pull the ball back to the target. With the driver in particular, we know that a golfer hitting the ball on the upswing will be swinging slightly left of the low point of their swing, so this may be something even good players need to do. Films of Hogan and Sam Snead show them doing just that with the driver.
Many of you reading this are experienced teachers who are well versed in fixing slices, so please consider this material as a refresher. For those of you newer to teaching, hopefully you will have found an additional teaching tip or two to help you solve one of the most frustrating problems in all of golf.
Awareness: The Key To Improvement
There is a saying in golf that “feel isn’t real.” What people mean by this is that often, what a golfer thinks he or she is doing is not actually what is happening. As an example, take the golfer who is aligned too far to the left, but in fact thinks he is aligned straight. If we align this golfer straight, what do you think his perception will be? Of course, he now believes he is aligned too far to the right.
This brings up the principle that in order to make a change, a golfer has to feel as if he is doing the exact opposite of what he is actually doing. We emphasize the word feel because it is exactly that, a feel, and not reality. We don’t want the golfer to actually be aligned too far to the right, but the perception has to be as such in order to be aligned properly.
This is where some caution must take place. A golfer who needs to feel as if he is aiming too far right in order to be straight will undoubtedly be aiming too far right at some point, so constant monitoring is necessary. Other examples might be that of a shanker who needs to feel as if he is hitting the ball off the toe of the club – at some point, he is likely to actually do that. Or, a golfer who takes the club back too far to the inside and later is now taking it back too far to the outside. This phenomenon of overdoing a change cannot be overstated enough, and the teacher needs to make the student aware that this could very well happen.
This is where the concept of awareness becomes paramount. Tim Gallwey, in his classic book The Inner Game of Golf, theorized that awareness, as opposed to “do” instructions, was the key to improvement. In other words, making the student aware of what he was actually doing was far more effective than merely telling him what to do.
Although sports psychology and motor learning theory have gotten far more advanced than what Gallwey’s book offered, awareness is still a valuable principle in making motor pattern changes. Have you ever struggled to get a student to change a bad habit? If you’ve taught for any appreciable length of time, you have indeed experienced this. You might have explained to the student what the problem is and how to fix it (verbal instruction); demonstrated what the student is doing wrong and what he needed to do correctly, and/or shown the student a video of his swing (visual instruction), or moved the student through the correct patterns or given him drills to fix the problem (kinesthetic instruction). You’ve used all three senses available for golf instruction, but you have failed to effect a change in the student’s habits.
This is where alternative methods to create or increase awareness come into play. Let’s explore a few of them:
Deliberate bad practice swings
Having the student deliberately create his bad swing habit during a practice swing can give the student insight into what is actually happening. For example, a student is coming over the top but he cannot feel it. You might have him deliberately come over the top on a practice swing and then contrast that to a good practice swing, something that virtually everyone can do. The student might say he feels his trail shoulder being thrown outwards when he comes over the top, but feels it going more downward on a good practice swing. We would then have the student monitor what his trail shoulder does during the actual swing. Gallwey recommends using a scale of 0 to 5, where 0 might be no coming over the top while 5 is the maximum over the top move.
Half-speed swings
When a student is given a “do” instruction and then makes a swing full-bore, his automatic motor response may well kick in and no change will occur. Instead, if we have the student swing at half-speed, the conscious mind takes more control of the action, and most students are able to make a swing with the suggested change…at least to some degree.
Reduced-motion swings
Akin to making half-speed swings, this is where we have the student make a smaller swing. An example would be if we’re trying to teach a student to release the club properly through impact. We might have them do the toe-up to toe-up drill, where the club goes no farther back than horizontal to the ground and the follow-through matches that, concentrating on the release through impact. Or a student might early release. The pump drill, where a student fully cocks his wrists and goes up and down a couple of times in a half-swing motion, can give the student the feel of not early releasing.
Compare/contrast
Sam Snead once said the problem with most amateurs’ games is that they don’t use their practice swing to hit the ball. This is because most golfers, regardless of skill level, can make an acceptable practice swing with proper fundamentals. We can have our students take several practice swings, take note of what the overall motion feels like, and then have them hit a shot. The key here is not to have them try to duplicate their practice swing, but instead compare and contrast their hitting-the-ball swing with their practice swing. Most students should be able to feel the differences and similarities within a few shots.
Summary
We need to accept that some students are completely unable to make any changes to their swings, no matter who is teaching them or what methods are used. A few prominent teaching professionals have written that this has happened to them, too, so you’re not alone. But giving students an awareness of what they are actually doing is an invaluable tool that is probably vastly underutilized by most teaching professionals. Take the techniques mentioned here and give them a try when a student is having difficulties in making a change. You should find some forward progress with one or more of them.
