This episode is brought to you by Adele Golf and we're going to
talk single length irons. If you've ever wondered how a
single length for iron goes just as far as a standard length.
Well, I have as well. So, we asked David Adele and he
explained the main attributes, the single length, that provide
the benefit and distance that is the misconception based on is
being shorter. Is the fact that the mass of the
head is generally about 30 grams to 35 grams heavier than a
standard for iron and the two Inch difference in club.
Head speed is minimal compared to the amount of force that's
being applied, to the golf ball in it, more perpendicular
manner, than a lofted, golf club that compresses the ball.
And with this face Flex technology, and more mass, that
golf ball is going to spin and get height and get distance,
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over and get all the details of golf science, lab.com Adele.
We have a bunch of Cast videos, diving into single length irons.
And if you do get asset tag, Us Golf science lab Patel Golf and
a picture on Twitter Instagram. You are listening to the gulf
Science Lab podcast. My name is Corey Walker, and I'm
on a mission to figure out how to improve the way that we learn
and get better at golf. I've been able to travel all
over the world talking to the leaders in the industry from
instructors, to researchers, to Golfers themselves learning how
they're getting better at golf and what that means for you.
Just a couple weeks ago, the world is scientific Congress of
golf took place. It's where individuals have been
doing golf research, share their studies, they present them in
front of, really, anybody in the industry.
Other researchers, golf instructors, folks that work at
different companies, and it's a really fascinating event.
I was lucky enough to attend in 2016 and st.
Andrews, really enjoyed it. And I want to share a bit of a
recap of what happened in this episode.
And I want to first talk about golf science because it doesn't
have Intimidating. It doesn't have to be something
that is not worth while for everyone if your golfer.
If your coach golf science is can be very approachable, could
be very applicable and covers a broad spectrum of things in
golf. Most people who think of golf
research think of, you know, the biomechanics and the technique
of the swinging. And while that's a big part of
what we do, it certainly does not make up the bulk of what we
do. I mean, you know, we do have
things like, you know, psychology and nutrition.
Those kinds of things as well as As you know, in recent recent
conferences and this one was no different, some more focus on on
player. Pathways how to become a tour
player. If you will, some of the
roadblocks to becoming a successful player, things like
tournament preparation, the development of life skills, and
junior golf programs. So there are some topics and
some mint, some studies that happening.
Now that I would say, haven't always been really in the main
sort of golf research part of it all and no question this year,
you know, there was a number of presentations on equipment and
some of the new Apologies around that.
So I think the I think the term golf research is quite it has
become quite wide in scope and isn't really all about
quantitative data either. There's a fair amount of
qualitative research being done in golf as well.
So I think again as I mentioned I think it was a really good
balance this year of of different topics and really
trying to expand the definition of what golf research is that is
Glen can Daria. He is the conference chair for
the Congress. This Congress was held just
outside of Vancouver and Abbotsford, British Columbia.
It was really exciting. Few days in one of the most
beautiful parts of Canada and the interior of British Columbia
in the Fraser Valley. I think, you know, we were
around 100 delegates, which we were pleased with, and had
representation from 11 countries, which is fantastic.
And they really had a chance to experience some very Canadian in
the parts of the country, if you will.
And I think they were quite impressed that and I think, you
know, the converse is a whole continuum.
Is to really develop and mature and to see some of the, some of
the new content, some of the research and studies that are
happening with was really, really good.
And I think we had a nice balance of PGA and LPGA members
that are along with researchers and I think you know, the
abstracts that we had which were near 50.
I think really spoke to a lot of different people who are
attending the delegates and unfortunately I couldn't make it
but I've spoken with a bunch of folks who attended and I really
hope to attend this next one. They have planned a little
change to the traditional format of the Congress happening every
two years. So one of the things this group
of conference organizers have noted as well as the board of
directors of the world scientific Congress is some of
the conflicts with other major sporting events in golf and
outside of gone. Frankly the Olympics Etc in
terms of delegate participation, research participation.
So the next Congress will be in 2021.
So it is a three year. Gap between now and the next
Congress and then it will go every every second year
following that so there is an expression of Interest document
or template that is available. People can definitely get hold
of me. Should they be interested in in
hosting the world scientific Congress in 2021?
So that's that's probably some of the latest breaking news I
suppose on from the actual Congress and we're we're moving.
So since we weren't there I reached out and we have a couple
All episodes here they're going to do to get the insights into
what research was most interesting.
Some things that stood out and really look at some highlights
today. We've got sasho Mackenzie who's
joined us quite a few times on the show.
He is a researcher in the biomechanics field.
We've done a number of episodes that if you enjoy him that you
should go back and listen to. And then next week, we're going
to have on nikhil, um, who's going to go in-depth on her
study, which is on practice and learning.
I really, really enjoyed learning about this and I can't
wait. Share with you next week but as
far as day we're going to bounce around with a number of
different highlights from Tosh.O.
Going to go over his keynote, some research from paying and a
few other things and I'd love to hear what is most interesting
for you. So, shoot a tweet at golf
science lab. I would love to hear what you
like the most as far as this research and what you want to
learn more about. All right, let's get to it.
My keynote was half pretty heavy on the technical side of the
world, side of the Congress of golf is a blend of hard science,
you know, and as well kind of stuff that's a little more
practical. You can pull it in the lesson
tee and mine was strictly towards the scientific end of
the Continuum. What I did was I wanted to to
look at the causes of Club, head speed from a mechanistic
standpoint. So I started off to talk kind of
saying hey, And bring the crowd. Can you list some some
variables, some things in the swing that lead to increased
corporate, speak the stuff you would only read about research
papers, but see on the Golf Channel, you know, it was great.
People throat. Well lat, yeah, it's exactly.
Okay, lag. You know, you want more lad.
All right. What about, you know, the
kinematic sequence. Great people through that out
and hey, Center pressure patterns, you know, there's some
stuff from ball invest. So, you know, I was trying to
paint the picture that it was kind of all very correlational.
We're not necessarily looking at things from from a mechanical
mechanistic, cause and effect deterministic standpoint.
It's kind of research kind of all these random little bits of
studies, is kind of complex puzzle.
We're just getting pieces of the puzzle, all over the place,
tough to put them together, not a shot at any of the individual
research projects. I've certainly done done a few
of them myself, but more. Let's see if we can take a more
mechanical mechanistic approach and it kind of Follow that with
a Quote from Sean Foley from an interview we did with a for a
golf science journal a few years ago where he said impact is true
science. I'm paraphrasing here and the
rest of the Swing is just a matter of opinion.
So I thought, you know, there's a prominent instructor who
prides himself, I believe in the science side of things and
getting things correct. But based on his survey of the
research, and, you know, understanding stuff that it's
pretty strong phrasing. From my perspective, to say the
impact is true science, but the rest of the go Golf swing is his
opinion. So I wanted to show that
actually the same way that the club had involved interact, the
same physical principles applied to the weight of the golfer in
the club interact. So I looked at it from a work
energy perspective, something we talked about in the little mini
lesson, I gave you to try and show, hey, what are the
components of work that the golfer does in the club and
which of those allows us to predict the most differences in
club head speed, too. If I looked at how the work way
you do work on the club Cordy versus me and we've got seven
miles per hour difference in club head speed.
What is it about the way you're doing work?
That allows you to get seven more miles per hour than me and
in what it comes down to is you know that nothing super
groundbreaking this sense but the average force that you apply
to the grip during the down. Swing is the biggest predictor
of differences in clubhead speed between players then also that,
you know, the next one along. That was the length of the hand.
So if you want to hit the ball further, you need to apply more
Force to the grip along the direction by hand path during
the swing. And it's also very helpful to
increase in length of that hand pot.
So those, those were kind of the take homes and then I kind of
had some, some other interesting decides that, you know, gravity
actually, does does nothing. If you look at grip them work
that gravity does in the swing to pretty Club head speed.
It's actually the size and overall negative amount of work
and Reason for that is if you think of the address position
the club actually sits lower, if you're driving a golf ball, the
address position, ascended masters Club is lower than it is
at impact. We kind of have our hands about
10 centimeters higher at impact and the driver had seems to be a
little bit higher off the ground impact.
So pretty easy to see that. Actually, the gravity does
negative work, does you have to do more work against gravity, to
get the club up to the top of the back swing.
Then, grab Gravity does on the way down so you can kind of rule
of gravity as a reason for being able to change Club head speed.
So you know, I made this kind of a high level overview, is kind
of more technical stuff about both statistical modeling in the
in the talk. But yeah, that's basically it.
So, you know, you can look at hey, why does someone like Tony
thin L have the same Club at speed is Bubba, Watson, very
different lengths of swings but when it comes down and Tony
finau has a pretty high average force of his Not short Council.
Does this change the way that we prioritize?
What to work on to gain speed in any way?
Yeah, I think so. Try to get you another specific
example. So the four ways we do work in
the club are the length of the hand path.
The average force slumming empath, the torque will be
applied to the club or specifically the couple and the
angle, the club rotates. So let's say you've got someone
like j.b. Holmes who doesn't get the shaft
to parallel with his driver. We're told.
Mikonos another example. What my findings showed is that
you're actually not really going to have much of an increase in
combat speed at all by taking GB homes.
Keeping his hand location in space, the same and dropping
having an increase that risk cottingley.
Dropping that club now down to parallel, even though you're
like, look, he's reached parallel now, we should see a
big jump and Club head speed. You won't increase in that
rotation angle really doesn't separate out.
Low and high quality players, but the distance that his hands
have traveled in the backswing that that does.
So, you know, you don't, you wouldn't necessarily want
someone to go to parallel and expect an increase in club head
speed. If that if I getting the
parallel, they haven't changed their position of your hands.
So, you know, so there's, there's maybe a kind of a
practical thing you could apply not okay?
Yeah, you want a longer hand, Pat.
But you don't necessarily have to increase that they, you know,
the risk talking about the at the end of Paxil.
That was some pretty interesting stuff.
I think coming out of ping, you know, like a briefly discuss
like that I thought Chris Brody was Mark, Brody son knows that
now works at pain, didn't need analysis of the influence of
grip size on driver performance. So that lets, you know, some
kind of practical I loved one. Practical questions are answered
by good science, so Inge was kind of had a long-held belief
that as you go up and grip size that tends to result in more
fading of the golf ball because you leave the face more open at
impact. So, bigger grip, higher tendency
for slicing and they seen that in some of their the player test
is, you know, if it's over the years like okay this makes sense
but what they would do in those studies is they would say right
you know we're changing other club framers are you put on a
bigger grip or adding Mass? So let's keep the same swing
weight. Let's add Mass to the head as
well. So now we've got some small
group meeting big grip but all these clubs are at D3 swing
weight. Same swing weight.
But he had seen swing weight. Now, they increase the mass of
the club quite a bit. So we know, I just finished
doing some research with ping looking at some just changing
grip mass, and it seemed to suggest that that has an
influence on. So what they did was this meat
kind of follow-up study while the previous Search where they
sit right, let's increase grip size, but we're going to do it
without changing the mass of the grip of the overall mass of a
club and what they found was all these differences now,
disappeared. So, there was no systematic
difference in facing. The Liberator was no systematic
difference in ball flight. So, Corinth, all right now, is
that changing grip size, you know, subsequently change mass
as well, really doesn't have clear.
Automatic change on performance. Certainly at the individual
level might be some stuff going on, but so that was really
interesting. My thought is kind of a
practical take home that, you know, hey, if you are going to
change your grip size and you add Mass expect me to face
moral, but if you can get one of those larger grips that is
lighter as well. So you keep your grip Mass
around 50 grams, then don't necessarily need to expect to
see it changing formats which I think it's important for say
older golf's who have arthritis you know maybe like the bigger
grip. Different reasons, but a lot of
golfers slice. So now I want to go with a
bigger grip. That's that also doesn't
increase Mass so you kind of get the best of both worlds, more
comfortable whole, but you're not increasing your chances of
slicing the golf ball. Matt Bridge had an interesting
study in the sense overall, that it was like, hey we have these
ideas that people have musculoskeletal limitation, you
know. So you see I'm standing there
and it's like this guy's got a bad posture and we'd like to
change their and then this leads to a poor you know posture in
their golf set up which then leads to a bad result.
So can we, you know, do some corrective exercises to improve
their posture? And now that's improve.
This should transfer to improve performance on the golf course.
So they looked at or Matt look that remove his colleagues were
with them, but they looked at forward head posture.
It was kind of one of the Brings out their golf, it was kind of
checked as being a negative. So they did corrective
exercises. And with a group of golfers,
they had a control group and a treatment group and the
exercises did work. So they in the treatment group
they improve their their posture but they said no change in
performance either. You know, when they set up to
the ball did that forward head posture change in the golf swing
did the performance improve know so kind of You know, just to,
you know, what only one study but kind of says that, hey, you
know, maybe that, that area deserves a little more tension
that we shouldn't be too quick to jump to the conclusion that
the changing someone's musculoskeletal, you know,
constraints that they have will necessarily, you know, make its
way into into the golf, swing to see.
Performance of probably also, going to need to be told, hey,
now that you've got this, um, improved range of motion, Her
posture. We need to now still make those
mechanical changes and remind you of them when you're
swinging. It's not going to be this
automatic pill, you know. Hey we improve it and it's going
to just translate into the golf swing so you can still might
need some biomechanical intervention there.
If that's what you're trying to improve.
Did he find any way to say? It's on average five yards
shorter on an average of percentage shorter than typical.
Yeah it was meaningful have to Double check the numbers.
But that's my takeaway was that it was, you know, like
meaningful in that at least you'll be playing at least a
club difference. Into the green might have been
more than that but yeah, it was certainly worth while keeping
your ball dry. But yeah, very cool.
I mean, good research from ping. Both of those studies are.
That's sweet. I like it.
Yeah, I really enjoyed the Moon away from the hard science or
they're really enjoyed will Robbins and all your Friends
with him. You test podcast with him.
He did a great keynote on the last day and you kind of it was
more about the perspective, you take it kind of creating a new
mindset for how you approach the game of golf.
Any kind of started with, you know, player comes to him and he
asked them questions once we really get to know you know why
they're coming for a lesson and he says that if you ask why the
person why enough, you know hey why do you want to listen?
Well While I slice the ball and I, you know that I don't want to
slice the ball. Okay.
Well, you know, why don't you want to slice the ball?
Okay. Well blah, blah blah, if you can
follow this chain, the ask. Why enough eventually everybody
just wants to have fun and shoot lower scores so it's not
necessarily it's not necessarily that they want to slice laws
really what it is. They just want to shoot those
courts that they've actually whether they believe it or not
will be fine. Slicing the ball if they shop
more and so that's kind of his approach and then he kind of
does a lot of Lot of Playing Lessons as a lot of stuff in
groups and really changes people's or golfer's
perspectives on, you know, what they should anticipate for their
abilities. To initiate example, he gave you
eat, ask a player, okay? It could be a good player, the
single handicapper and say, hey you know what, do you got a 450
yard par 4? What your expectations here?
Well you know, what would be really great to make a par but
But I will be that disappointed in a bogey, you know?
So for would be great, five would be yeah.
Okay, not that bad. Okay, next question, you have a
four hundred and fifty yard? Par 5?
What are you thinking? Well, I great opportunity for an
eagle and I better walk away with a birdie, you know, so it's
exact same whole but just because it has a different part
all of a sudden, the golfers mindset completely change it,
and you would say look that shouldn't change your mindset,
your kind of focusing on the wrong thing.
So, I that We thought was very useful information for everybody
needs. Having a lot of success, really
approaching the average player, not from a mechanical
standpoint, but from this, this mindset approach, which I
thought was really fascinating. I have been doing some research
supporting research on the influence of putter design on
performance with the head of innovation at thing.
Eric Henrickson and we did a little study looking at toe hang
versus face, balanced putter. So effectively, where is the
center of mass of the putter have relative to the shaft axis
and found that pretty clear result playing at.
Oh, Hang putter tends to result in?
Golfers, leading the face more open.
So, if you Are having trouble hitting pushes.
Try to move towards a center, shafted more face, balanced
Putter. And if you're hitting poles,
hey, maybe maybe just a switch to a towing would help you out.
And he kind of, you know, we're kind of like, where's this
coming from? You know, what are the what are
the reasons for this? And he pings got an on-site
historian. So you going and kind of talk to
this guy about all the research and all the things that the
Karsten solheim has been, you know, figuring out how long
before anybody Else. And it was this concept of a,
it's called a balm, it shaft and the idea and Eric was into some
fast when there's some fascinating research, eaten all
the way, you know, into the 1800s about having shafts being
bent. So that the axis actually goes
through the even at the center of the head in this original
ball Melmac, ping design, actually bends the shaft.
So at impact that shaft axis goes through the ball.
Hence the ball, man. Hammock concept, but you can't
have been shafts. That was a, was an issue that
the USGA are. We already took care of at some
point in history, but the compromise was pistol grip, so,
the shaft doesn't change. But the grip has a different
shape up by the the top hand and effectively what that does is it
puts that access of the, the grip at the top hand, if you're
playing at Oh, Hang putter. It now makes that that grip pass
through it closed or right through the The center of
gravity of the the putter head. So effectively making it making
a towing putter, plane, more like a face balanced.
So Eric set up a study, took a toll, hang putter at a straight
grip and a pistol grip. And the Hound sure enough, that
if you take that Towing putter but you play with a pistol grip
on it, that you have a better chance on squaring the face of a
phrase that we're more likely to there's going to be a difference
in facing like impact. Crystal grips.
Going to have a more Square Face a straight grip on a twang
Putters than a 10 to leave the face more open.
So it's, you know, kind of just kind of starting to scratch the
surface and some was researching on the more questions about why,
you know, what if you have, how much of that that angle of the
pistol grip is good. What happens if you actually
have that, that grip actually passing through the toe side of
the putter. You know, if you have a face
balanced putter with a pistol grip, where does that put you
put Finally some clear systematic differences in
changing the way that the golfer inputs, those forces and torques
to the shaft change in that accident are applying those
forces and torques but seems to have a meaningful impact.
This was fun. We got a little sneak peek into
some of the research presented got to feel like we were there
and learning about some of the latest golf research.
I enjoyed this. Thank you Sasha for hopping on
and joining the link and re thank you as well.
Thank you. For sharing this awesome event
for sure. If you're listening to this,
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tip to date on exactly what we are doing in this episode was
hosted written by me. Corey Walker.
You can follow me at Cordy Walker on Twitter and was edited
mixed and produced by just hit publish Productions.