[Mike O]

OB Left

You wrote-: "Jeff your diagrams of Appleby might seem to suggest a curving path of the hands and a shaft non aligned to the plane at times. Leadbetter came to a similar conclusion I think. But what if App's plane line was drawn to show his shifts? The hands in 3-D space might still travel in a curve but the club might be seen to remain on the plane at all times with the butt pointing at the baseline. If he is on plane, that is."

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I think that Appleby's clubshaft is always "on plane" if the peripheral end of the club always points at the baseline. However, his clubshaft is not on a single plane. It is on an near-infinite number of planes (depending on how thin you slice the planes) between the turned shoulder plane and the elbow plane during the early/mid downswing, and it is therefore continuously shifting planes. During the early downswing, the "imaginary" clubshaft plane will be steeper, and it will be less steep as the hands progressively reach waist level.


Jeff.

Jeff,
Absolutely with you on this. OB's comment is in principle the same issue that Matthew is having regarding the left wrist cocking - it's a matter of context i.e. what view or perspective you are looking at it from.

For OB the understanding needs to be that you can have a curved motion of the hands and at the same time the clubshaft can maintain a straight line relationship to a straight line. In fact if you are making plange angle shifts on the downswing as viewed from down target- not sure how the hands could move anyway but curved.

For Matthew the understanding needs to be that the left wrist can cock "in the plane of the left arm" and the shaft can still maintain a straight line relationship to a straight line- move on the inclined plane.

Regarding single plane or shifting plane- depends on what issues you are looking at- where even if one is shifting planes as happens in any full golf stroke- anaylzing issues using the single plane concept is still a valid tool for learning the relationships of some of these items. So while you may analyze an issue using a single plane - that doesn't mean that there is a single plane- it just initially limits the variables involved.