[BerntR]

We are not having a meeting of the minds although I think we agree on almost everything. It doesn't seem that way sometimes. This is one of those times.

Yes, the differences are probably magnified at the expense of the common understanding. I can live with that. And I hope you can too. Cause I enjoy both the agreements and the disagreements.

I am not sure that the pictures we study show what we think they show. Actually I think we interpret what's going on plane wise is off the mark.

What's the most correct way of measuring the swing geometry? We look at the relationship between the hands and the clubhead - the line that runs from the hands through the sweet spot of the club. The area it covers throughout the swing is labeled as the inclined plane. And we attribute a great deal of value to it.

But what if we look at the hand path in separation and the clubhead path in separation? Elbow planers have their hands closer to their torso at address and impact. That's what keep them on the elbow plane. The shaft plane is raised during the back swing, which means that the hand path is pretty steep.

And overall the clubhead path can be quite steep as well for elbow planers. And perhaps steeeper than on the TSP. I don't think a TSP-er can take the club as high up as Furyk does and get away with it.

When Furyks swing was declared to be the most unfundamental at TGM he responded that he feels like he is swinging straight back and straight through. He doesn't feel like rerouting and plane shifting. Feel isn't real, I know that. But perhaps what we take from those pictures isn't real either. Perhaps Furyks application of force is much more straight back and forth than the photos might suggest. The golf stroke is a a 3D motion but we always look at it in two dimension. I wonder how good we are at seing the real force wectors that are working the club.

Look at Garcia:


Here, the clubhead has caught up with the hands when you look at the plane where the clubhead is going. (The up front view) But if we had a picture - not face on - but handpath - on - we would possibly see that there were still accumulator #3 lag present. Is he swinging left? Yes. But perhaps he has been swinging left all the time.

I say he is swinging left here:




It doesn't perhaps look like he is swinging left, but I say he is. The plane line of his hands' plane is pointing left of the target. His hands are too close to the ball here - and they will get even closer before they start moving left in our down the line view.

If he was on the TSP here he would be very close to thrusting all the PP# force he could produce right into the inside aft quadrant of the ball. But he is coming in with more accumulator #3 lag than the TSP-er and he needs to keep some of it in order to not place his sweet spot outside the target line. At this point his hands are already too close to the ball to go straight at the ball. And they will get even closer before they move away from the ball. He has to turn his hands to the inside. But the hands are already heading in that direction so it's not something he has to manufacture in the last instance.

I believe that "covering" the left arm with the right - as has been said earlier in this thread - really is a stroke that is powered along hands plane with an open plane line.

How shallow is the clubhead path really on the elbow plane? I don't know. We always look at the shaft angle and assume that the club goes where the hands has been. But in the big scheme of things the hands travel on a much steeper path than the clubhead. So how can the two move on the same plane?

Some of the flatness that we see is caused by accumulator #3 lag. Quite a lot actually. When I strike the ball on the elbow plane I use a lot more vertical force throughout than when I swing on the TSP. In fact, that's one of the reasons I like to do it. If you look at Garcia past impact his shaft angle has steepened quite a lot. I don't think that is caused by a reorientation of how he applies force. It is a direct consequence of reduced accumulator #3 lag. The club is in the process of catching up with the hands, and therefore the clubshaft is increaslingly reflecting the plane angle Garcia is thrusting on - and has been thrusting on for quite some time.

Take this as preliminary thoughts from me. I don't think I understand even half of what's going on here. But I am quite certain that the shaft angle we usually look at is quite deceptive.