[coophitter]

Without wishing to appear impolite or contentious, the post in question fails not only for the vice of uncertainty but because it is just plain wrong.

Coops post is built upon the premise that a reaction force can be precipitated - "precipitated" in this context meaning - that is simply not so. A reaction is a result and not a cause.

There is no natural force on the good Lords planet that can start from the ground up and defy, let alone be made to override, gravity. This, so called, upward generated, "ground force" is simply the equal and opposite reaction to the force the golfer exerts when swinging his club downwards. Newtonian laws apply, where every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Simple test. Address a ball, make a back swing and without further interference from yourself use force from the ground up to bring the club down.

Right, you've got it; it just 'aint possible. The club stays up until you physically exert a force that brings it down , thus causing the upward "ground force" reaction.

DG is not the bad guy in all of this and receives, in my opinion, less than generous consideration from some for his efforts in conveying his understanding of Mr Tomasellos's teaching to us.

DG is merely passing on the message/knowledge given to him and should not be called upon, mostly unfairly, to justify the help that he is trying to give us when so doing.

We should be grateful for his generosity in this regard rather than seek to use him as a "whipping boy" should we hold contrary beliefs.

Delaware Golf, thank you for making available to us your knowledge of Mr Tomasello and his teachings .

Whether members agree or not with what you bring to the forum in this context, your generosity in making this material available to us cannot be denied.

Thank you.

Burner, perhaps I should have said that the downswing is "predated" by 1) the body (primarily the legs) exerting pressure and weight into the earth under hopefully stable feet, and 2) the resultant reaction force of the earth pushing an equal amount of energy back in the opposite direction. The body/brain can then choose to harness this batch of reactive energy and muscularly redirect it via what is known as a human kinetic chain. This energy is ideally channelled via the body's ability to create speed and power by TRANSFERRING or conserving momentum from large base segments to smaller extrmities. The whole process is due to the law of conservation of energy and MUSCULAR stretch-shorten cycle. In your example you are only agreeing with me. You definitely can't swing the club down until you push into the ground. But you don't have to swing. You can just let the undestroyable groudforce energy flow out of your body. You don't have to TRANSFER that momentum via your muscles. So you can physically exert a force into the ground in order to faciltate a downswing but after you do that you can AVOID that energy. You can even stop or derail your downswing once it has started by pushing into the ground again PRIOR to the derailment. In that case you have OVERPOWERED the original ground reaction force.

Your brain has to decide to do something with RESULTANT groundforce energy and it does so by innervating muscle activity AFTER you have used a PREVIOUS muscle force to give you that opportunity. Its all confusing and most people say semantics makes the argument moot. I am not wrong. You can not start your downswing without muscularly causing a ground force reaction but this RESULTANT force cannot cause the direct muscular force required to harness and redirect that very same resultant force. The RESULTANT REACTIVE ground force does not swing the club down for you. Your muscles can only do that with a DIRECT FORCE. You will NEVER convince me otherwise and I'm not trying to be polite.

Thank you.