Since the shorter irons tend to result in a more upright swing with the arms naturally staying close to the body, which arms close to the body let the body to rotate faster during the downswing, according to the physics law of the conservation of angular momentum (as demonstrated by figure skaters pulling their arms close into their bodies to speed up their spins to great speeds) to further reduce the time of the downswing to preclude sensing and controlling anything during the swing.

The iron clubs hit the ball “earlier” without the club shaft fully being released to vertical, as the shaft is still leaning back to hit “down” on the ball while the club is still on the initial downward portion of the clubhead swing arc. There is a less need to spend time to fully release the club to vertical, further reducing time to impact.

More time is needed for the “extra” step of fully releasing the driver to “vertical” at impact. In Hogan’s second book, he illustrates an exercise of the hand release with the left and right hands just before impact, which Hogan as a left hander playing with right handed clubs may need to do more exercises to strengthen his none dominant trailing hand, like he talks about throwing a medicine ball underhanded to build up power. The driver has a long arc, taking more time to complete. The driver swing tends to involve more body movement with longer backswings, and body action, which take more time to perform. There is a tendency of letting the arms to swing more away from the body, as the driver swing is flatter, being the driver is the longest club. When the arms swing more away from the body, the law of the conservation of angular momentum dictates that the upper body and shoulder will rotate slower, and taking more time during the downswing (like figure skaters pushing their arms out to drastically slow down their spins.)

In the book “Tiger Woods How I Play Golf” pages 126 to 127, Woods talks about a “two stage” down swing: slow to the beginning point of the release, and then pour on the power. In Nicklaus’s video, Nicklaus said that once the weight shift for the driver downswing is completed with the left heel down (and the right heel starting to come up,) he swings “all out” right from the top of the backswing. The danger of swinging all out from the top of backswing is to complete the release too early resulting in hitting the ground behind the ball with the clubhead still swinging downwards without getting the chance to level out. Baron Nelson’s book “Shape Your Swing the Modern Way” page 79 talks about programming the feel of throwing the clubhead to a target down range to promote an accurate swing arc into the ball. Venturi in his book “The Venturi Analysis” talks about standing reasonably close to the ball, which promotes having the arms swing close to the body. This again, according to the law of the conservation of angular momentum, automatically speed up the body rotation during the downswing to high speeds like a figure skater pulling the arms in to speed up the spin greatly. The driver downswing can complete almost as fast as iron downswings, when the arms are close to the body, leaving little or no time for sensing anything during the downswing.

when I hit my irons it feels more like the iron just falls in the drop zone from transition

with my driver it doesnt tend to feel like it it falls into the drop zone from transition like the irons do……..it feels like I wait alot longer to get a sense of where it is before i fire

so with my driver i simply wait longer from transition

Have you been recording your distances with the Golf Shot application as well? Would be interesting to see how far you are hitting it and correlate that to your scores.

All the best,

Paul

Great effort and a good validation of your decision to switch coaches and change certain clubs.

I broke 80 for the first time ever last week, shooting 78, without trying to score. No expectations or pressure which must have been the key and I even bogeyed 17 and 18 which disappointed me a little as I usually go bogey-birdie for net level par. I’m with you on the putting cautiously and reverting to old habits in the clutch as I did exactly that on these holes.

And I inscribed my ball too and removed it from the bag! It was a Titleist Velocity – so not even close to being a good control type ball.

Keep grinding away there buddy.