Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Dana Dahlquist and the Flat Spot in the Golf Swing

Here's a video from Dana Dahlquist with his student discussing angle of attack and the flat spot.



Some golfers may not understand the importance of the flat spot.  I had first heard the 'flat spot' bandied about by Jim McLean in one of his books (I think it was The 8 Step Swing).  IIRC, all McLean discussed was his belief that a flat spot existed and that you wanted to hit your driver on the flat spot.

It wasn't until recently that Chris Como and Dr. Sasho MacKenzie started to research the flat spot and found that it did exist and the longer the flat spot, the better.  The long the flat spot it creates more speed due to creating more parametric acceleration.  Furthermore, it makes the golfer more consistent and more accurate.

This is what I think was the real secret to Moe Norman's success.  Watch this video of Moe hitting balls.  At this point, Moe's eyesight is becoming an issue and he was grossly overweight and in his 60's.




Moe is still hitting the ball well, but you can see instances where his club head is hitting the turf further back, behind the ball.  Yet...he still hits the ball well.

What we also know about Moe?

He was known for small divots or almost no divot.  As Moe said 'bacon strips, not pork chops.'

Of course, some will dispute that Moe wasn't long.  However, these people usually saw Moe when he was in his 50's and 60's and was out-of-shape.  A few years ago I was told that Moe's driver weighed in at 465 grams.  I've been known to have a heavy driver and at its heaviest mine weighed 337 grams.

That's 128 grams heavier than my driver!

So if you find a way to lengthen that flat spot, I say go for it.



3JACK

1 comment:

Nick Tuason said...

The first I ever heard of the flat spot was from a Phil Rodgers article in a Golf Digest sometime in the 1980's. Rodger's was very particular with it, stating that the better the player, the longer the flat spot. McLean being a good student probably picked it up from Rodgers as well.