writing that last post triggered a thought.
Physics.
Somewhere in TGM there is a comment that the club does not seek the ball, it seeks an in line condition.
When the great Paul Hart, TheDart, was on here, he and I exchanged ideas on one topic when he wanted me to practice a move and he said I would miss the ball if I got it wrong. I replied that it was impossible for me to miss the ball.
My point here is that if physics were the dominant factor, we would miss the ball when we were misaligned. Yet we don't. Therefore, physics is not the dominant factor.
So what is? I think physics as in a free release of the club etc only comes into it as long as our instinctive hand eye coordination is "happy" that we will hit the ball. If it is not "happy" it takes over and adjusts, aka compensates.
How often do we compensate? I reckon every time to some degree, no two swings are identical, very few swings are perfectly on plane.
So, I reckon we can forget the physics.
What we need to discuss and work on is what makes our instinctive hand eye coordination "happy" that we are on track to hit the ball?
Big statement, I know. Could be nonsense, as always. But I have maybe 50 golf books, videos etc, and not one of them says a word about how our instinctive hand eye coordination works.
All of them treat the golf swing as if it is a combination of conscious, intentional, movement and physics. They miss out the most important part, imo, the part that actually hits the ball: instinctive hand eye coordination.
I read a paper once written by some University researcher about how cricketers catch a cricket ball in the outfield. They analysed the movement of the players and worked out that the subconscious was computing something from the arc of the ball.
The cricketer is compensating. They "instinctively" see the ball in the air, realise that they are not where they need to be to catch it, then adjust their position to intercept it.
This is turning into one of my long posts, so I will stop here. Hopefully you can get some sense of the question I am raising.
Edited by Devongolfer, 19 January 2020 - 07:20 PM.