This episode is brought to you by Adele Golf and we're going to talk single length irons. If you've ever wondered how a single length for iron goes just as far as a standard length. Well, I have as well. So, we asked David Adele and he explained the main attributes, the single length, that provide the benefit and distance that is the misconception based on is
being shorter. Is the fact that the mass of the head is generally about 30 grams to 35 grams heavier than a standard for iron and the two Inch difference in club. Head speed is minimal compared to the amount of force that's being applied, to the golf ball in it, more perpendicular manner, than a lofted, golf club that compresses the ball.
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And if you do get asset tag, Us Golf science lab Patel Golf and a picture on Twitter Instagram. You are listening to the gulf Science Lab podcast. My name is Corey Walker, and I'm on a mission to figure out how to improve the way that we learn and get better at golf. I've been able to travel all over the world talking to the leaders in the industry from instructors, to researchers, to Golfers themselves learning how they're getting better at golf and what that means for you.
Just a couple weeks ago, the world is scientific Congress of golf took place. It's where individuals have been doing golf research, share their studies, they present them in front of, really, anybody in the industry. Other researchers, golf instructors, folks that work at different companies, and it's a really fascinating event. I was lucky enough to attend in 2016 and st. Andrews, really enjoyed it. And I want to share a bit of a recap of what happened in this episode.
And I want to first talk about golf science because it doesn't have Intimidating. It doesn't have to be something that is not worth while for everyone if your golfer. If your coach golf science is can be very approachable, could be very applicable and covers a broad spectrum of things in golf. Most people who think of golf research think of, you know, the biomechanics and the technique
of the swinging. And while that's a big part of what we do, it certainly does not make up the bulk of what we do. I mean, you know, we do have things like, you know, psychology and nutrition. Those kinds of things as well as As you know, in recent recent conferences and this one was no different, some more focus on on player. Pathways how to become a tour
player. If you will, some of the roadblocks to becoming a successful player, things like tournament preparation, the development of life skills, and junior golf programs. So there are some topics and some mint, some studies that happening. Now that I would say, haven't always been really in the main sort of golf research part of it all and no question this year, you know, there was a number of presentations on equipment and some of the new Apologies around that.
So I think the I think the term golf research is quite it has become quite wide in scope and isn't really all about quantitative data either. There's a fair amount of qualitative research being done in golf as well.
So I think again as I mentioned I think it was a really good balance this year of of different topics and really trying to expand the definition of what golf research is that is Glen can Daria. He is the conference chair for the Congress. This Congress was held just outside of Vancouver and Abbotsford, British Columbia.
It was really exciting. Few days in one of the most beautiful parts of Canada and the interior of British Columbia in the Fraser Valley. I think, you know, we were around 100 delegates, which we were pleased with, and had representation from 11 countries, which is fantastic. And they really had a chance to experience some very Canadian in the parts of the country, if you will. And I think they were quite impressed that and I think, you know, the converse is a whole continuum.
Is to really develop and mature and to see some of the, some of the new content, some of the research and studies that are happening with was really, really good. And I think we had a nice balance of PGA and LPGA members that are along with researchers and I think you know, the abstracts that we had which were near 50.
I think really spoke to a lot of different people who are attending the delegates and unfortunately I couldn't make it but I've spoken with a bunch of folks who attended and I really hope to attend this next one. They have planned a little change to the traditional format of the Congress happening every
two years. So one of the things this group of conference organizers have noted as well as the board of directors of the world scientific Congress is some of the conflicts with other major sporting events in golf and outside of gone. Frankly the Olympics Etc in terms of delegate participation, research participation. So the next Congress will be in 2021.
So it is a three year. Gap between now and the next Congress and then it will go every every second year following that so there is an expression of Interest document or template that is available. People can definitely get hold of me. Should they be interested in in hosting the world scientific Congress in 2021? So that's that's probably some of the latest breaking news I suppose on from the actual Congress and we're we're moving.
So since we weren't there I reached out and we have a couple All episodes here they're going to do to get the insights into what research was most interesting. Some things that stood out and really look at some highlights today. We've got sasho Mackenzie who's joined us quite a few times on the show. He is a researcher in the biomechanics field.
We've done a number of episodes that if you enjoy him that you should go back and listen to. And then next week, we're going to have on nikhil, um, who's going to go in-depth on her study, which is on practice and learning. I really, really enjoyed learning about this and I can't wait. Share with you next week but as far as day we're going to bounce around with a number of different highlights from Tosh.O.
Going to go over his keynote, some research from paying and a few other things and I'd love to hear what is most interesting for you. So, shoot a tweet at golf science lab. I would love to hear what you like the most as far as this research and what you want to learn more about. All right, let's get to it. My keynote was half pretty heavy on the technical side of the world, side of the Congress of golf is a blend of hard science, you know, and as well kind of stuff that's a little more
practical. You can pull it in the lesson tee and mine was strictly towards the scientific end of the Continuum. What I did was I wanted to to look at the causes of Club, head speed from a mechanistic standpoint. So I started off to talk kind of saying hey, And bring the crowd. Can you list some some variables, some things in the swing that lead to increased corporate, speak the stuff you would only read about research papers, but see on the Golf Channel, you know, it was great.
People throat. Well lat, yeah, it's exactly. Okay, lag. You know, you want more lad. All right. What about, you know, the kinematic sequence. Great people through that out and hey, Center pressure patterns, you know, there's some stuff from ball invest. So, you know, I was trying to paint the picture that it was kind of all very correlational. We're not necessarily looking at things from from a mechanical mechanistic, cause and effect deterministic standpoint.
It's kind of research kind of all these random little bits of studies, is kind of complex puzzle. We're just getting pieces of the puzzle, all over the place, tough to put them together, not a shot at any of the individual research projects. I've certainly done done a few
of them myself, but more. Let's see if we can take a more mechanical mechanistic approach and it kind of Follow that with a Quote from Sean Foley from an interview we did with a for a golf science journal a few years ago where he said impact is true science. I'm paraphrasing here and the rest of the Swing is just a matter of opinion. So I thought, you know, there's a prominent instructor who prides himself, I believe in the science side of things and
getting things correct. But based on his survey of the research, and, you know, understanding stuff that it's pretty strong phrasing. From my perspective, to say the impact is true science, but the rest of the go Golf swing is his opinion. So I wanted to show that actually the same way that the club had involved interact, the same physical principles applied to the weight of the golfer in
the club interact. So I looked at it from a work energy perspective, something we talked about in the little mini lesson, I gave you to try and show, hey, what are the components of work that the golfer does in the club and which of those allows us to predict the most differences in club head speed, too. If I looked at how the work way you do work on the club Cordy versus me and we've got seven miles per hour difference in club head speed. What is it about the way you're doing work?
That allows you to get seven more miles per hour than me and in what it comes down to is you know that nothing super groundbreaking this sense but the average force that you apply to the grip during the down. Swing is the biggest predictor of differences in clubhead speed between players then also that, you know, the next one along. That was the length of the hand. So if you want to hit the ball further, you need to apply more Force to the grip along the direction by hand path during
the swing. And it's also very helpful to increase in length of that hand pot. So those, those were kind of the take homes and then I kind of had some, some other interesting decides that, you know, gravity actually, does does nothing. If you look at grip them work that gravity does in the swing to pretty Club head speed.
It's actually the size and overall negative amount of work and Reason for that is if you think of the address position the club actually sits lower, if you're driving a golf ball, the address position, ascended masters Club is lower than it is at impact. We kind of have our hands about 10 centimeters higher at impact and the driver had seems to be a little bit higher off the ground impact.
So pretty easy to see that. Actually, the gravity does negative work, does you have to do more work against gravity, to get the club up to the top of the back swing. Then, grab Gravity does on the way down so you can kind of rule of gravity as a reason for being able to change Club head speed. So you know, I made this kind of a high level overview, is kind of more technical stuff about both statistical modeling in the in the talk. But yeah, that's basically it.
So, you know, you can look at hey, why does someone like Tony thin L have the same Club at speed is Bubba, Watson, very different lengths of swings but when it comes down and Tony finau has a pretty high average force of his Not short Council. Does this change the way that we prioritize? What to work on to gain speed in any way? Yeah, I think so. Try to get you another specific example. So the four ways we do work in the club are the length of the hand path.
The average force slumming empath, the torque will be applied to the club or specifically the couple and the angle, the club rotates. So let's say you've got someone like j.b. Holmes who doesn't get the shaft to parallel with his driver. We're told. Mikonos another example. What my findings showed is that you're actually not really going to have much of an increase in combat speed at all by taking GB homes.
Keeping his hand location in space, the same and dropping having an increase that risk cottingley. Dropping that club now down to parallel, even though you're like, look, he's reached parallel now, we should see a big jump and Club head speed. You won't increase in that rotation angle really doesn't separate out. Low and high quality players, but the distance that his hands have traveled in the backswing that that does.
So, you know, you don't, you wouldn't necessarily want someone to go to parallel and expect an increase in club head speed. If that if I getting the parallel, they haven't changed their position of your hands. So, you know, so there's, there's maybe a kind of a practical thing you could apply not okay? Yeah, you want a longer hand, Pat. But you don't necessarily have to increase that they, you know, the risk talking about the at the end of Paxil. That was some pretty interesting stuff.
I think coming out of ping, you know, like a briefly discuss like that I thought Chris Brody was Mark, Brody son knows that now works at pain, didn't need analysis of the influence of grip size on driver performance. So that lets, you know, some
kind of practical I loved one. Practical questions are answered by good science, so Inge was kind of had a long-held belief that as you go up and grip size that tends to result in more fading of the golf ball because you leave the face more open at
impact. So, bigger grip, higher tendency for slicing and they seen that in some of their the player test is, you know, if it's over the years like okay this makes sense but what they would do in those studies is they would say right you know we're changing other club framers are you put on a bigger grip or adding Mass? So let's keep the same swing weight. Let's add Mass to the head as well. So now we've got some small group meeting big grip but all these clubs are at D3 swing
weight. Same swing weight. But he had seen swing weight. Now, they increase the mass of
the club quite a bit. So we know, I just finished doing some research with ping looking at some just changing grip mass, and it seemed to suggest that that has an influence on. So what they did was this meat kind of follow-up study while the previous Search where they sit right, let's increase grip size, but we're going to do it without changing the mass of the grip of the overall mass of a club and what they found was all these differences now, disappeared. So, there was no systematic
difference in facing. The Liberator was no systematic difference in ball flight. So, Corinth, all right now, is that changing grip size, you know, subsequently change mass as well, really doesn't have clear. Automatic change on performance. Certainly at the individual level might be some stuff going on, but so that was really
interesting. My thought is kind of a practical take home that, you know, hey, if you are going to change your grip size and you add Mass expect me to face moral, but if you can get one of those larger grips that is lighter as well. So you keep your grip Mass around 50 grams, then don't necessarily need to expect to see it changing formats which I think it's important for say older golf's who have arthritis you know maybe like the bigger grip. Different reasons, but a lot of
golfers slice. So now I want to go with a bigger grip. That's that also doesn't increase Mass so you kind of get the best of both worlds, more comfortable whole, but you're not increasing your chances of slicing the golf ball. Matt Bridge had an interesting study in the sense overall, that it was like, hey we have these ideas that people have musculoskeletal limitation, you
know. So you see I'm standing there and it's like this guy's got a bad posture and we'd like to change their and then this leads to a poor you know posture in their golf set up which then leads to a bad result. So can we, you know, do some corrective exercises to improve their posture? And now that's improve. This should transfer to improve performance on the golf course. So they looked at or Matt look that remove his colleagues were with them, but they looked at forward head posture.
It was kind of one of the Brings out their golf, it was kind of checked as being a negative. So they did corrective exercises. And with a group of golfers, they had a control group and a treatment group and the exercises did work. So they in the treatment group they improve their their posture but they said no change in
performance either. You know, when they set up to the ball did that forward head posture change in the golf swing did the performance improve know so kind of You know, just to, you know, what only one study but kind of says that, hey, you know, maybe that, that area deserves a little more tension that we shouldn't be too quick to jump to the conclusion that the changing someone's musculoskeletal, you know, constraints that they have will necessarily, you know, make its
way into into the golf, swing to see. Performance of probably also, going to need to be told, hey, now that you've got this, um, improved range of motion, Her posture. We need to now still make those mechanical changes and remind you of them when you're swinging. It's not going to be this automatic pill, you know. Hey we improve it and it's going to just translate into the golf swing so you can still might need some biomechanical intervention there.
If that's what you're trying to improve. Did he find any way to say? It's on average five yards shorter on an average of percentage shorter than typical. Yeah it was meaningful have to Double check the numbers. But that's my takeaway was that it was, you know, like meaningful in that at least you'll be playing at least a club difference. Into the green might have been more than that but yeah, it was certainly worth while keeping your ball dry. But yeah, very cool.
I mean, good research from ping. Both of those studies are. That's sweet. I like it. Yeah, I really enjoyed the Moon away from the hard science or they're really enjoyed will Robbins and all your Friends with him. You test podcast with him. He did a great keynote on the last day and you kind of it was more about the perspective, you take it kind of creating a new mindset for how you approach the game of golf.
Any kind of started with, you know, player comes to him and he asked them questions once we really get to know you know why they're coming for a lesson and he says that if you ask why the person why enough, you know hey why do you want to listen? Well While I slice the ball and I, you know that I don't want to slice the ball. Okay. Well, you know, why don't you want to slice the ball? Okay. Well blah, blah blah, if you can
follow this chain, the ask. Why enough eventually everybody just wants to have fun and shoot lower scores so it's not necessarily it's not necessarily that they want to slice laws really what it is. They just want to shoot those courts that they've actually whether they believe it or not
will be fine. Slicing the ball if they shop more and so that's kind of his approach and then he kind of does a lot of Lot of Playing Lessons as a lot of stuff in groups and really changes people's or golfer's perspectives on, you know, what they should anticipate for their abilities. To initiate example, he gave you eat, ask a player, okay? It could be a good player, the single handicapper and say, hey you know what, do you got a 450 yard par 4? What your expectations here?
Well you know, what would be really great to make a par but But I will be that disappointed in a bogey, you know? So for would be great, five would be yeah. Okay, not that bad. Okay, next question, you have a four hundred and fifty yard? Par 5?
What are you thinking? Well, I great opportunity for an eagle and I better walk away with a birdie, you know, so it's exact same whole but just because it has a different part all of a sudden, the golfers mindset completely change it, and you would say look that shouldn't change your mindset, your kind of focusing on the wrong thing. So, I that We thought was very useful information for everybody
needs. Having a lot of success, really approaching the average player, not from a mechanical standpoint, but from this, this mindset approach, which I thought was really fascinating. I have been doing some research supporting research on the influence of putter design on performance with the head of innovation at thing. Eric Henrickson and we did a little study looking at toe hang
versus face, balanced putter. So effectively, where is the center of mass of the putter have relative to the shaft axis and found that pretty clear result playing at. Oh, Hang putter tends to result in? Golfers, leading the face more open. So, if you Are having trouble hitting pushes. Try to move towards a center, shafted more face, balanced Putter. And if you're hitting poles, hey, maybe maybe just a switch to a towing would help you out.
And he kind of, you know, we're kind of like, where's this coming from? You know, what are the what are the reasons for this? And he pings got an on-site
historian. So you going and kind of talk to this guy about all the research and all the things that the Karsten solheim has been, you know, figuring out how long before anybody Else. And it was this concept of a, it's called a balm, it shaft and the idea and Eric was into some fast when there's some fascinating research, eaten all the way, you know, into the 1800s about having shafts being
bent. So that the axis actually goes through the even at the center of the head in this original ball Melmac, ping design, actually bends the shaft. So at impact that shaft axis goes through the ball. Hence the ball, man. Hammock concept, but you can't have been shafts. That was a, was an issue that the USGA are. We already took care of at some point in history, but the compromise was pistol grip, so,
the shaft doesn't change. But the grip has a different shape up by the the top hand and effectively what that does is it puts that access of the, the grip at the top hand, if you're playing at Oh, Hang putter. It now makes that that grip pass through it closed or right through the The center of gravity of the the putter head. So effectively making it making a towing putter, plane, more like a face balanced. So Eric set up a study, took a toll, hang putter at a straight
grip and a pistol grip. And the Hound sure enough, that if you take that Towing putter but you play with a pistol grip on it, that you have a better chance on squaring the face of a phrase that we're more likely to there's going to be a difference in facing like impact. Crystal grips. Going to have a more Square Face a straight grip on a twang Putters than a 10 to leave the face more open.
So it's, you know, kind of just kind of starting to scratch the surface and some was researching on the more questions about why, you know, what if you have, how much of that that angle of the pistol grip is good. What happens if you actually have that, that grip actually passing through the toe side of
the putter. You know, if you have a face balanced putter with a pistol grip, where does that put you put Finally some clear systematic differences in changing the way that the golfer inputs, those forces and torques to the shaft change in that accident are applying those forces and torques but seems to have a meaningful impact. This was fun. We got a little sneak peek into some of the research presented got to feel like we were there and learning about some of the latest golf research.
I enjoyed this. Thank you Sasha for hopping on and joining the link and re thank you as well. Thank you. For sharing this awesome event for sure. If you're listening to this, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and apple podcast wherever you are listening. So you can stay up-to-date on all of the episodes. We have coming out so much. Good stuff here, really appreciate your support by, that's leaving a review that way that's telling a friend a listen of Time Out playing golf with them.
Sharing something you've learned on the show with them, whatever you can do to help spread this. Message of, we are trying to help folks improve to play better Golf and to be better people. And you want to become a golf signs, live Insider completely free, our newsletter. The dispatched part of that, head over to golf sign sap.com/learnbi, Insider sign up there, get all the content first tip to date on exactly what we are doing in this episode was hosted written by me. Corey Walker.
You can follow me at Cordy Walker on Twitter and was edited mixed and produced by just hit publish Productions.