If you're interested in golf at all, you've most likely come across the term shallowing the club. While it may sound like a passing fad or a fleeting buzz word, shallowing the club in the downswing is a staple that occurs in every elite golf swing. Let's see what it is, what are the benefits and how to apply this to your swing.
What does it mean?
First of all it is important to identify the part of the golf club which is in my humble opinion the most important and the most misunderstood: its center of gravity (or center of mass). This is more or less the balance point of the stick.
To define simply shallowing the club, this is the movement made by the center of mass of the club during the transition between the backswing and the downswing. The latter moves in this sequence: up, behind and around the golfer.
This flattening movement of the shaft is the result of the forces applied to the grip at this time.
Benefits
The advantages are twofold: more precision and more club head speed. Are you dreaming? It is not a dream, but many physical laws in action. Without going into too much detail, shallowing the club early in the transition allows you to use your body's rotation to hit the ball. This rotation generates more speed and more ''stability'' of the of club face in the impact zone than with the series of compensations necessary that one must carry out in order to strike the ball from a vertical position of the shaft in the transition (early extension, excessive lateral inclination to the right of the spine, excessive rotation of the forearms in the impact zone, cessation of rotation of the pelvis and torso, etc.).
How to properly shallow the club?
The golf swing being a succession of causes and effects, the answer is not simple. In fact, it is about understanding two important relationships in order to create the winning conditions for a shallowing the club early in the transition:
1- The distance between the center of mass of the club and the ball at the top of the backswing
Simply stated, if you have little rotation or if the sahft is short of parallel to the top of the backswing, it is to your advantage to create space between the center of mass of the club and the ball because you will have little time to shallowing the club during the downswing.
Conversely, if you have a lot of rotation and
the shaft goes beyond parallel to the ground at the top of the backswing, you can allow yourself a tighter space between the club's center of gravity and your ball as you will have plenty of time to shallow the club during the downswing.
2- The relationship between the center of mass of the club and the forces applied to the grip.
The combined forces of both hands on the grip at the start of the transition is more or less towards the ball. This force applied to the grip has a direct effect on the movement of the center of gravity of the stick: the latter will seek to align itself with the direction of this force.
Concretely, depending on the position of the center of mass of the club at the top of the
backswing, the force you apply to the grip will cause the shaft to shallow or straighten "naturally". Take the test ... At the top of your swing, make your shaft point in front of you and perform a downswing: the shaft will flatten. Then, make the shaft point more behind you and perform a downswing: the shaft will straighten up.
Going further...
To fully understand your swing it is imperative to understand these fundamentals. To go more in depth on the same theme, I suggest you watch the different videos I posted on this subject.
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