How to Hit a Golf Ball Just Right - Pt2: The Moment of Impact

    While hitting the golf ball just right is extremely important, the actual moment of hitting the golf ball often gets overlooked. Instead, most of the focus is placed on the club and swing, rather than taking a look at the ball itself. Now in all fairness, this is because any adjustments you make as a golfer are made to the club or swing, as you can't exactly adjust the ball directly. However, understanding a little about what the golf ball goes through can help make the right decisions, especially when you need to make situational adjustments to your normal swing.

Note: this is Pt2 of a series. Click Here to go to Pt1, or Read This to see why all this information matters in the first place.

What happens to the club at impact?

    When a golf club and golf ball meet at impact there are two different parties involved, namely the club and the ball. Let's start with the club. What does it go through specifically during its brief meeting with the golf ball? Well, not much. The clubhead is much heavier than the ball and much more rigid. It doesn't bend or deform, and it isn't slowed much during the impact.

    In fact, the only time the clubhead even notices the ball is if the impact happens to the left or right of its center of mass (also known as the "sweet spot"). When you hit the ball with the sweet spot of the clubface, the club continues exactly on its way without changing its direction or rotation.

    On the other hand, if the clubface impacts the ball to the left or right of the sweet spot, a twisting force (torque) is produced, which causes the club to twist and vibrate. This has several effects. The first is that you feel the force in your hands and wrists, usually uncomfortably but sometimes painfully. Secondly, that twisting means that the club is now pointed and moving in a different direction than you originally lined up. This often gives the ball spin in addition to sending it in unpredictable directions.

What happens to the ball at impact?

    The ball experiences a much more interesting effect. Despite only contacting the club for a fraction of a millisecond, the ball experiences tremendous impact, sometimes between 1 and 2 tons of force and up to 50,000 g's of acceleration (for reference, you feel only 3 or 4 g's at the bottom of a normal rollercoaster drop). Even though the golf ball seems quite rigid, this massive pressure causes it to deform startlingly during impact. Check out this video from Titlist demonstrating with a high speed camera:

    This deformation actually plays a huge part of sending the ball flying the way it does, and is also why golf balls bounce much higher off pavement than rocks do. Most of the energy that launches the ball comes from its own "bounciness". The club merely stores that energy into the ball, which then releases it in its own way.

    As the ball flattens out, it also helps to stick it to the clubface for better control. If there were no deformation, the ball would roll and slide up the clubface more, causing shots to generally fly higher and for less distance. 

How does spin occur?

    This stick also helps to control backspin based on the loft of the club. Low-loft clubs like drivers meet the ball close to its equator, meaning that the ball bounces off at a very similar angle to the movement of the clubface itself. High-loft clubs like wedges meet the ball lower, causing a bounce (and therefore ball direction) that is much higher than the movement of the club. The sticking of the ball to the club means that the club's motion carries the underside of the ball forward even as the ball is bouncing away, inducing a backspin.

    Spin to the left or right is caused in a very similar way. All golf clubs (except the putter) have a vertically angled face, naturally causing backspin. However, clubs are not angled horizontally (at the sweet spot, at least). Hitting the ball directly on the sweet spot produces little to no spin, depending on other factors of the swing. However, hitting with an open or closed clubface presents the ball with a horizontally angled surface. This will cause left or right spin, in the direction that the club was facing.

Summing Up

    While you can learn and become quite good at golf without knowing what happens in the millisecond that the ball touches the club, understanding the basics can help you gain a better grasp on the "whys" behind the advice you receive and put into practice. Understanding this information can also help you to determine some answers intuitively when you need them, whether you've forgotten the conventional wisdom or simply haven't seen it before. Making the right decisions when faced with new situations becomes much easier when you understand principles rather than just quotes. So aside from being interesting, will knowing that a golf ball changes its shape bring your score on the course down? Perhaps not, but then again it might.

If you enjoyed this, read the next part of this series to see how this information can be used practically!

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