In this most advanced golf swing science circles, a new debate is now underway. Is there a benefit to a lower rate of club face closure through the impact zone?
It is becoming clear that closure rates on the PGA Tour vary, but don’t seem to have a high correlation to success. You would think that having the slowest rotating face would give a huge boost in accuracy, so this begs a few questions:
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One, do these higher ROC players just have (or require) better timing to make it work?
Two, if this is an inferior way to swing, do they make up for it with good course management?
Three, if a golfer has been swinging this way since childhood, is it so grooved that they just don’t mis time the closing of the face?
Very few labs or centers have the capability of measuring rate of face closure accurately. I believe, however, that once the evidence piles up, golf teaching will favor a method that makes the clubface go through the impact zone fairly SQUARE to SQUARE.
In this video above, I demonstrate how Mike Austin was able to move his wrists and forearms to cause the club to have the least amount of face closure so that it actually swung square to the points on the arc. And yet Mike also got incredible distance. Was he really 50 years ahead of the curve with his methodology?
Mike didn’t just hit it straight – he also released the clubhead without tension and accelerated it to an incredible velocity. We believe he had one of the fastest swings ever in history.
Kyle Berkshire, the 2020 World Long Drive Champion has been posting swings in excess of 155 mph, which is right in the neighborhood of where Mike was swinging in 1940 with a steel shafted club.
What would Mike Austin have done with today’s modern lighter weight drivers? Would he have dominated long drive? Could he make it on the PGA Tour?
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