How-To "Backspin on chips"

[Mox]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

Bill, I totally get what you mean, but that photo is not the point of impact, and the entire proposition is wrong if you use that photo as a base.

The clubhead should attack the ball on a downward trajectory, aiming to hit the ground AFTER point of impact, about an inch IN FRONT of where the ball was positioned.

That puts first ball contact in a VERY different position from what you are showing in your photo, and it WILL 'trap' the ball, in keeping the force vector moving downward through the contact with the ball. And it is this force vector and the bounce of the club that keeps the ball in contact with the clubhead for as long as possible. Long contact from an accelerating clubhead means SPIN!

[bill reed]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

hi Mox
i do agree what the way you have said that, but of you look at my picture and i agree it not really meant to be impact point, you will see the forward lean of the shaft and if you take the club head coming down in a very sharp swing you still contact below the middle of the ball and the ball compresses on the face of the club and runs up the groves imparting more backspin but it down to the sharper swing but you still don't hit down you swing down and the club makes contact with the lower half of the ball and the ball runs up the club face. i wish i had a slow clip i could show of what happens to the ball and you would see it does compress into the club face but not the ground, also if the ground was soft then it would be harder to get backspin as it would be harder to compress the ball with the ground but that not the case, its just as easy to impart more backspin on a lush fairway as it it on hard compact fairway.
the confusion i think is that you have to hit a ball below the equator with every club in the bag even the putter but the putter is the closest club to hitting the equator. but with the shorter clubs your swing is more upright and we swing back into ball steeper, this is often called hitting down on the ball but you don't really hit down on the ball you swing down under the ball into the ground after you make contact with the ball.
you contact the ball before the club hits the ground and the ball spins up the club face.
there is no way you can push the ball down against the earth with the loft of the clubs we all use as you can never get the face of the club on to or above the equator to push the ball down word to compress with the earth.
cheers
bill

[BrianW]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

Bill is absolutely correct, it is not possible to trap the ball between the clubface and the ground, this is one of the biggest myths in golf and unfortunately still put out by some of those at the top of the game.

If anyone thinks it can be done then try what Bill has suggested and you will see that it cannot happen. If you hit a ball off a tee it absolutely cannot be trapped with the ground but it still spins and goes upwards, so exactly what part would the ground play in ball flight?

The ball sits on the clubface for around a millisecond and it is the oblique blow imparted by the clubs loft that makes it slide then roll up the face creating spin, nothing else.

[ben hogan]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

Support the shaft...pivot thru the shot...feels like a trap.

[BrianW]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

For any anoraks like me this is a nice article that explains what happens at impact and expels some of the myths of it.

http://www.tutelman.com/golf/design/swing2.php?ref=

[bill reed]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

thanks Brian
thats what i was trying to explain but your link does it a lot better than i did.
really good link.
cheers
bill

[ben hogan]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

To bad there wasn't better one of an iron off the turf.

[bill reed]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

hi golfinguy
if you look at the top pro golfers you can often see a worn ring where the ball wears the club face on mostly there wedges and it always on grove 4,5 and 6 from the bottom and that would agree with your last post where you say the pros hit the ball of the center of the club face.
with the short irons there is more weight on the sole of the club and the sweet spot it just below the center of the club face and not the center of the face, the driver it the other way, the sweet spot it higher on the club face.
cheers
bill

[ben hogan]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

http://www.golfdigest.com/instructio...gertips_gd0703

[BrianW]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

ok, cool thanks for clarificatoin, (slightly below center for short irons) but still a descending blow is needed to hit that, main point being that its not to hit down and pinch the ground and the ball, its to make it possible to hit the center of the face (or slightly south) and not thin the ball from a flipping or a sweeping blow.

I never did understand where the "pinching theory" came from and how a upward slop (loft) could have a downward force and "pinch" the ball and the ground. what really blow my mind is that golf digest and other "big names" still teach this as ben hogans post shows. with the technology we have and high speed cameras and force mats ect you would think they would be able to figure this one out? and how would that theory explain how the ball "compresses or pinches" with the sand in the bunker and gets backspin? what about the fairway bunkers that people hit 180 yrs from, certainly if you were to pinch the ball from in between the club and the sand the ball would sink really deep in the sand vs. bouncing out and getting spin and distance?

just food for thought for all the "pinch theory" believers out there, not saying I am right, just saying why I believe what I believe

Mox, would you be able to explain how the ball dows not sink in the sand after compression?

here is a good video of how a descending blow allows the center of face to hit the ball
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbnHQ8Tf1zE

You only need to consider a ball hit of a tee, it flies as well as one on the ground if not better but it cannot make contact with the ground. I am also amazed at how the pinch theory is still propagated by many professionals.

[bill reed]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

hi
if any of you play links golf as I do most of the time you will know that the fairways are cut short and feel spongy under foot even in the summer, it feels so diffrent to inland courses, when using from a 7 iron to my wedges i take a divot, with the longer clubs i tend to shave the top's of the grass. if i have say 140 to go to the green i use a full 7 iron and i always get some backspin, sometime lots and sometimes it stops dead and no spin back but there is never any mark on the fairway where the ball has been compressed between the club face and the ground and the links fairway is soft and you would see it. i get the same backspin on the inland courses but the fairways have longer bladed grass and any divot it heaver than you take on a links course, the grass on links courses is very fine and don't seem have a grain like inland courses do.
if you did compress the ball with the ground then you would get diffrent results playing links and inland courses but i know i don't. it the same it you play off the first cut when the ball is sitting up in the grass not touching the ground.
cheers
bill

[Mox]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

It's odd though, that the worlds greatest golfer - Tiger Woods himself - talks about "trapping the ball between club and turf".

Tiger Tips: Compress the ball

To improve your ball striking (and your divots), try shallowing out your backswing—swinging a little more around you. That sets up a shallower angle into the ball and a long, thin divot. It also helps if you turn the knuckles of your top hand to the ground through impact, like I'm doing here. This is a clear sign that you're compressing the ball, trapping it between the clubface and the turf, which will result in a divot on the forward side of the ball.

Now who to believe ... The Tiger, or ...

This is a matter of (very) simple physics.

A downward strike on the ball, be it on turf or tee, produces a force vector that points downwards. Not directly downwards, and not more downwards than forward, but definatly more downwards than horisontal. That goes for lofted clubs as well. The force of the club is down as well as forward.

That force compresses the ball against the turf or the tee. It has nowhere else to go, and can only transfer it's energy to the ball in the direction of the force vectors.

It is the restriction of the ground or the tee that causes the ball to ride up the clubface, allowing the prolonged contact to induce spin.

Try to put a ball on a tee and hit it with an upward strike. Can you make it spin back on the green? Not very likely. Hit the same ball with a downward strike and it will spin a lot more. The downward strike cause the club to have less loft and the launch angle to be lower. Despite this, the ball checks on the green, where the higher launching shot, hit by the sweeping higher lofted club drops softer but spins less.


Regarding sand play, Bill, a correct bunker shot is never a downward strike on the ball, but a downward strike on the sand BEFORE the ball. A perfect bunker shot has no contact between club head and ball, but only the club accelerating the mass of sand under the ball. Dave Pelz writes very detailed on this in his Short Game Bible.
Any backspin on bunker shots, comes from contact between sand in motion and ball at rest, not from contact between ball and club.

[bill reed]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

hi Mox
think of what Tiger said in your text.
the last part says,
which will result in a divot on the forward side of the ball.

that must mean the club hits the ball before the ground if the divot starts after the ball. so how if swinging shallower do you get this pinching of the club and ground. what really happens and what players think happen is not always the same, even if you tiger.
cheers
bill

[BrianW]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

Mox,

Tiger is wrong here and so are you or anyone that believes the ball can be trapped between the clubface and turf in the swing. Just try something that Bill suggested earlier: Place a ball on a table then take a club, say a 7 iron and lay it behind the ball, now see if you can trap the ball between the surface and clubface, you will see that the shaft will need to lean forward past horizontal to do it.

You should read the link I posted earlier in this thread it shows and explains to you how the ball reacts to the clubface. The ball is in contact for half a millisecond as it is struck an oblique blow by the loft(not a downward vector), it is compressed onto the clubface, slides up then rolls before the coefficient of restitution springs it off.

Look again carefully at these videos: Does the driver trap the ball in the turf? does the iron? No! of course they don't but they all create backspin.

Tiger may be a great golfer but he does not necessarily understand the ballistics or physics of impact.

Mox, you are a knowledgeable golfer but please give this matter some closer observation and you will see that 'pinching the ball' is a myth and impossible.

[Mox]

Re: How-To "Backspin on chips"

Of course they create backspin, but not a lot of backspin.

When hitting driver, you're actually hitting UP on the ball trying to AVOID backspin to gain distance.

And iron off the tee - struck on a downward trajectory - WILL 'trap' the ball between club and tee and generate more backspin.

A really great iron strike off the tee, will hammer the tee into the ground instead of chopping it in half like in your video.

You can choose to believe what you want. It matters little to me. But SIMPLE physics prove you wrong.

It seems to me, that you think 'trapping' or 'pinching' the ball is about thumping it into the ground, as in generating an angle between clubface and turf of less than 90 degrees. It is not! That is irrellevant. It is about the FACT, that during the very first part of that split-second contact between clubface and ball, there ARE force vectors working on the ball, that is going marginally into the ground resulting in friction between the ball and the ground as it starts to move. The resulting force back on the ball from the ground (or tee) is the 'trapping' or 'pinching'.

Your video actually proves my point, Brian. If you look at the driver shot and go frame-by-frame, you'll see that there is a point after the driver has hit the ball bug before the driver has hit the tee, where the trailing edge of the tee is actually already deforming from the friction between ball and tee. (freeze frame provided)

There is NO WAY that rubber tee would 'lip out' like that, unless there is pressure on it from the ball. And that is a sweeping strike. Imagine that being a downward trajectory! Oh yes - there IS 'pinching'.

But I'm sure the good people over at Zero Friction Tees will be sad to learn, that there is no friction between ball and tee anyway, so their product is useless.

EVERY shot generates backspin. 'Hitting down' on the ball generates MORE backspin.

I have given this plenty of thought, and as I mentioned, this is quite basic physics in action.

We'll probably never agree, and further debate is likely pointless.