Is there any reason a strong 'hitter' with a soft shaft could not have the shaft bent back at impact? I would think that this would lower the effective loft of the club. Also (and this depends on your frame of reference) if the shaft appears to bend back after impact it is a consequence of the club head suddenly slowing and the shaft not. The shaft over runs the club head. The other way of looking at this is that if you put your reference frame on the shaft and let the ball hit the club head at 100-mph the shaft is clearly going to bend backward (or try to). If the shaft is 'oscillating' and the club head is actually going faster than the shaft then the shaft may simply appear to straighten or be bowing forward more slowly. I sure hope this makes sense 'cause it's late and I'm going to bed now.
Night all,
Alan
At 08:19 PM 1/20/03 -0500, you wrote:
Graham,
Several of the full-swing BJ photos show the shaft is actually bending forward before the clubhead strikes the ball. Then, the impact does indeed reverse the bend before it rebounds forward again. Think I also sent you a couple of BJ's acceleration/velocity circle graphs. They'll give you some numbers on the "negative" acceleration...and note how the shaft rebounds from the negative to the positive as the ball leaves the face. Velocity drops about 40'/sec at impact and acceleration goes a couple thousand feet/sec/sec negative before it rebounds to about zero. Guess that's the shaft suddenly bending back at impact. Might be something to add to your talk.
Bernie
Writeto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Graham Little
- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 7:02 PM
- Subject: ShopTalk: 20 min talk
- I've taken up Tom Wishon's suggestion about preparing a 20 minute talk about what happens when the club strikes the ball and I've been doing a bit of homework. Bernie sent me a series of photos that show the full swing including the point of contact. Thanks for the photos Bernie. One of the more interesting things about two of the photos is the fact that the shaft bends back at contact. We are used to seeing photos of the shaft bending forward slightly just before impact. However, these photos show that the shaft is not just straightened at the point of contact it is actually bent back. Will this have any affect on the ball flight or is it too late to matter? Do we have to rethink issues like the shaft flex taking this into account?
- Any comments? Does anyone have other photos of this sequence that may shed some light on this matter?
- Cheers
- Graham
