Professor Stephen Nesbitt and Golf

 

Whilst many scientists, engineers and biomechanists have looked at the golf swingit it is not unfair to say that they have contributed little to our understanding of the the golf swing The reason is this. The scientists have balked at the complexity of the body action in the golf swing and therefore  have concentrated their attention on the action of arms, hands and club. They have thus neglected something of great importance in the golf swing, namely the golfer. The golfer is reduced to being nothing more than a 'point source of torque'.

 

However one engineer, Professor Stephen Nesbitt, the Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Lafayette College, decided not to ignore the golfer and because of his boldness produced what is, in my view, far and away the best scientific paper ever produced aboout the golf swing. 

 

Briefly what Profesoor Nesbit did was attach reflective markers to alll the joints of the body of his golfers.  They were attached to ankles , knees, hips . lower torso, upper torso, shoulders, elbows and wrists. During the swing the golfers were photographed by seven high speed cameras to ensure the reflective markers were always visible and the data produced was analysed with the help of a powerful high speed computer.

 

What did Professor Nesbit find? I will describe the three main and most significant findings only,

 

Firstly, he found that all parts of the body, with the exception of the legs which contribute little force, contributed force to the golf swing. That is pelvis, lower torso, upper torso shoulders, elbows and wrists all contributed force. Therefore if you were ever told to hit the ball with everything you had then this was good advice because this is exactly what is the case. 

 

Secondly, he found when the forces were produced in downswing.He found that with only slight deviations, forces were produced earlier in the downswing by the lower parts of the body and later in the downswing by the upper parts so the sequence started with the ankles and ended with the wrists.

 

Thirdly  and I find this the most interesting idea of all. It is possible to work out from Nesbitt's data the time when work is done in the downswing and what we find is this. The downswing last an average of 0.25 seconds or one quarter of a second. We find that 95% of all the work done in the downswing takes place in the last 0.05 seconds before impact. Thu, ,in the frst 4/5ths of the downswing we have 5% of the work done and in the last 1/5th of the downwing we have 95% of the work done.

 

This is a fascinating finding. Professor Nesbitt does not say how this work is produced. When we look at these results baldly we can come to a conclusion. This is that it would be impossible to hit the ball in this manner using muscular power alone. We have to conclude that such is the rate of power release at this stage of the swing that elasticity must be involved much as it occurs in the use of a bow or catapult.