Ben Hogan, Lee Comeaux, and the Right Hand Hit

A Little Background

Hogan and Comeaux

Ben Hogan made no bones about it! He believed in hitting the ball with the hands at the point of impact. Quoting from his classic book "Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf": "Let us study the correct motion of the right arm and hand in the impact area.... On a full shot you want to hit the ball as hard as you can with your right hand. But this is only half the story. HIT THE BALL AS HARD AS YOU CAN WITH BOTH HANDS. The left is a power hand also. If you hit hard with only the right and let the left go to sleep, you will not only lose much valuable power, you also will run into all the errors that result when the right hand overpowers the left."

About a month ago (early November 2010), I got email from Doug "Rock" Burke, telling me about Leecommotion, his name for the swing taught by Lee Comeaux. Lee is a teaching pro, and he teaches a motion that he calls a "shovel move" or "right hand slap". You can see a video of his swing on YouTube by clicking on the thumbnail to the right. Rock is a low-handicap golfer who reports that the Leecommotion has increased his distance significantly. "I have picked up 30 yards on my drives and 1 club on my irons. It feels a lot more effortless also." It wasn't a trivial change; he practiced it for weeks before he got better. At the time of this writing, he has been at it for 12 weeks, still practicing, and feels it has made a major improvement in his game. My initial impression of Leecommotion is that its essence is the right-hand hit in the impact area, and Rock and I agreed that I should start by studying that. It turns out to be a lot more than that, and I'll do a separate study for "the whole package". But it is worth mentioning in this study, since Hogan's book is not the only school of thought that feels hand action near impact will increase clubhead speed. Rock asked me to explain the benefit in terms of physics. It's one thing to make an improvement; it's quite another to understand why -- and Rock wanted to understand why. This article applies more to Hogan's "hit the ball hard with both hands" Than to Comeaux's "right hand slap", but was mostly motivated by Rock's question.

Golf Swing Physics

Before we go on to analyze the slap swing, let's review what we know about the physics of the swing. The illustrations are taken from my tutorial article on golf physics. For more detail than is given in that article, see Rod White's article. For more detail on the mathematical model used to analyze the swing, see my article on the double pendulum. The golf swing is analyzed by physicists as a double pendulum. The inner member of the double pendulum is the triangle of the shoulders and the two arms (green in the diagrams). The outer member is the club itself (black in the diagrams). The variables in the analysis are the lengths of the two arms, and the forces on them. Well, not exactly forces; they are turning forces, more precisely known as "torques". (1) The body rotation exerts a torque on the shoulders, which turns the shoulders and arms. (2) The forearms, wrists, and hands might exert a torque on the club via the grip. If you are not certain you understand the model, its applicability is discussed in more detail in another of my articles. In particular, you may be concerned that the role of the hips or the right arm might not be properly modeled if this is my tool for analysis. You would be right to be concerned. But whether that concern will doom the analysis is a different story. So understand that article before you dismiss the results out of hand. The most notable of the analyses using the double pendulum model is that by Ted Jorgensen ("The Physics of Golf"). He, and just about every other engineer or physicist who has studied the swing, has concluded that the basic efficient swing is one that depends completely on body rotation (shoulder torque), and lets the wrists hinge freely (that is, zero wrist torque). In other words, you get a very efficient swing from turning the body and allowing the inertial forces on the club to cause the release. (Those inertial forces are usually referred to as centrifugal force. This is a vague and undisciplined use of the language, but we'll stick with it unless the distinction needs to be made for pragmatic reasons.) Hitting with the hands constitutes the addition of wrist torque late in the downswing. This is the basis of our physical analysis of the Hogan and Comeaux swings.

What It Might do

1. Stand on the shoulders of giants. Specifically, see what people concluded who had seriously looked at the problem before.
2. Try it myself. Of course, this will only be anecdotal -- hardly a controlled scientific experiment. But it will give me a feel for how the swing works, an insight into the analytic results, and ideas for what to try next.
3. Do the math. I used a computer program that simulates the swing, where the torque profiles can be varied over the downswing.

Shoulders Of Giants

• Let's start with Rod White's analysis. He devotes a subchapter to what happens if you add wrist torque to the standard swing. The graph he presents is unequivocal. Positive wrist torque (torque to uncock the wrists) results in less distance, not more. It may seem paradoxical, but that's what physics says. It is worth noting that negative wrist torque (to hold the wrist cock angle) results in more clubhead speed and more distance.


• Tom Wishon has been the Chief Technical Officer of Golfsmith, and now has his own golf club component company. His company is recognized as an innovator, and he is the world's foremost advocate of custom fitted golf clubs. In his book "Common Sense Clubfitting" (chapter five on shaft fitting), he writes:
  
  "The condition of the shaft being slightly bent backward with the head lagging behind the shaft is very rare in the game. This is because the swing skill plus strength that is required to maintain radial acceleration and the wrist-cock angle until very late in the downswing is such that very, very, VERY few golfers can do this. Far more common are the conditions in which the shaft arrives at impact either straight or slightly bent/curved forward with the head in front of the forward curve of the shaft."
  In other words, it takes more athletic ability than almost anybody possesses to apply a positive wrist torque late enough in the swing to be helpful. (If I may add my own opinion, not Wishon's words: It isn't just strength; it's also speed. Late in the swing, centrifugal force is whipping the clubhead toward impact. The wrist-cock angle is being dragged out very fast, so it takes a lot of hand speed to even keep up, much less help it along.) One other thing he mentions: we can tell if the wrist torque is negative or positive on the basis of shaft bend. That is important, and we will come back to it later.


• Jorgensen's book is a bit more optimistic. In his chapter 4, some of the points he makes are:
• It is always a bad idea to apply positive torque early in the downswing.
• It is always a bad idea to apply positive torque throughout the downswing. (We knew that already from Rod White.)
• It is generally helpful to apply negative torque (that is, hold the lag angle, retard release) throughout the downswing. (Also Rod White.)
• What is new and interesting is his analysis of adding positive torque late in the downswing:
  
  "Let us look at such a helping action of the wrists late in the downswing. Extensive calculations with the standard swing modified by a constant helping torque of 2 ft-lbs by the wrists late in the downswing show that indeed such a helping torque does produce an increase in clubhead speed at impact. The maximum increase in clubhead speed at impact comes with the torque starting about seven hundredths of a second before the ball is hit. The resulting clubhead speed was found to be only about 0.7% greater than that of the standard swing. This constant torque acting for a longer time or for a shorter time at the end of the downswing produces clubhead speeds less than the maximum."
  In other words, there is room for a properly executed push or slap to increase power. But it is not much of an increase, and it has to be timed very precisely. Not extremely promising, but not a closed door either. The other giants didn't offer any hope at all.

1. A strong shoulder turn increases clubhead speed. (The model does not say whether the turn should be a product of the shoulders, the torso, the hips, the legs,... Just that a strong turn powers the swing well.)
2. Wrist torque that helps release usually winds up hurting clubhead speed at impact. You may get higher clubhead speeds earlier in the downswing, but those speeds don't hit the ball; by the time of impact, the clubhead speed is lower than with no wrist torque at all.
3. Wrist torque that retards or delays release usually winds up increasing clubhead speed at impact. #2 and #3 are recognized as paradoxical, but they work time and time again on the computer -- and also on the driving range.
4. When it comes to a "pulse" of helping torque just before impact, there is no consensus. Jorgensen found there is some small advantage to be gained. Wishon believes it is nearly impossible for a real, live human being to achieve that gain. And White didn't even look at the question. (We will look at it a bit later.)

• Rotational speed. The faster the golfer rotates, the more the force.
• Wrist cock angle. The more acute the wrist cock angle, the more the centrifugal force is contributing to clubhead speed, by throwing the club outward. Conversely, the more the wrist cock is already released, the less the clubhead can be thrown outward (accelerated) by centrifugal force.

No wrist torque (the "standard swing") Release is driven only by centrifugal force in this swing.. Maximum acceleration is 60msec before impact. (The red-dot clubhead is the point of maximum acceleration.)

Positive (helping) wrist torque Maximum acceleration is early, 80msec before impact. Very little wrist cock is left late in the downswing, stealing centrifugal acceleration. The clubhead positions are closer together at impact, indicating less clubhead speed.

Negative (retarding) wrist torque Maximum acceleration is late, only 40msec before impact. Wrists stay cocked late into the downswing, encouraging centrifugal acceleration. The clubhead positions are farther apart, indicating more clubhead speed.

Tried It

• It is not a silver bullet. It only works if my fundamental swing is sound. Any faults in the basic swing seem to be magnified by the slap.
• If the slap is introduced early, some very bad results occur. The most common and worst result is a seriously left hit. The ball flight indicates a closed face. This makes some sense, since the slap includes a rotation of the club. Early slap means early rotation, which means rotated past square at impact.
• Even many of the good impacts were pulls or even pull-hooks. That means a closed face at impact.
• I started by thinking of it as a slap or throw with the right hand. Lee Comeaux has a video that describes the move as, "Right hand closest to the body starting the downswing. Right hand farthest from the body through impact." This was a reasonable visualization, and did help.
• Practicing with it for a while, my body was telling me that an energetic straightening of the right arm was the real driving force behind the motion. A little thought told me that both motions had the same effect on the double pendulum model; they added positive wrist torque. (See my article on the double pendulum and the right arm to see why.)

• Is it physics? We'll do some modeling and other investigation to find out why.
• Is it biomechanics or kinesiology? Sometimes a swing key has no good explanation in physics, but encourages other good things to happen in the swing. One example: "Accelerate through the ball." Physics says that acceleration makes no difference once the clubface reaches the ball. But experience shows that a body that expects to accelerate through the ball does a bunch of other things right.
• Is it the placebo effect -- or, more accurately, the "Hawthorne Effect"? This ain't just physics; it's human experience. Note that we need to treat any swing experiments as human factors experiments, not physics experiments. The Hawthorne effect comes from an experiment by Western Electric in the 1920s, where they changed things like the lighting in the Hawthorne, Illinois factory to see what effect it had on productivity. Turns out anything they did improved productivity. More light? Productivity went up. Less light? Productivity went up. The fact that they were changing things and watching results was more important than exactly what it was they were changing. The "takeaway" for golf: Consistent attention to one thing -- almost anything, as long as it's not actually detrimental -- is going to help your golf performance. It's called disciplined practice.

Do The Math

• 2 foot-pounds. Jorgensen used this number, and thought it was quite a lot. I'm not sure it's so big, but perhaps he's right.
• 5.7 foot-pounds. Rod White thought that 10% of the shoulder torque was kind of an upper limit on the wrist torque a golfer could apply. I tend to agree. The default shoulder torque for SwingPerfect is 57 foot-pounds, and 10% of that is 5.7 foot-pounds.
• 12 foot-pounds. Suppose the golfer were actually able to convert all the shoulder torque into arm-piston force (instead of triangle-turning force). This is clearly an upper bound on the wrist torque, and unrealistically high. But let's compute it just to see what could happen. I used a shoulder width of 24" (exactly 2 feet) and a maximum distance between the hand pressure points (using a 10-finger grip) of 5". 57 ft-lb divided by 2ft gives 28.5 pounds of force in the arm piston. Applied over a 5" grip spread, this is 12 foot-pounds of torque.

• Clubhead speed, in mph. (Black on white)
• Clubhead speed compared to standard swing, in percent. (Red on white)
• Wrist cock angle at impact, in degrees. (Black on yellow)

Suppose the golfer is exercising retarding torque for most of the downswing. We know this produces more clubhead speed. But... Would releasing this negative torque just before impact increase the clubhead speed further?

What It Doesn't Do

Shaft Bend

Straight shaft - If the shaft is straight, that means it is conveying no lateral force to the clubhead. The hands are not applying a wrist torque to the grip, neither to accelerate nor decelerated the clubhead. For the standard swing with freely hinging wrists, the shaft would find itself straight once the wrist cock angle "left the stop". So why is there shaft bend in almost every swing we see, and long after the wrist cock starts to release? The most important reasons are: Not many players keep their wrists as frictionless hinges. They will exert some torque, whether they are trying or not. Because the center of gravity of the clubhead is not in line with the centerline of the shaft, the centrifugal tug of the clubhead will bend the shaft a little bit. There is certainly bending early in the downswing, where the "stop" of the standard swing is applying torque. Some "rebound" from this initial bend may occur. But, if the wrists were truly hinging, then this effect would be small and short-lived; it would be long gone well before impact.

Bent backward - If wrist torque is accelerating the clubhead toward the ball, then the shaft will be bent backward. That is the only way that the spring of the shaft can apply a helping force to the clubhead. Remember, the force will be applied in a direction to straighten the shaft. So a shaft bent backward -- the clubhead trailing the grip -- is a sure indicator of a positive or helping wrist torque.

Bent forward - By the same reasoning, a forward shaft bend shows a negative, or retarding, wrist torque. Again, the force applied by the shaft is in the direction to straighten the shaft. The force applied to the clubhead by a forward-bending shaft is slowing the release of the clubhead. A little bit of forward bend in the vicinity of impact may be due to the clubhead's center of gravity. But that will seldom be as much as an inch of bend, and most swings have a lot more forward bend than that coming into impact.

How Right-Hand Slappers Bend The Shaft

Note: The shaft bend in some -- but not all -- of the following pictures may be an "optical illusion". Many digital cameras and camcorders suffer from a photographic distortion that may exaggerate shaft bend, or even create bend where there isn't any. I have tried to point out the pictures where this might be a problem. To understand the problem yourself, read my article on Focal Plane Distortion.

Lee starts down with the wrists well-cocked.

The backward bend of the shaft at this point of the swing is typical, and represents the "stop" that keeps the wrist cock from collapsing inward.

Here centrifugal force has taken over, and is trying to uncock the wrists. Lee claims to be doing a right-hand push at this point, but the shaft bend clearly indicates that the hands are actually opposing the uncocking, not causing it. (In all likelihood, this picture is not affected by focal plane distortion. It reflects what the shaft is actually doing.)

At this point, the ball is gone. With most swings I've observed, the shaft would be bent backward, at least near the tip, in reaction to impact with the ball. The fact that Lee's shaft is still bent well forward suggests that the clubhead came into impact bent well forward -- with the clubhead's considerable momentum still pulling the hands through -- and impact caused only partial recovery. (The forward shaft bend in this picture may well be exaggerated or even caused by focal plane distortion.)

Fairly late in the downswing, the bright steel shaft is clearly bent forward. If Hogan was able to "hit the ball hard with both hands", it kicked in later than this. Our analysis says that is too late to help clubhead speed measurably.

It is hard to see the shaft in this frame; remember what I said about video quality from Hogan's heyday. But, if you can make out the blur that is the shaft, you can see it is still bent forward. No hand-hit working here, only a few milliseconds before impact.

If you want a couple more pictures of shaft bend, I had two of Lee Comeaux's students, Rock (left) and Karl. I have removed the picture of Karl, because the focal plane distortion was so large it was hard to tell what the shaft was doing. In Rock's case though, there is a clear forward bend even with the fast shutter. The picture was a couple of milliseconds before impact. Any hand hit he can introduce after this does not have enough time to change the clubhead speed. Both Rock and karl showed very good swings, and they have a lot of power. Both these golfers credit Lee Comeaux with adding power to their game. But we see here that, whatever is causing their improvement, it is not because the right hand is pushing the clubhead through impact. Physics says that just isn't happening.

How Top Golfers Bend The Shaft We have to be careful about using photography to measure shaft bend. There is, of course, focal plane distortion; we've already mentioned that. It is also worth noting that the best measurements of what we are looking for come with the camera perpendicular to the swing plane. You can draw reasonable conclusions from less careful face-on views, but for accurate measurement the position of the camera is important. But there are better ways to measure it. In the 1990s, TrueTemper had an instrument they called ShaftLab, which measured shaft bend directly. They attached strain gauges to the shaft of an actual club, and transmitted to a computer samples of the shaft bend during the swing. I have an article describing in detail what we can learn from the ShaftLab data published by TrueTemper. Let's review one specific lesson: the fact that the shaft is always bent forward at impact, and for tens of milliseconds before impact. Here is a scatter plot for shaft bend at impact; it reflects the swings of nine PGA Tour pros from the 1990s. Impact always has leading and toe-down bend. Moreover, it is leading by more than can be explained just from centrifugal bending -- that is, radial acceleration pulling on the center of gravity (CG) of the clubhead. There is bending due to dynamic forces of the swing. In fact, a leading bend at impact says that the head is pulling the hands through, so the hands must be exerting torque that resists the release of the club. If the hands were exerting releasing torque, then all those dots would show lagging bend, or at least be positioned to the left of the white "CG" line.

For those who feel that Long Drive competitions change the rules, physics included, here's Jamie Sadlowski just before impact. (Jamie won the ReMax World Championship the past two years running, and won handily.) Yes, his shaft is clearly bent forward, telling us he gets his distance from his huge body turn in the backswing, inhuman wrist cock, and holding that wrist cock very late into his downswing -- and not from forearm or hand strength driving the clubhead through the ball. Likewise for Tiger Woods, as if there were any doubt. (Both these pictures are probably unaffected by focal plane distortion. The shaft bend is real. The Sadlowski picture was taken by Rick Malm using a technique designed to minimize distortion. The technique is explained in the article. The picture of Tiger is a frame from the super-slow-motion video used in a well-known Nike ad a few years ago; the camera scan rate is very fast, which minimizes distortion.)

Why?

In order to test this theory, we need to measure the speed the hands can rotate a club without the load of a club's moment of inertia. Today's digital cameras make video the most convenient way to measure such speeds. So I made a quick video. Click on the photo at the right to view it. I took a short length of PVC plastic pipe, about the diameter of a golf grip. I did a 90º back-and-forth whipping of this baton as fast as I could, simulating the attempt of the hands to uncock and recock the wrists. Because the baton is short and light, it offers little resistance to the turning, so I could measure what the hands would do moving unconstrained at full speed. (An engineer would say that the baton's moment of inertia is negligible compared to that of a golf club.) I examined the video in a movie editor that could identify frame times to within 10msec. (Actually that is more precise than the video itself; the inter-frame period of my camera is 33msec, so I would not trust an answer to be more precise than that.) What I discovered was that it took at least 150msec to make the move of a nearly 90º release. With a ten-finger grip, it was more like 200msec. True, others may be able to make a quicker move than I, and perhaps the back-and-forth is not as fast as a single forward slap (though I suspect it is). So we may do better, but we are not likely to see an improvement to twice that speed. Why do I mention twice the speed? Let's remember that, when we looked at the "standard swing" the same change of wrist angle occurred in just 70msec. That's just inertial acceleration, no wrist torque (no hand hit) at all. So the hands would have to move more than twice the speed they do, just to keep up with what the clubhead is doing to pull the hands around. In order to actually push the clubhead (rather than be pulled by it) the hands would have to go even faster than that. In fact, this test was tried by Rick Malm using better cameras and swing analysis software. (One of the lovely things about science is that it invites others to validate or disprove results by doing their own testing.) In addition to being a scientist and researcher, Rick teaches speed training for golf, so if anybody can demonstrate "fast hands" it should be Rick. Rick was able to create a 90º release using wrist torque much faster than I could. Depending on the details of the experiment, it took between 60 and 83msec. That is roughly the same as the 70msec it takes for inertial release. So Rick can possibly keep the shaft from bending forward, but even he would not be able to apply much "slap" to the head to increase clubhead speed. Conclusion: the clubhead is pulling the hands around as fast or faster than the hands can move under their own muscle power. So the hands just can't keep up well enough to apply a hit that could increase clubhead speed.

What It Probably Does

1. Something about the motion encourages some other good habit. This might result in more shoulder torque or a later release, or perhaps something else.
2. Following up on the first point, it might be that focusing on forcing a 90º release just before impact causes the golfer to hold the 90º lag until just before impact. That synchronizes the release to when it should be, and perhaps causes the golfer to exercise negative wrist torque earlier, in order to hold the lag until very late in the downswing.
3. A related possibility: Anybody who has played ball-and-stick sports other than golf has learned to depend on hand action to supply power. You need it in baseball, stickball (I grew up in the Bronx), tennis, etc. For someone like that, it's very hard to train your body and your subconscious to swing through impact with passive hands (the "standard swing"). If you use a late right-hand slap it might not help, but at least it won't hurt if it's late enough. So the slap swing acts as permission to let the hands get involved, in the least harmful way. If you had been allowing the hands to get in the way by releasing early, then the slap move might cure the problem. If this is the answer, the slap move is not so much a powerful move as an antidote to something you are doing that loses power.
4. An aggressive move through the ball -- like the slap -- might be encouraging a strong, committed follow-through from a golfer who normally gives up the swing after impact. (That is sometimes a problem of mine, but not so much since I started using the slap motion.)
5. Or it might be something completely different. Lee's swing involves a lot more than just the right-hand slap, and those who have been practicing everything Lee teaches report big improvements. I started out suspecting his other advice was in support of the slap, and didn't get very deeply into them. But I have talked with Lee, and there are lots of other things he teaches that could have value in their own right. So maybe one or more of these, and not the right hand slap in the impact area, is responsible for the improvement.

Summary

• According to physics studies using the double pendulum model, it was determined that small improvements in clubhead speed could indeed be achieved by adding helping wrist torque late in the downswing. But it has to be added about 70 milliseconds before impact; any earlier hurts clubhead speed more than it helps, and any later and the force isn't there long enough to have a significant effect on clubhead speed. These facts have been reported by previous investigators and confirmed by our analysis.
• We looked at frames of videos of golfers who claim to use a right-hand hit. Wherever we saw the shaft just before impact, it was always bent forward. That means that, whether the golfer thought so or not, the slap was not applying any accelerating force to the clubhead.
• We also looked at video frames and ShaftLab traces of PGA Tour pros and Long Drive competitors. They also showed a forward bend, meaning a resisting torque rather than an assisting torque.
• The reason would appear to be that the grip is rotating too fast approaching impact, due solely to centrifugal acceleration. The golfer's hands cannot move fast enough to catch up to the grip and apply pressure to it.