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In this analysis video, we're going to discuss the look of rate of closure.
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So I've had a couple of questions about Sasha McKenzie-Johnson Claire presentation regarding
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the look of rate of closure.
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So I wanted to just do a quick video to kind of put in a couple of thoughts and give you
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a way that you can have a better way of looking at rate of closure on video.
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So historically, or when a lot of guys have done is looked at two different points.
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So when the club is about parallel and the follow-through and when the club is about
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parallel and the down-twing and basically advocating a certain look here in the follow-through.
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Now these are, this is Phil Nicholson flip to a rightening golfer over here is Matt Kutcher.
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You can see that they've got the club face, you know, pointed, roughly in the same direction
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compared to the camera, golf balls started right of their target, so they were both kind
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of starting on a push trajectory.
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That means the club face is turned about the same amount between these two frames.
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Well, coming into impact, we're looking at their 3Ds of Matt Kutcher as one of the lower
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rate of closures and Phil Nicholson has one of the higher rate of closure.
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So this frame by itself doesn't give you enough to go off of.
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And there's a couple of reasons that that might happen.
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One would be looking at contact location, so when you're looking at, you know, where the golf
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balls hit on the face compared to the COG, that can cause some funky twisting looks in the
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follow-through.
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One other piece that might be relevant is in order to have a lower rate of closure at impact,
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often times golfers then are holding off or delaying the things that close the face.
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And so as a result, after impact, they have a rapid spike where a speed up in rate of closure,
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where oftentimes golfers who have a faster rate of closure at impact may have a look of a
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slower rate of closure after impact.
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And then lastly, the piece that we can't really tell from here is this is a 3D image,
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so we can look at the distance the club is away from where that T was.
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And often golfers who have the lower rate of closure have the later arc width.
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And so because their arms are extending more through the shot,
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and the club is essentially working away from their body,
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the club may be further away, even though it's at the same angle, therefore it traveled a greater
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distance and therefore it moved a little bit slower.
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But one of keys is okay, this is a hard position right here in order to really look at rate of closure.
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So where do we want to look? The classic other position that I've heard discussed is looking
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pretty much at when the club is parallel to the ground or shaft parallel right around here.
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And you will see that if we look back at that position.
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So probably close this to this frame here.
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You will see that there's enough of a difference here, right?
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The film Nicholson's club is pointing above the horizon.
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Matt Kooch's is already pointing down, so in order to get the club face to rotate a certain amount
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around the shaft, it's going to have to rotate less covering about the same distance, so it's
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going to move slower. But I would charge a challenge you to look even closer.
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Whether it's a foot before impact or basically it's close to impact as you can
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seeing how early they get the face pointed roughly at the golf ball.
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So you'll see with fill through this phase right through here, there's not a lot of club face rotation.
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Right through here, there's not a lot of club face rotation, so the club is still pointing well
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out to the right and then it's not until well down here that it starts to straighten.
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And it's straightening more from a result of straightening that right arm rather than
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twisting the club with the wrist. And when you're doing it more from straightening that arm,
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you're going to tend to reach that low or widest point sooner, which is going to decrease the
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resistance to twisting and therefore it's going to twist much higher.
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So looking before impact, you can see that roughly when the club is in front of the right foot,
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if it's still pelt pointing well out to the right, you're going to have a higher rate of closure.
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All right, so one of the better places to look at rate of closure is looking at the face on view.
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Actually one of the best is the overhead view, but that one's really hard to come by.
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Unless you have your own studio and have a fair amount of prose. So from the face on view,
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you can basically look at about how much of the club face you can see. And you'll see over here with
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fill, the club face really is apparent well into the downswing. So roughly when it's even with
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his trail foot, you can still see a fair amount of it. So now over here on the right, got matte
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couture and you'll see that by that right foot, it's really rotating and pointing more at the
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at the golf ball. So right about here where it's even with the right foot, you can see pretty much the
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whole face where here you can see a lot less of it. So he's already got it rotated towards the face
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or towards the golf ball. So then it's not going to have to rotate quite as much going into it.
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Fill on the other hand still has a fair amount of closing that he's going to have to do.
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And he does it really in those last few frames. So even though they get to a similar look of club face
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rotation at that follow through position, they got there in very different ways. You can also see
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from this view, you can see more of that with aspect where he's reaching the widest point of his
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swing sooner. So when the downline camera we're looking from this view here, club is going to reach
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about the same height as matte coutures would a little bit later. And that can also
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kind of skew the look of how much the club face is actually rotated. So when you're trying to
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analyze club face rate of closure, you want to look at it just before impact not after and sometimes
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down the line is a harder camera view to see rather than face on or overhead. Now here's a
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quick image to help with that idea of looking at the club after impact. Now these are amateurs hit
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on the swing vision and you'll see that when it's hit outside of the center of mass it's going to
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cause a fair amount of club face rotation. So if you were to take a look at the image right about there,
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you might say that that was held open and therefore be slower. But if you were to look at this image
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here it's still pointed fairly to the right so my guess is that it's higher and unfortunately
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a lot of the golf swings that have a higher rate of closure tend to have more of a toe miss
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and therefore it's going to skew the look of it after impact. This would be more of the
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vertical gear effect from hitting it really low on the face. So now here we have gymfurric,
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another lower rate of closure golfer and you'll see that he gets to a very different look here
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in the follow-through than that couture did but the rate of closure numbers are very similar.
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Now you can see that he gets the club through that key zone here pointing at the golf
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baller closer to the target pretty early. It's not pointed out to the right quite as much from this
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face on view. Again by the time he gets even with that right foot you'll see that the
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club is pointing more at the golf ball or more at the target so it's not going to have to rotate a
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ton through there. So I hope this helps you clarify the rate of closure discussion and how you can
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use video to identify you're definitely not going to be able to get a numeric range as far as how
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fast you're actually closing but you may be able to categorize yourself as more of a high rate
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low rate medium rate. So here's one last example. By looking at rate of closure in this way
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you'll be on the other hand why Jordan's beef has more of a medium rate of closure. He's not even
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really on the super low side even though he has that kind of hold off look in the follow-through
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that often gets attributed to a lower rate of closure. You can see that the club faces pointing a
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bit out to the right and not as much as fills not as low as furrix or kutcher. He's kind of more
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in the middle of the pack. From that face on view you can still see a bit of the club face
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as it approaches more that right foot and then it closes there on the way through. So by using
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a more of a scientific or critical eye hopefully you can understand a little bit better the
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rate of closure discussion.
