Left Wrist Flexion

[blugold]

Because it's not golf outside season, it's stay inside and rabbit hole my own swing and videos.

This Gankas video is playing my mind because I always thought I had to have some wrist cock. Always fought a slice too.

 

[WILDTHING]

Bowing the wrist opens the clubface relative to ball-target line in the late downswing.

At the top of the backswing bowing the wrist closes the clubface relative to the swing plane , not closes it relative to the club path.

Bowing the lead wrist also causes your grip pressure to weaken, so too much could also mean loss of control of the grip due to other forces that come into play during the golf swing. Remember that approaching impact for a full driver swing you will feel 100 lbs forces acting via your hands/fingers.

You don't need to understand the video below explaining the muscular physiology as to why your grip pressure loosens when the wrist is bowed, just try it yourself.

 

[blugold]

Bowing the wrist opens the clubface relative to ball-target line in the late downswing.

At the top of the backswing bowing the wrist closes the clubface relative to the swing plane , not closes it relative to the club path.

I don't think either of these things are bad.

 

[wadesworld]

I tend to cup the wrist by default, so the feeling of flexion gets me into a flat wrist. I'm not actually getting my wrist bowed, but it feels that way.

 

[WILDTHING]

I don't think either of these things are bad.

Bowing the wrist might be a requirement to keep the club on the swing plane as the clubface is closed by the rotation of the lead forearm , but I don't think by itself will necessarily assist clubface closure.

Actually, my statement above might be wrong as I was just using an old email I received from Dave Tutelman , which on reflection, I'm not fully in agreement.
I've just found the email and it does make sense but only from P6 (club horizontal in downswing).


Dave Tutelman email extract:

Time for a real-life exercise. Grab a club and assume the 90° lag position. The clubface is in the swing plane. It has to square up --rotate 90° around the shaft -- by the time it gets to impact.

Now move to P6 or a little beyond it -- say 45° of lag still there. With a flat wrist and all the release in radial-to-ulnar motion, the face is still in-plane. BUT IT SHOULD NOT BE! It should be squaring up. If we assume it squares up about the same rate as lag is lost (a reasonable assumption), the face should be 45° to the swing plane. Try making that happen, but ONLY WITH SUPINATION. Notice how the club rotates out of plane. Way above the plane. The only way to get the club back in plane and still satisfy 45° lag and 45° face closure is to add wrist flexion. Go ahead. Do it. Try it. (I may make a video of this some day, but not in time for our discussion.)

Is that a complicated movement for a golfer to make? Well it would be if the golfer were making it consciously and/or making it with wrist torque. But the inertial forces that make the swing plane stable just create that flexion. Why? Because there is nowhere else for the wrist to go if inertial forces are both releasing the lag and keeping the club in-plane -- and they are.

This is something that too many mathematical models of the swing ignore. I suspect they've gotten a lot better by now. But early models had the problem of not recognizing the need for this degree of freedom. And it is why the measurements show that substantial wrist flexion occurs before it begins to turn to extension. It must happen to allow the club to stay in-plane while lag releases and the clubface squares up.

-----------------------

The physics , if anyone is interested, to explain why the above happens is in the link below.


http://tutelman.com/golf/swing/stability.php