A lot of good players have a "two burst" swing, where the shaft is seriously bent in this part of the swing, and where something similar happens around impact. It's related to lag pressure.
The combination of lag pressure excerted by right hand - and rope handling pull from the left arm - will put a significant amoung of Newtonian moment to the grip end of the club. (Force x length). And the work from this moment stresses and bends the shaft. And increase the clubhead sped as well. AND ENERGY IS STORED.
Image 2:
While it is biomechanical possible to maintain the clubhead speed through impact it is impossible to maintain the brute force moment from image 1 all the way through. And when the moment decreases , the shaft starts to release. And since the club is a highly resonant system with moderate inner damping, the club will now whip forward - as it does here. This is not an ideal occurence since it means that stored energy is released long before impact. It is kind of similar to the dreaded throwaway. But given how we are built it is perhaps unavoidable in a swing that starts hard and fast down.
Image 3:
Strange things may happen to the shaft at impact. But it seems to me like this player has a two-burst swing. That he was reloading the shaft. Or at least was trying to. But the forward bend of the bottom half of the shaft will work against his effort of adding an extra ooomph at impact.
All this shaft bending and releasing business is about stored energy. If the shaft doesn't fit the swing, chances are that the energy stored in the shaft is released at the wrong moment. Further, the s- shape of the shaft just before impact here suggests there's no chance that all the stored energy will be used to send the ball far away. The shaft seems to be loaded and unloaded at the same time at impact.
I believe this is the kind of image that proves that the shaft manufacturers still have an interesting challenge in securing a proper and controlled sequence of energy storage and release through the swing.
Other people have a "one burst" swing, where the moment applied at the club shaft increases gradually through impact. But we aren't able to load the shaft as much at impact and therefore the biggest shaft bends are usually seen in strokes like image 1-3 with a big wrist cock and aggressive down swing.
And then some people are using an almost pure rope handling technique throughout without any of these shaft loading bursts. In addition to the extensive shaft loading we see above, the rope is pulling the center of gravity. And since this isn't on the shaft axis it will cause shaft bend as well. In which case the mechanical properties of the shaft will have less influence on distance, but perhaps on direction.
The stiffness of the shaft has a profound influence of the timing of the shaft rebound. A stiff shaft will release faster than a whippy shaft, and every player that applies some moment to the shaft (lag pressure) at impact would want a shaft that releases in juust the right moment.
Very interesting and insightful post.
I took these pictures of Yoda and remember the procedure he was displaying. Ill leave it to Yoda to discuss in full but your observations are
very perceptive. He was laying it on real hard in release with an active right arm. The pictures dont reveal what the naked eye saw and ears heard. Like a war on the practice field.
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