RESEARCH ARTICLE


Golf Club Deflection Characteristics as a Function of the Swing Hub Path



Ryan S. McGinnis, Steven Nesbit*
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Lafayette College, Easton, PA, USA


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Creative Commons License
© 2010 S. McGinnis et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Lafayette College, Easton, PA, USA; Tel: 610 - 330 - 5446; Fax: 610 - 330 - 5905; E-mail: nesbits@lafayette.edu


Abstract

This study investigated the relationships between golfer hub path trajectories and interaction kinetics, and club behavior. An equation of motion describing a flexible golf club system was derived and solved to yield time and club position deflection behavior during the downswing. This equation was applied to three diverse subjects whose kinematic and kinetic information was used to drive the simulation. It was determined that there is a relationship between the timing of the maximum interaction torque and the increase in normal force applied to the club and club head deflections. Also, it appears that there is a correlation between degree of radius reduction directly before impact and shaft deflection behavior. The timing of both torque and normal force are directly related to changes in hub path radius thus the effect of hub path geometry on club deflection behavior is secondary. Based upon these findings, a method for fitting shafts to specific swing characteristics was developed that optimized predicted carry distance. These results are based upon limited subjects.

Keywords: Golf swing, shaft deflection, swing hub, computer modeling.