Instruction
Dynamic loft, angle of attack and your launch angle
I want you to remember way back to when launch monitors first became commercially available and what they actually measured. My first monitor showed me club speed, ball speed, launch angle, spin rate, carry distance and smash factor. That was it.
Such data is pretty basic by today’s standards, and as time has progressed and we’ve come to understand more about the club and ball interaction. I want to introduce you to two other terms that you need to understand and their efforts to control your ball’s initial launch angle: dynamic loft and angle of attack.
We’ll examine the data given to us by the old launch monitor and how these two new data points will help us to better understand what is going on in more detail.
As we examine the driver swing of a tour player friend of mine, I want to show you what the old launch monitor would have told me.
- Club Speed: 110 mph
- Ball Speed: 162.4 mph
- Smash Factor: 1.48
- Spin Rate: 2629 rpm
- Launch Angle: 11.9 degrees
- Carry: 268 yards
Based on this information, all I could tell this player with the old launch monitor is that we need to get his launch angle up a touch. But I really wouldn’t know why it was too low until years later when launch monitors like Trackman and FlightScope became available. They give me two other vital pieces of the puzzle: dynamic loft and angle of attack.
Since we now know that the launch angle is too low, the real question is why? Based on information given to us Trackman, we now understand that launch angle is comprised of two factors:
- Angle of Attack: The vertical (up and down) angle the club is moving on during impact.
- Dynamic Loft: The loft angle of the club at impact.
Factor in the following numbers for this shot:
- Launch Angle: 11.9 degrees
- Dynamic Loft: 13.5 degrees
- Angle of Attack: 2.8 degrees
Understanding that dynamic loft is 85 percent of your ball’s launch angle and angle of attack is 15 percent of your ball’s launch angle, we now see that the dynamic loft of this shot hit was a touch too low.
- Dynamic Loft: 85 percent of 13.5 degrees is 11.47 degrees.
- Angle of Attack: 15 percent of 2.8 degrees is 0.42 degrees.
Add those numbers up and you get 11.89 degrees for your launch angle.
Knowing this simple math can really help you to fine tune your ball’s launch angle, and it is now easy for me the teacher to understand exactly what piece of the puzzle is causing your launch angle issues. It might be your dynamic loft, it could be your angle of attack or it could be both!
Knowing all of the information help me make a more educated decision regarding your fitting. So the next time you have a fitting and the fitter says your launch angle is too high or too low, remember these two factors and you will have a better understanding of just why that is.
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Instruction
Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?
Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!
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Instruction
The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic
My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.
As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.
The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.
Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:
Mis-aligned hands
By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.
The position of the grip in the upper/left hand
I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.
To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.
Too much lower (right) hand on the club
It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.
Gripping too tightly
Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.
So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
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Instruction
Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!
Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?
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Golfinghound
Oct 3, 2014 at 6:10 pm
Hi Tom, Just found this article – very illuminating. Thanks for the clear description. One question i had was – given the Launch Angle and the Static Loft of the driver, couldn’t you just calculate the Dynamic Loft(DL) and the AoA ?
Since
DL = Static Loft + AoA
&
Launch Angle = 85% of DL + 15% of AoA
You already know the launch angle from the old trackman data and the static loft on the club. So you now have 2 equations with 2 unknown variables, which should be easy to solve to get the values of DL and AoA. You dont need the fancy new trackman numbers.
What am i missing ?
cheers
U
Chuck
Apr 26, 2014 at 10:26 am
I don’t know about anybody else, but I am so grateful for straight, solid, plain-English, authoritative writing like this.
Thank you Tom.
I am as much of an equipment junkie as the next guy at GolfWRX. “Tour only” could be my middle name. But if I’ve learned anything in the era of internet-fueled golf equipment fanaticism, it is that “Lessons are the best equipment you can buy.”
tom stickney
Apr 26, 2014 at 10:41 pm
Thank you very much for your comments….I try to do my best to make things easier to understand.
BG
Apr 24, 2014 at 9:37 am
So how do you use this to fit a club?
Tom Stickney
Apr 24, 2014 at 10:09 am
The correlation of dl and your aoa controlls your launch angle. All if these factors influence spin rate, carry, landing angle, and roll…which are the keys to your distance output.
AP
Apr 23, 2014 at 3:04 pm
If your angle of attack increases, won’t your dynamic loft increase as a byproduct too?
tom stickney
Apr 23, 2014 at 4:51 pm
Not always…
Mekong
Apr 22, 2014 at 1:01 am
Hi tom
What is the optimum numbers for spin rate, landing angle, launch angle?
Thanks tom
Tom Stickney
Apr 22, 2014 at 1:05 am
All depends on your ball speed…
Mike
Apr 22, 2014 at 1:35 pm
Can you expand on this answer? For example, would optimum stats for someone with 154 to 157 avg driver ball speed be very different from the example dissected in your article?
Thank you. Very cool article.
Mekong
Apr 22, 2014 at 12:58 am
Hi tom
How can i compute the spin rate and angle of descent?
Thanks tom
Tom Stickney
Apr 22, 2014 at 1:07 am
You need a fitting with someone whom uses a TrackMan, flightscope wyc.
Eric
Apr 21, 2014 at 8:03 pm
“Understanding that dynamic loft is 85 percent of your ball’s launch angle and angle of attack is 15 percent of your ball’s launch angle”
Do you mean…?
“Understanding that launch angle is the sum of 85 percent dynamic loft and 15 percent of angle of attack”
Tom Stickney
Apr 22, 2014 at 1:08 am
Yes
Brian
Jan 31, 2024 at 1:13 pm
I tested the AOA calculation with Trackman’s driver fitting chart: total optimizer
at the club speed of 105 with a launch angle of 11.7 then AOA should be 1.755 degrees where the chart shows 5 degrees
What am I missing as this is significant?
mike wakes
Feb 9, 2018 at 10:18 am
Eric; I’am on your side. either tom’s not listening or he does not understand the math. Tom,this is good stuff.
MHendon
Apr 21, 2014 at 4:27 pm
That’s some pretty slow club head speed for a 6’4″ tour pro.
tom stickney
Apr 21, 2014 at 6:09 pm
Always in the top 20 of the ball striking category…works for him…never the longest but boy can he hit it! Shot 64 on the last day of qschool to get his PGA Tour Card on the number at PGA West two years ago. Good dude.
JJ
Apr 22, 2014 at 12:34 am
@MHendon
Typical “WRX” pro douche comment with your XX 118mph SS. He’s on tour, stick to your day job bud.
tom stickney
Apr 21, 2014 at 12:55 pm
The driver is 85/15. The irons are 75/25. Testing done by Trackman.
Gary McCormick
Apr 21, 2014 at 10:47 am
Where does the 85/15 split for dynamic loft/angle of attack come from? Is it always the same?