Opinion & Analysis

Clark: Understanding The D Plane

Published

12 years ago

Jun 17, 2012

There is an ancient proverb which says: “May you live in interesting times.”

In golf instruction these are THE most interesting times. Like any other discipline we have come of age thanks to technology; things like radar and 3D capture systems have taken much of the guesswork out and replaced it with immutable laws of physics. We started out in the “dark ages” of golf instruction using only our eyes. We, the instructors, would watch the flight of the golf ball and infer from it what the golf club might have done to cause a shot. We helped some people but there was still something missing. Then came the video era and we got at least a better look at what the body was doing in the swing, but a certain ambiguity still surrounded impact. Now we have come pretty much full circle to the enlightenment era of Doppler Radar. This article deals with some of the new findings and how the data debunks certain long held myths.

If you are a fan of this or any of the other popular golf forums, you most certainly have heard of something called the D Plane. The D Plane was popularized by Theodore Jorgenson in his seminal work “The Physics of Golf” back in 1999. He used the term D Plane because it “described” the collision of the golf club and golf ball. His findings were somewhat controversial because he took issue with prevailing ball flight and impact theories; namely the initial direction of the golf ball and the role of the club face, path and angle of attack at impact. So let’s look into the D Plane and explain it in practical terms that you can understand and use to help your game.

D Plane definition — The wedge shaped plane between two three-dimensional directions:

The club head direction, which is a combination of the path AND the angle of attack; and
The club face orientation, which is a combination of dynamic loft and face angle.

Interpretation: The golf club swings up, down, reaches the very bottom of its arc, and travels back up. Because we all swing on an inclined plane (somewhere between 45 and 65 degrees) when the club is traveling down it is NOT swinging at our target (assuming we are aimed parallel left of our target line). It is in fact swinging to the right of the target. And when the club is swinging up, it is actually swinging to the left of the target (stand up and try it.) The only point in the entire arc of the swing where the golf club is swinging at our aim point is at the very bottom of the swing arc, what we call low point.

This might be a better way to understand it: If the golf club was swung on an entirely vertical plane (90 degrees) then ALL points in the swing, up and down, would be swinging at the target. This is physically impossible on an incline. So with that in mind, we learn something critical about the “true path: of the swing. It is not simply directional. It is a combination of the up and down in conjunction with the left and right. This is why video can NEVER show the true path. Video is a 2-dimensional representation of a 3-dimensional motion! The knowledge of this, thanks to Trackman, FlightScope, etc., has all but revolutionized teaching.

Here’s why…

Technically you cannot hit a straight shot with an in-to-in path aimed at the target. The more DOWN you swing, the more you need to aim or swing left. The more UP you swing (driver), the more you need to swing or aim right. It’s that simple. Because remember: If you hit the golf ball BEFORE you reach low point, which of course you should on any shot on the ground, at impact your path is in-to-out. This will give you a club face that is closed RELATIVE to the path, and curve the golf ball to the left (for a right handed player.) And if you hit a golf shot AFTER low point you are swinging to the left. This gives you a face that is open RELATIVE to the path. It is not the position of the club face relative to the target but RELATIVE TO THE PATH that gives the shot its shape. This explains quite categorically how a square face draw/hook or a square face fade/slice can be hit. Very often you can look at high speed video, see the face DEAD SQUARE to the target, and watch the ball curve. Maddening!

Finally all of the information above is based on hitting the golf ball on the center of the face (Which is rare by the way). Toe hits, heel hits, high or low on the face contact, twist the golf club. Here’s where the beauty of modern golf clubs comes into play. We have what is known as horizontal gear effect, which actually helps straighten the flight of the golf ball, when hit off center. When the toe of the golf club strikes the ball, the clubface opens, and when the heel of the club strikes the ball, the face actually closes. But … here is the where the integrated help I referred to comes into play: The toe hits have hook spin and the heel hits have fade spin. So … on a toe hit the flight actually starts to the right (open face) and curving a little back to the left. And on a heel hit, we get flight beginning to the left (closed face) and curving back to the right. So here we actually observe open face hooks and closed face slices! A real true draw is hit with a slightly OPEN face with a path from the inside. And a true fade is hit with a slightly closed face and a path well outside that face. Horizontal gear effect is more built more into woods than irons, but irons have it as well. And you think this is isn’t a crazy game!

It’s difficult to understand in words but there are plenty of D Plane videos on the net, and if you like I’ll do one here on the GOLFWRX forum as well.

Feel free to send a swing video to my Facebook page and I will do my best to give you my feedback.

Click here for more discussion in the ‘Instruction & Academy” forum.

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19th Hole

Vincenzi’s 2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans betting preview

Published

1 day ago

Apr 22, 2024

Matt Vincenzi

The PGA TOUR heads to New Orleans to play the 2023 Zurich Classic of New Orleans. In a welcome change from the usual stroke play, the Zurich Classic is a team event. On Thursday and Saturday, the teams play best ball, and on Friday and Sunday the teams play alternate shot.

TPC Louisiana is a par 72 that measures 7,425 yards. The course features some short par 4s and plenty of water and bunkers, which makes for a lot of exciting risk/reward scenarios for competitors. Pete Dye designed the course in 2004 specifically for the Zurich Classic, although the event didn’t make its debut until 2007 because of Hurricane Katrina.

Coming off of the Masters and a signature event in consecutive weeks, the field this week is a step down, and understandably so. Many of the world’s top players will be using this time to rest after a busy stretch.

However, there are some interesting teams this season with some stars making surprise appearances in the team event. Some notable teams include Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, Collin Morikawa and Kurt Kitayama, Will Zalatoris and Sahith Theegala as well as a few Canadian teams, Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin and Taylor Pendrith and Corey Conners.

Past Winners at TPC Louisiana

2023: Riley/Hardy (-30)
2022: Cantlay/Schauffele (-29)
2021: Leishman/Smith (-20)
2019: Palmer/Rahm (-26)
2018: Horschel/Piercy (-22)
2017: Blixt/Smith (-27)

2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans Picks

Tom Hoge/Maverick McNealy +2500 (DraftKings)

Tom Hoge is coming off of a solid T18 finish at the RBC Heritage and finished T13 at last year’s Zurich Classic alongside Harris English.

This season, Hoge is having one of his best years on Tour in terms of Strokes Gained: Approach. In his last 24 rounds, the only player to top him on the category is Scottie Scheffler. Hoge has been solid on Pete Dye designs, ranking 28th in the field over his past 36 rounds.

McNealy is also having a solid season. He’s finished T6 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and T9 at the PLAYERS Championship. He recently started working with world renowned swing coach, Butch Harmon, and its seemingly paid dividends in 2024.

Keith Mitchell/Joel Dahmen +4000 (DraftKings)

Keith Mitchell is having a fantastic season, finishing in the top-20 of five of his past seven starts on Tour. Most recently, Mitchell finished T14 at the Valero Texas Open and gained a whopping 6.0 strokes off the tee. He finished 6th at last year’s Zurich Classic.

Joel Dahmen is having a resurgent year and has been dialed in with his irons. He also has a T11 finish at the PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass which is another Pete Dye track. With Mitchell’s length and Dahmen’s ability to put it close with his short irons, the Mitchell/Dahmen combination will be dangerous this week.

Taylor Moore/Matt NeSmith +6500 (DraftKings)

Taylor Moore has quickly developed into one of the more consistent players on Tour. He’s finished in the top-20 in three of his past four starts, including a very impressive showing at The Masters, finishing T20. He’s also finished T4 at this event in consecutive seasons alongside Matt NeSmith.

NeSmith isn’t having a great 2024, but has seemed to elevate his game in this format. He finished T26 at Pete Dye’s TPC Sawgrass, which gives the 30-year-old something to build off of. NeSmith is also a great putter on Bermudagrass, which could help elevate Moore’s ball striking prowess.

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19th Hole

Vincenzi’s 2024 LIV Adelaide betting preview: Cam Smith ready for big week down under

Published

1 day ago

Apr 22, 2024

Matt Vincenzi

After having four of the top twelve players on the leaderboard at The Masters, LIV Golf is set for their fifth event of the season: LIV Adelaide.

For both LIV fans and golf fans in Australia, LIV Adelaide is one of the most anticipated events of the year. With 35,000 people expected to attend each day of the tournament, the Grange Golf Club will be crawling with fans who are passionate about the sport of golf. The 12th hole, better known as “the watering hole”, is sure to have the rowdiest of the fans cheering after a long day of drinking some Leishman Lager.

The Grange Golf Club is a par-72 that measures 6,946 yards. The course features minimal resistance, as golfers went extremely low last season. In 2023, Talor Gooch shot consecutive rounds of 62 on Thursday and Friday, giving himself a gigantic cushion heading into championship Sunday. Things got tight for a while, but in the end, the Oklahoma State product was able to hold off The Crushers’ Anirban Lahiri for a three-shot victory.

The Four Aces won the team competition with the Range Goats finishing second.

*All Images Courtesy of LIV Golf*

Past Winners at LIV Adelaide

2023: Talor Gooch (-19)

Stat Leaders Through LIV Miami

Green in Regulation

Richard Bland
Jon Rahm
Paul Casey

Fairways Hit

Abraham Ancer
Graeme McDowell
Henrik Stenson

Driving Distance

Bryson DeChambeau
Joaquin Niemann
Dean Burmester

Putting

Cameron Smith
Louis Oosthuizen
Matt Jones

2024 LIV Adelaide Picks

Cameron Smith +1400 (DraftKings)

When I pulled up the odds for LIV Adelaide, I was more than a little surprised to see multiple golfers listed ahead of Cameron Smith on the betting board. A few starts ago, Cam finished runner-up at LIV Hong Kong, which is a golf course that absolutely suits his eye. Augusta National in another course that Smith could roll out of bed and finish in the top-ten at, and he did so two weeks ago at The Masters, finishing T6.

At Augusta, he gained strokes on the field on approach, off the tee (slightly), and of course, around the green and putting. Smith able to get in the mix at a major championship despite coming into the week feeling under the weather tells me that his game is once again rounding into form.

The Grange Golf Club is another course that undoubtedly suits the Australian. Smith is obviously incredibly comfortable playing in front of the Aussie faithful and has won three Australian PGA Championship’s. The course is very short and will allow Smith to play conservative off the tee, mitigating his most glaring weakness. With birdies available all over the golf course, there’s a chance the event turns into a putting contest, and there’s no one on the planet I’d rather have in one of those than Cam Smith.

Louis Oosthuizen +2200 (DraftKings)

Louis Oosthuizen has simply been one of the best players on LIV in the 2024 seas0n. The South African has finished in the top-10 on the LIV leaderboard in three of his five starts, with his best coming in Jeddah, where he finished T2. Perhaps more impressively, Oosthuizen finished T7 at LIV Miami, which took place at Doral’s “Blue Monster”, an absolutely massive golf course. Given that Louis is on the shorter side in terms of distance off the tee, his ability to play well in Miami shows how dialed he is with the irons this season.

In addition to the LIV finishes, Oosthuizen won back-to-back starts on the DP World Tour in December at the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the Mauritus Open. He also finished runner-up at the end of February in the International Series Oman. The 41-year-old has been one of the most consistent performers of 2024, regardless of tour.

For the season, Louis ranks 4th on LIV in birdies made, T9 in fairways hit and first in putting. He ranks 32nd in driving distance, but that won’t be an issue at this short course. Last season, he finished T11 at the event, but was in decent position going into the final round but fell back after shooting 70 while the rest of the field went low. This season, Oosthuizen comes into the event in peak form, and the course should be a perfect fit for his smooth swing and hot putter this week.

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Opinion & Analysis

The Wedge Guy: What really makes a wedge work? Part 1

Published

5 days ago

Apr 18, 2024

Terry Koehler

Of all the clubs in our bags, wedges are almost always the simplest in construction and, therefore, the easiest to analyze what might make one work differently from another if you know what to look for.

Wedges are a lot less mysterious than drivers, of course, as the major brands are working with a lot of “pixie dust” inside these modern marvels. That’s carrying over more to irons now, with so many new models featuring internal multi-material technologies, and almost all of them having a “badge” or insert in the back to allow more complex graphics while hiding the actual distribution of mass.

But when it comes to wedges, most on the market today are still single pieces of molded steel, either cast or forged into that shape. So, if you look closely at where the mass is distributed, it’s pretty clear how that wedge is going to perform.

To start, because of their wider soles, the majority of the mass of almost any wedge is along the bottom third of the clubhead. So, the best wedge shots are always those hit between the 2nd and 5th grooves so that more mass is directly behind that impact. Elite tour professionals practice incessantly to learn to do that consistently, wearing out a spot about the size of a penny right there. If impact moves higher than that, the face is dramatically thinner, so smash factor is compromised significantly, which reduces the overall distance the ball will fly.

Every one of us, tour players included, knows that maddening shot that we feel a bit high on the face and it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s not your fault.

If your wedges show a wear pattern the size of a silver dollar, and centered above the 3rd or 4th groove, you are not getting anywhere near the same performance from shot to shot. Robot testing proves impact even two to three grooves higher in the face can cause distance loss of up to 35 to 55 feet with modern ‘tour design’ wedges.

In addition, as impact moves above the center of mass, the golf club principle of gear effect causes the ball to fly higher with less spin. Think of modern drivers for a minute. The “holy grail” of driving is high launch and low spin, and the driver engineers are pulling out all stops to get the mass as low in the clubhead as possible to optimize this combination.

Where is all the mass in your wedges? Low. So, disregarding the higher lofts, wedges “want” to launch the ball high with low spin – exactly the opposite of what good wedge play requires penetrating ball flight with high spin.

While almost all major brand wedges have begun putting a tiny bit more thickness in the top portion of the clubhead, conventional and modern ‘tour design’ wedges perform pretty much like they always have. Elite players learn to hit those crisp, spinny penetrating wedge shots by spending lots of practice time learning to consistently make contact low in the face.

So, what about grooves and face texture?

Grooves on any club can only do so much, and no one has any material advantage here. The USGA tightly defines what we manufacturers can do with grooves and face texture, and modern manufacturing techniques allow all of us to push those limits ever closer. And we all do. End of story.

Then there’s the topic of bounce and grinds, the most complex and confusing part of the wedge formula. Many top brands offer a complex array of sole configurations, all of them admittedly specialized to a particular kind of lie or turf conditions, and/or a particular divot pattern.

But if you don’t play the same turf all the time, and make the same size divot on every swing, how would you ever figure this out?

The only way is to take any wedge you are considering and play it a few rounds, hitting all the shots you face and observing the results. There’s simply no other way.

So, hopefully this will inspire a lively conversation in our comments section, and I’ll chime in to answer any questions you might have.

And next week, I’ll dive into the rest of the wedge formula. Yes, shafts, grips and specifications are essential, too.

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