August 14, 2024 • 39 mins
In this episode, Dr. Paul Wood, Vice President of Engineering at Ping and President of the Golf Science Organization, discuss insights from the recent World Scientific Congress of Golf.
They delve into various research topics, including the physics of putting on sloping surfaces, technological advancements in measuring putting dynamics and the latest buzz in the research community.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
We're on a mission to help golfers from all over the world
achieve their goals by understanding what it actually
takes to play their best golf. We're talking with leading
instructors, researchers, and players themselves to find what
is actually working. Hey everyone, welcome back to
(00:25):
the podcast. It has literally been years
since I've posted a new episode on here, but we're back.
I don't know if we're back for good.
We're back for a little series of interviews, which I think you
will find interesting. The World Scientific Congress of
Golf just happened and I wanted to talk about some of the
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research that happened, some of what was there.
I wasn't able to attend personally, so I reached out to
some folks who presented and were there to share what they
found most interesting and some things we should check out.
So that's what we're going to hear.
And today we're sitting down with Doctor Paul Wood.
He is the VP of engineering at Ping, as well as the president
and chairman of the board of thegolf science organization that
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kind of runs this Congress. So it was great to get his take
on what happened, kind of some of the things that stuck out to
him. And here are some research that
he's involved with as well. That's what we're going to do
today on this episode and we'll have more to come.
So stay tuned to this podcast here for a bit.
Make sure to subscribe if you haven't.
Who knows, maybe we'll we'll kick back off with some some
(01:27):
interviews. I've got some ideas of series
and stuff, but we will see if ithappens.
If you're not following us over on YouTube, we've been really
active posting a bunch of great content, then doing some trips,
talking with some interesting folks about some interesting
ideas to play better golf. So make sure to go and check
that out. Other than that, I'm excited to
be back with this conversation. Hopefully you enjoy.
(01:49):
Let's get into it with Doctor Paul Wood.
All right, excited to sit down with Doctor Paul Wood from PING.
The World Scientific Congress ofGolf was just a week ago.
So he's going to break down someof the things that he thought
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were most interesting that he kind of remembers and stood out
from, from the time there. Paul, you're, you're at the PING
offices there now. You guys have a lab in England.
What's going on? What do you guys have going on?
Over there, we're actually righthere, probably a quarter mile
from where the conference was held, we're at Loughborough
University. This is just one of our little
offices, but we have a joint labwith the university there.
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I mean, that's part of why Loughborough chose to hold the
World Scientific Congress of golf is their big sports
university, depending on how youmeasure it, the maybe the
biggest small engineering team at a university anywhere in the
world. And we've had a pretty good
relationship with them, I'd say for about 15 years with a lot of
interns from their sports technology group funding PhDs
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and joint research. They have quite a lot of golf
experts on staff and so that we kind of solidified that
partnership a few years ago by having a lab here.
And it's not exclusively with love for there's other
universities around the UK that we work with and we do a lot of
work. The golf industry in the UK is
thriving. There's a ton of golf nerds just
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like there are in America and Canada and elsewhere in the
wild. So we, it's a small team.
We have just six based here and the mothership still in Phoenix.
But it's nice we we focus on more human performance, you
know, kind of athlete performance, you know, where the
the golfer meets the equipment and why humans get in the way
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around nice engineering and try to understand that better.
That's the main aim of the lab. Well, I'm sure we could do a few
podcasts on that, but but we better stick to the topic before
I I take us down any rabbit trails here.
So the Congress, I guess. So if people don't know there's
academics, there's yeah instructors as well, like coming
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up with ideas, doing a study andthat everyone comes and kind of
presents it and all talks about it together.
Is that the gist of of what happened?
Exactly. You know, I come from academia
and in academia conferences are,you know, ubiquitous.
You, you host a conference, people present their latest
work. Academics like argue about it.
That's, you know, that's where everyone meets and and talks
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about the latest research. The idea of the World Golf
Scientific Congress came from Alastair Cochran and Martin
Farley in the late 80s. The very first one was 1990s.
So we've been going for what's that a long time, 34 years?
Yeah, this was number 11. And the idea was to bring
together academics and practitioners.
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So maybe a little different to the average conference where
it's usually 99% academics. The idea of this one is there
are academics presenting their work, but there are also
coaches, practitioners, just people who are interested who
swap ideas and we host some morepractical workshops.
And so it's a it's a mixture of,you know, people from the
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equipment industry, people from academia who study golf coaches,
people from the PGA, you know, we had workshops from a
psychologist, a bio mechanics expert and the strength and
conditioning coach, for example.Are you covering a lot of
different things? But anything to do with sort of
the science of golf that's in scope for this conference?
Awesome. Well, let's get into the meat of
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it. I, I assume you attended a few
sessions. You're kind of like an attendee
yourself, kind of like taking some of this in.
What stood out to you? What was what were some of the
things that you remember here a week after?
Yeah. So there was a bunch.
So it's three whole days. So there's some really
interesting keynotes and maybe we'll, you know, we'll touch on
a couple of those people that, you know, some of the people
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watching or listening might haveheard of.
But there's a few interesting themes.
And maybe a good one to start with would be there were a
number of papers and presentations all on the topic
of how parts roll on sloping surfaces, which was kind of
interesting. So that probably was the biggest
single area of the whole conference that a ton of people
right now are doing research on.What happens when you're putting
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on a downhill slope, an uphill slope, the side of a side slope.
How does that change the physicsof the role of a part, maybe the
optimal conditions of the part, the optimal equipment for you?
So that was interesting to me. You know, there's always
something that's kind of a hot topic and I think this it was it
to me, it makes a lot of sense because the technology to
measure that stuff has come on in leaps and bounds in the last
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three or four years. So I don't think people suddenly
magically started asking, hey, Iwonder what happens to sloping
parts. It was now we have the ability
to answer some questions. There's obviously plenty of
outdoor potting greens with slopes that you can go out and
use, but often a way to measure parts on the green.
You know, you can maybe measure where it finishes with a tape
measure, but to actually measurehow's the ball slowing down,
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when's it skidding, when's it rolling?
Those things require a bit more sophisticated kit.
And one example of that is the called the quintic overhead
systems with the camera that sits overlooking the green,
either an indoor sloping green or an outdoor sloping green.
And it tracks the whole part andtells you what's the
deceleration on the ball? When does it go from skidding to
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rolling? When there's a what we call the
decay phase of the part, the last foot or two where the ball
starts to like meander. Is it just those last few
wobbles? And you a lot of golfers have
probably seen that right before it gets the whole, it just sort
of seems to take a little dive one way or the other.
That's called the decay phase. So that was fun for me watching
a number of people coming at it from different angles, you know,
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from whether it's just pure physics modeling and then using
the measurement tools to validate the model.
There was some dogs who built anapp where you can, you know, you
can program and I'll get them ona 2% download slot.
Well, how should I adjust my speed?
You know, what does that say? A 15 foot pot?
What is that effectively now youknow, 15 foot pot when you're
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downhill, a certain slot might be the equivalent of a 10 foot
pot. And how do you fast track
learning those skills? So as a goal for you don't have
to do it all by trial and error.You can get some help to learn
it quickly. I thought that was like a pretty
interesting part of the conference and to see and you
know, ladies, I don't know how in depth into the science you
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want to go over. There's some interesting stuff.
There's the, you know, you can calculate the coefficient of
friction basically as the ball is slowing down, how fast is it
slowing down or how you know how, how is that rate of
changing the speed? And you can calculate in a high
school textbook that coefficientof friction is a constant.
And you can you can teach a highschool student how to solve
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those equations and go right by if I take your part and it has
this speed to start with, you can plug in a cognition of
restitution and calculate how far it would roll.
Except in real life, that cognition of friction isn't
constant and changes across the part.
And it actually can increase or decrease on a downhill part in
interesting ways and grain on the green and how bubbly the
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green is and things like that can make a difference.
So it's it's some quite youth physics to understand that.
And it makes a difference to a golfer, right, Because two more
inches of roll might be the difference between a two-part
and a one part. So a couple of inches makes a
difference on a part which is fun.
So I'm guessing the the skid androll is very important to you
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guys as you're, you know, thinking about putter design.
Is there anything that you didn't know going into it as far
as like how it reacts with slopes that was that was
surprising or outside of kind ofwhat what you guys know?
Yeah, I think that's what I think the big thing is that that
coefficient of friction can actually increase during a part
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or decrease based on the specific conditions.
And that for Full disclosure, one of these papers presented
was was one of our engineers. So we had one of the papers, but
then there were a number of other papers of different
aspects that we hadn't tested that in the whole kind of adds
to our knowledge and at least corroborated the yeah, they were
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doing this test slightly different guys, but they saw
some of the same things as we did.
I think it's part of what makes putting difficult to pin down
because you would think based onjust the physics and what's
going on, you would think, well,I just, if I can just make the
ball start rolling as quick as possible and minimize skid, that
should be the best all the time because rolling is more
consistent than skidding. But in real life, it doesn't
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seem to quite play out that way.And we did some tests when you
presented a different paper on giving players higher lofted
butters and lower lofted Pottersand seeing how they react to
different slopes on the green. And it's not as simple as
actually the Potter that gets the ball rolling the quickest
goes in the hole better. Actually, there was some
evidence that a bit more loft can help players adjust the
different slopes more easily. You basically don't have to
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adjust quite as much, but uphillto a downhill or so that was a
good learning for us. I think as always, a research,
there's more to learn and one test doesn't prove anything.
So backing it up with more testsand I'm really understanding,
OK, if we poke at this a number of different ways, do we still
see the same effect? But.
Why do you think more aloft is potentially better?
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Yeah, I think so. In simplest terms, I think with
more loft you don't have to makeas big an adjustment to
different conditions on the green.
And to back up a little, at a previous World Scientific
Congress trying to think 2016, so quite a while ago now, there
was a paper presented on lookingat consistency of role using a
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pot of pendulum on flat greens. That kind of showed, if you
squint a little bit, that getting the ball rolling
quicker, at least in that condition led to more consistent
roll out. You know, so if you, if you use
a pendulum and you use a low lofted powder and get the ball
rolling quicker, then the balls are collecting in a smaller area
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down near the hole. And so people took that to go,
well, that must be better than right, Ball gets falling
quicker, more consistent. So we had a lot of our
engineers, they're going to build 0° lofted powders.
And actually none of them, I don't think kept it in play.
And the feedback was well on thecourse.
I get some weird results and it's quite hard to pin down
exactly what we had results and what caused you.
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But the reality is players are pretty good and go, OK, it's not
working. Maybe I don't know exactly why
it's not working, but it's not working.
And then we go back to, you know, they would go back to
using more loft. And I think this test we did,
making players adapt to different slopes and we showed
in those conditions where players are not getting into a
group and in the same part, but they're adapting the different
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slopes, they actually had betterdistance control with a bit more
loft and with a bit less. Interesting, was there anything
I'm always curious on like setupand swing changes based on
slope? Is anybody doing any research on
that of how how those things change?
I didn't see anything at the conference on that, but I'm sure
that people are looking at it and you know, interestingly,
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measuring setup can be notoriously tricky, right?
And you know, you can, you can see it right.
If you're a coach or you're a keen don't for, you know, you
can, you can have a keen eye andgo over that.
I can describe that setup. But actually then measuring
where are the feet in relation to the ball and how have you
aligned your body like that getsinto reasonably complicated
motion captures stuff. But I would bet that people are
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looking at that. It gets studied along the full
swing, but maybe not as much in putting.
Got it. Got it.
OK. So we got due to technology
improvements, we're able to lookmore at putting on slopes, skid
roll, friction, all that kind ofstuff is now getting more
measured, more documented. We're trying to figure out how
to best navigate all those thosethings now.
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Yeah. Cool.
What else? What else you got?
What's? A good one.
I think another one was quite ofa very different, I guess,
flavor, but an interesting There's quite a bit of stuff on
women in golf. It is a fact that women in golf
are strong minority, but it's also a fact that they're the
biggest growing segment in golf.And there are a lot more women
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coming into golf. And the percentage of golfers
who are female is growing from apretty low base.
And the reality is there's not aton of good research out there
that studies female golfers and how are they different to male
golfers? There's a lot of studies that,
hey, we studied 20 players and one of them was a female, right?
And you're not going to learn too much from studying one
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female. And so most studies tend to be
around male golfers. But there was a little section
of a conference and then there'salso a panel on specifically on
women's golf. And what can golf do to better
understand how women swing, whatwomen need.
You know, some of it was some ofit was more the bio mechanics,
some of it was the cultural side.
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And there's an interesting thing.
I mean, I spent my life studyingmore the, you know, how people
interact with equipment. But there's a whole section of
strength and conditioning and, you know, how would you tune
strength and conditioning for female golfers, which is
interesting and so right. But also some cultural stuff of
a lot of female golfers are hesitant to do strength and
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conditioning. And we had some women on that
panel kind of say, you know, yeah, that's that's the real
thing. And often it's a fear of getting
too bulked up, you know, that I'm not looking to get big
muscles. And the strength and
conditioning coach was like, youknow, I think people
underestimate how much you've got, how much time you're going
to spend in the gym to get to that point, right?
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It's there's a lot of people that would love to get bulked up
and spend their life trying and don't get there.
But actually it puts people off going and doing any strength and
conditioning because they're worried about I don't want, you
know, I think at least from thispanel for women in particular,
that was a worry. That's culturally that's not, I
don't, that's not a look I want to have.
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But then they end up not gettingthe benefits of strength and
conditioning for hey, look, you know, we can increase you want
to be quite a bit here without bulky, without just by being
more functionally strong in the right areas for golf.
So that that whole panel I thought was really interesting.
There's a number of research presentations.
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People are starting to do more female only studies, or at least
studies where it's like an equalnumber of women and men.
And you start to look at how do women swimming differently?
You know, women are not just small men.
Like there are differences biologically, biomechanically in
how they swing, but it's not super well, other than, hey,
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they're a little smaller, they don't weigh as much, they don't
have as much muscle mass. So there's more than just that.
So that's an area that I think is going to continue to keep
growing, but. Do you think we're going to see
change in like structure of studies maybe going forward?
Because like, thinking back, it's like either only men or
like you said, there's like 22 ladies and, you know, in the
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study. So it's like, do you think we'll
see studies put together differently, maybe here?
Yeah, I'd like to think so. And there was there was an
interesting debate in the conference about, you know, how
do you, how do you set up research studies to be more
inclusive? What does that mean if you're,
if you're doing a research studyand you want to get 20
participants, like how do you choose those 20 people?
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And do you try to get something that represents kind of the bell
curve of golfers? Do you try to actually get
something that represents the full gamut of golfers?
Do you? We had an interesting comment
and we had a panel on adaptive golf and one of the guys in on
the panel said one thing I like about working with adaptive
golfers is we're really solving for the edges, the edge cases,
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the people who are not in the middle of the bell curve, but on
the periphery of the different possible ways to swing a Golf
Club. And you learn a lot from the
extreme cases, just like we learn a lot from working with
PGA Tour players who are extremecases, right?
99.999% of us do not swing like Big Dog or do not swing like
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Bryce in this chamber. But you learn a time for working
with those players because they are the extreme side of how to
swing a Golf Club. I think more and more studies
are starting to realize you and you can learn a lot by
deliberately picking people on the edges of the bell curves and
adaptive golf. A very good case study of that.
You work with say, a seated golfer.
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Well, they're not using their lower body at all.
In fact, their lower body is, you know, pinned down to the
golf cart. And so it's a totally different
mechanism. I've been studying the bio
mechanic rule books kind of go out the window and which makes
things pretty interesting. Yeah, No, it is super
interesting. OK, next thing, you had
mentioned in the little list ahead of time angle attack on
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wedge shots. What was interesting there?
Yeah, this is so you know, this,this was a ping study, but it
was a it was a big one that I think had a lot of interest and
and has a lot of particularly a lot of interest in the Gulf
country world. It's a questions come up with
time like how do people deliver like partial shots on wedges?
Again, there's not as much research on it.
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It's actually very difficult to measure.
You're talking about, you know, a much smaller motion than a
full swing. Anyway, Long story short, we we
tuned our motion capture system to really focus on getting that
moment of truth around impact captured as well as we possibly
could. And particularly when does the
club first brush the turf? Where is that in relation to the
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ball, whether you're catching ball and turf and you're
catching turf and ball, if you are catching some turf, how much
are you catching it and what does that do to you?
Angle of attack, You know, does the does the club just kind of
plow on through like you would have or is it actually bending
your angle of attack like the direction the club's coming in
back up a little? And a good example of at least
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that idea would be Phil Mickelson's talked a little bit
about using the ground and almost feeling like he's
bouncing the club up into the ball when he wants to hit a
really high spinning one. And he wants to deliver a lot of
loft to it and deliver it prettyneutral.
When we measured 4000 wedge shots, it was a rain.
We had people heading to targetsat 15 yards, 30 yards, 60 yards.
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Didn't tell them how to do it. We just said that's the target.
You know, there's a little bit of fairway, there's a green,
there's nothing. It's a kind of vanilla chip.
You'd play it the way you want to play it and just get the ball
to stop as close to the pin as you can.
And across 4000 shots we measured over 1000 with a
positive angle of attack where the club was actually moving up
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into the ball. So what the ball sees when the
club gets to the ball, it's actually moving upwards, which
really surprised us because a couple of years ago we were
talking about is it possible to measure a positive angle attack
with a wedge? Like that's things are changing
in this one or two inch period around the ball really fast
without with this system that wedevised, the focal system, we
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can measure that and suddenly now we have 1000 positive angle
attack shots. And as you might expect, there's
a real correlation between whereyou first kissed the ground and
what that angle attack is at theball.
So everybody is coming down intoit and that first contact with
the ground, the Cubs moving down, obviously it has to be
moving down. But but then it was sort of
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roughly 30% of all shots involved the club then bouncing
up into the ball in some way, which drastically changes what
the physics the ball see. And it knocks a bunch of spin
off. And so you might have pretty
similar technique where you're coming in kind of the same, but
on one shot you hit the ground alittle behind the ball and
another you're right next to theball and your angle attack can
be 10° different pretty easily. Like that's not a particularly
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extreme case. We actually measured one where
the Anglo attack had changed 25°from from about 10° down to 15°
up, and that was an extreme one.But it was a huge data set and
it showed that actually there's this huge variety and how the
club is getting to the ball, even though there's less variety
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and how the players are delivering it.
And that exactly where you firstkiss the ground is hugely
important. And it was about 86% of shots
that touched the ground before the ball.
And just because you touched theground before the ball doesn't
make it a fat shot or a chunk. Like it could be a good shot
that you've clipped pretty well.You just brushed a little bit of
grass. And actually, I think a lot of
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the best ones are sort of maybe first kiss with the ground as
they can inch behind the ball. Even an inch and a half.
Players describe that is still feeling pretty crisp.
And then once you get more than about two inches by, that's when
the player starts saying, I feellike I caught that heavy.
But now we can quantify that. We can really look at what did
that do to a term we call spin off, like the loft.
(23:00):
The ball is seeing the difference between the angle of
clubs moving and the loft on theclub.
That's your spin off. You know if you're a little
sloppy on where you catch the ground, you're changing your
spin off by maybe 10° from shot to shot.
That's a huge amount. You don't do that with your
driver. You change your driver by 10°
shot to shot. You have one that's knee high
and one that's way up in the sky.
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Obviously some people do that, myself included every now and
again. But like that's a, that would be
a huge difference on a driver. But on a wedge, it's quite
normal. And I think it really explains
why a lot of players find these partial wedge shots so
frustrating. OK.
I think I've got 100 questions about this, this study
potentially, but narrowing it down, were these all tour pros
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or these were all variety of? This was a variety of players.
We do what we do, what we call our company wide test, which is
kind of everyone who can swing aclub and is not, you know, not
too embarrassed to come and hit shots on our system.
There were how many do we have? It was about 8 tall players that
did the test and then probably about 20 scratch and better
(24:09):
golfers. And then it's sort of a bell
curve. The average handicap and the
whole test was about 8. And we did look at, you know,
what do the scratch and better golfers do and what do the zero
to 10 golfers do? What are the 10 above golfers
do? And as you would totally
imagine, the better the golfer, the more precise they are
hitting the ground kind of rightwhere they want to best spot.
(24:29):
There's some variety of player to player to what clipping the
ball means to that player. So we're saying tour pros and
and really good golfers, they donot clip the ball.
There's some ground interaction.Some level of ground interaction
and and that is changing the attack and it's basically
bending the natural arc of the swing that the ground is
(24:50):
actually having an impact. It's not necessarily making it
go up into the ball, but it's maybe instead of being 10° down,
it's 7° down because there's a little bit of tough interaction.
So how does this I'm affecting this like impacts bounce and
that may maybe that's why you guys are kind of looking at this
like how does that factor in then?
Yeah. And so this was like this test
(25:11):
was always kind of asked our standard sole, our main grind is
kind of the bread and butter that fits most people.
We've really started doing testslooking at, OK, great, let's
have you play a low bounce wedgeand a high bounce wedge and see
how that changes. We actually have the ability to
take real grass and bring it into our lab.
And so we get a bit messier, butwe can look at how does natural
(25:37):
turf compared artificial turf. And then I think everyone would
have a feel for different types of conditions really change
things, right? So there's a big difference
between clipping them off, you know, around the greens of
Pinehouse where it's hard and it's really tight or Saint
Andrews or True, versus somewhere where the ground is
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soft, maybe it's fluffy grass, but certainly, you know, when
it's wet and the club just kind of digs right through.
And those are very different conditions we need to
understand. But if we know exactly how
you're delivering in the lab, wecan then start to model what's
happening and try to predict, OKHoward, this club for this
player work in wet conditions out and work in Pinehurst like
(26:19):
conditions. And I'd like to look at how to
play as adapt, you know. So does the player adapt their
technique or is it better just to give him a different wedge
and use the same technique? We know there's a bit of both
goes on. We know that a lot of the better
players will change their wedge for certain courses, but then
there's obviously don't. They just know I want.
I want to know exactly what I'm getting with the wedge, but I'll
(26:41):
change my technique to suit the cause.
So what's the take away then? Like what do we need to remember
from from this study? For that one, I think you use
the ground in some way. Use the ground.
It may be an emotive term. The ground is getting involved
in what's going on almost all the time with partial wedge
shots. It is changing what's happening
(27:01):
in bank and the 86% shots have some level of ground
interaction. 58% of the shots wemeasured were changing the angle
of the tag by a meaningful amount.
You know, enough to notice in terms of the spin you're
getting. And so I think when you're
seeing results where maybe you know, you're not spinning in
like you think you should be, the chances are that's a, the
(27:25):
ground thing in terms of exactlywhere you're catching the
ground. Unless a technique thing of you
suddenly go super steep or you suddenly go super shallow, it's
more likely to be you just made a very small change in where
you're impacting. And that's where sometimes we
see like putting a different wedge in someone's hand can
dramatically change their results, even though 99% of
everything is the same or we change.
(27:47):
There was a little piece on the sole of the club.
It just helped helped or hinder your turf interaction.
Very cool, very cool. What else do we have here?
Performance on sloping lies or some studies around that?
Yeah, we've there's, again, there's some technology that's
that's out there and is more readily available to researchers
now where you can actually put aplayer on an artificial slope.
(28:09):
But one way you know exactly what it is and you can
manipulate it and then look at how they adapt to slopes.
The company called Zen who make the partying platform that moves
also make a swing stage that's starting to get out into the
into the world. That's basically a hitting that
you can give yourself different sloping lines.
(28:29):
And obviously you can do this out on a real course.
You just it helps if you're a scientist, you want to control
variables. It helps to know what the swap
is rather than just sort of randomly pick out spots on a
course. So the nice thing about these
stages, as you can see, right, this is a 5° downward slope or
this is a 5° out of slope. One study that was presented
(28:50):
showed kind of how players adaptto cycle lights when the boards
below your feet or the boards above your feet, the better
players will kind of go with theslope and then just sort of
factor in, OK, I'm just going toaim a little left, I'm going to
aim a little right. And just, but actually in terms
of their posture, they kind of go with the slope and just
accept that I'm swinging, I'm moving my whole frame of
(29:12):
reference on to this slope wherethe less experienced golfers
tend to try to kind of more bring it back to a flat swing.
But then of course, they end up in this sort of posture that
relative to the slope is now in a spot that I used to and they
don't complete the task as well.So I think a learning is, you
(29:33):
know, if you're on a line when it comes below your feet, just
kind of go with that, go with the slot, just your aim
accordingly and make your normalas much as you can make your
normal swing relative to that's one.
Useful, useful. So it kind of just affirms the
thing that we that we've kind ofassumed here over the years.
Yeah, I think a lot of good golfers, most good golfers, work
(29:55):
that out through trial and error.
Yes, let's see, you should do one.
One more that you have on here that I'm interested in is face
angle variability and irons. Yeah, that was a fun one.
That was one of our workshops. Dr. Sasha McKenzie did a whole
workshop on on that. He'd done some studies looking
at players using smaller blades and larger blades on ions and
(30:18):
trying to look at measuring workability.
So the ability to delivery, it wasn't paid to look at the just
the ability to control face angle.
And how do you, that's one of the things that's very important
in golf, right? You know, distance is important,
but like controlling the face toget the ball starting in the
direction you need to is goes without saying, super key, super
(30:41):
key and golf. So like, what is that?
What can you do to minimize phase angle variability is a
huge one. And Sasha did the whole workshop
on that. It's kind of it's kind of
interesting. There's a good debate around and
I'd say a very active debate right now and then golf coaching
world around, Is it better to hit a particular shot shape
right? Is it better to just go, I'm a
dual player, I'm only going to hit drawers, never anything
(31:02):
else? Or is it better to say, you
know, when, when the whole dictates it, I'll hit a draw
when the whole dictator fade or a straight ball?
And I don't know that that's certainly not everyone agrees on
that. But one of the questions that
Satchel was asked was, you know,is it easier?
The players just naturally biomechanically find it easier
(31:22):
to hit fades or drawers or whatever.
And he made a pretty compelling bio mechanics argument as to why
a drawn fade are no different bio mechanically.
You know you can. You can be a drawer player and
we can just close your eyes, youmove the club in your grip,
point you a different direction,make you make the exact same
(31:43):
swing, and now it's fading. Biomechanically, nothing changed
at all. So biomechanically, there's no
reason why a draw is easier thana fade or vice versa.
And yet, you know certain clients, for whatever reason,
find it just more comfortable inone than the other, and you try
to make them hit something against their natural shot
shape. You know how much of that is
(32:05):
just that learned thing about this is what I'm used to seeing.
I'm so dialed in seeing this both like when I see a different
both like it just kind of makes it harder for me to get the
feedback. Any whatever it is, it just
biomechanically there's no difference.
But there's yet there's still this persistent thing that for
some players it seems to work best to just pick your shot
(32:26):
shape and go with it. And then for others they're very
comfortable going No today. I mean, father example, Bob
Watson would be the perfect example of that's not how he
operates. He does not pick a shot shape
and go with it. He sees every shot differently.
And the guys won two majors and a bunch of PGA Tour events.
And so it clearly works for him.But there's still that question,
(32:47):
is there a way that inherently is better for masses for most
people? And that was, you know, Sasha,
definitely beyond the camp of itdoesn't matter by mechanics
wise, whether it's a draw or fade, but still an open debate.
And that's what as a perfect example of where like, you know,
there's the scientists coming out from one side.
This culture is coming out from a different side of world.
(33:07):
This is what I see on the course.
So help me explain it. And this is what I you know,
what players feel they do is important because they're super
dialed in. But then it's up to us as
scientists to try to explain it.And sometimes it's a myth and
sometimes it's the truth, and wejust, you know, scientists catch
it up. What was the most buzz this year
in like what category was it Biomechanics?
(33:28):
Was it maybe throughout equipment?
Because that might be where you live most of the time.
Yeah, it's a good question. I think there was certainly
there was a decent amount of buzz around where's golf going
in terms of, you know, the future of golf.
We had one of our keynotes with Steve Auto from the RNA, which
was great. You know, he got a lot of
questions about world ranking, some good players.
(33:49):
How where's that going? You know, which obviously is a
big topic in the whole golfing world.
There's a lot of questions aboutreining in distance and and why
and how and how much is this done deal and what where are we
going next? And would you ever consider
changing clubs? And I think that's on a lot of
people's mind, like the future of golf, whether you're coming
at it from the sustainability side, and certainly here in
(34:12):
Europe, I think that's a big conversation, whether you're
coming at it from, you know, protecting the pro game and
making that the best part of thewhen you're coming out from
what's the best thing for 66 million people in play to grow
the industry. And as an equipment company,
obviously that's something we care very deeply about.
You know what we want golf to bea healthy sport that's popular.
(34:34):
That's the those are the bread and butter of the game.
So don't make a change purely for the pros if it's going to
harm 66 million golfers. But all those voices and there's
a lot of discussion around that.You know, we have another
keynote from an equipment manufacturer that was, was
really cool. There was, I think, you know,
just a quick, there was a littlebit of talk about
(34:55):
sustainability. It's because I don't think it's
a huge thing in the golf industry right now, but it's
coming just like it's coming in lots of other industries.
So where's golf going to be in the future?
I think was quite a quite a big topic.
Got it. Before we run any other studies,
you're going to remember here asyou as you go back, go back to
work and start thinking about things, anything else you're
(35:16):
going to kind of like maybe I should look into that more.
Gosh, that's going to that makesyou think.
I don't know, I think I think that stood out to me.
Maybe not a study that was wrong, but there's a really nice
tribute to Alastair Cochrane, who was the founder of golf
science and kind of linking, I think one of the quotes was, you
know, science injuries. And for people who don't know
(35:37):
who he was, Alastair Cochrane was the godfather of golf
science. He created The Search for the
Perfect Swing, which is still the best book in golf science,
even though it was published 5456 years ago.
He founded the World Scientific Congress and his vision was, you
know, having a forum for for people to publish, you know,
(35:58):
golf scientific work and talk about it and debate it.
We had, you know, two different equipment manufacturers and a
ruling body up on stage together, you know, laughing and
enjoying it. Talking about Alastair Conkin
and the effect he had on all of our careers, which was really
good. And I think it's it's an area
where the golf science communitycan be quite a positive thing of
(36:21):
science is science. And it doesn't really matter
which company you work for and whether you agree with it or
not. And Alistair was very good at
that. Like do a study that probably
answers the question and no one needs to run that study again
because the science endures. And that was, for me like a real
highlight of the conference to have that.
(36:42):
Love it, love it. When's the next one?
This is every every two or four years.
Yes, what goes, in fact it couldbe, I think we're aiming to try
to have them every two to three years.
We've been in the early days there every four years.
The last couple I mean every twoyears, but obviously it's quite
a lot that host a conference every two years.
So there's a reasonable chance that we'd be looking at 2027.
(37:05):
We're actually actively looking for the next host.
There's a couple of different places that are interested.
You know, we'd like to, we like to take it around the world a
little bit, but obviously a big part of the kind of population
in the States and in Europe. And so potentially the next one
will be looking at the states, although that's not a guarantee.
And that's our goal is to have them regularly enough that
(37:26):
people who are interested can see that we do video the whole
thing and we're working on editing all those videos and
we'll make those available for small purchase fee.
People want to look at just particular talks or if they want
to get access to the whole lot. So that last year's conference
or 2022's conference are up on our website
rightnowgolfscience.org this morning and give us a couple of
(37:48):
weeks and we'll have them all edited and ready to go.
I'd recommend Saint Andrews the next location if I can put my
vote in. Yeah.
That's, that's fair. That's a good draw.
We'll, we'll work on that. That was good.
That was the last one I went to and I would definitely come back
if it was if it was there. But no, I'm excited to keep
diving into this. Are you guys going to release
(38:10):
the the book again of all the apps?
Yeah. Actually, more recently, rather
than publish a whole book, we wejust put the abstracts that were
submitted each, but each presentation is A2 page kind of
summary. We'll put those on our website
once we have them. In the digital age, it's easier
just to download and those will be available for free.
But we do charge a little for the video.
(38:31):
It's just to try to feed some funds back into running the
conference because we also have a journal that we published.
It's Open Access and there are some costs to running things.
So that that keeps us, keeps us going for the next few years.
Well, thank you, Paul for the time letting us know some of
what happened this year and I'llkeep covering it.
I'm going to dive into a lot of those studies.
(38:52):
So we'll keep looking into all those.
And I, we need to hear more on this wedge study.
We might have you back to to go deep on deep on what you guys
did there. I'd love to.
It was a, you know, a 15 minute presentation did not cover the,
you know, three months of work, the one into collecting the
data. So there's a lot to be dived
into. There.
Awesome. Thanks, Paul.
Have a good day.
We're on a mission to help golfers from all over the world
achieve their goals by understanding what it actually
takes to play their best golf. We're talking with leading
instructors, researchers, and players themselves to find what
is actually working. Hey everyone, welcome back to
(00:25):
the podcast. It has literally been years
since I've posted a new episode on here, but we're back.
I don't know if we're back for good.
We're back for a little series of interviews, which I think you
will find interesting. The World Scientific Congress of
Golf just happened and I wanted to talk about some of the
(00:45):
research that happened, some of what was there.
I wasn't able to attend personally, so I reached out to
some folks who presented and were there to share what they
found most interesting and some things we should check out.
So that's what we're going to hear.
And today we're sitting down with Doctor Paul Wood.
He is the VP of engineering at Ping, as well as the president
and chairman of the board of thegolf science organization that
(01:06):
kind of runs this Congress. So it was great to get his take
on what happened, kind of some of the things that stuck out to
him. And here are some research that
he's involved with as well. That's what we're going to do
today on this episode and we'll have more to come.
So stay tuned to this podcast here for a bit.
Make sure to subscribe if you haven't.
Who knows, maybe we'll we'll kick back off with some some
(01:27):
interviews. I've got some ideas of series
and stuff, but we will see if ithappens.
If you're not following us over on YouTube, we've been really
active posting a bunch of great content, then doing some trips,
talking with some interesting folks about some interesting
ideas to play better golf. So make sure to go and check
that out. Other than that, I'm excited to
be back with this conversation. Hopefully you enjoy.
(01:49):
Let's get into it with Doctor Paul Wood.
All right, excited to sit down with Doctor Paul Wood from PING.
The World Scientific Congress ofGolf was just a week ago.
So he's going to break down someof the things that he thought
(02:09):
were most interesting that he kind of remembers and stood out
from, from the time there. Paul, you're, you're at the PING
offices there now. You guys have a lab in England.
What's going on? What do you guys have going on?
Over there, we're actually righthere, probably a quarter mile
from where the conference was held, we're at Loughborough
University. This is just one of our little
offices, but we have a joint labwith the university there.
(02:34):
I mean, that's part of why Loughborough chose to hold the
World Scientific Congress of golf is their big sports
university, depending on how youmeasure it, the maybe the
biggest small engineering team at a university anywhere in the
world. And we've had a pretty good
relationship with them, I'd say for about 15 years with a lot of
interns from their sports technology group funding PhDs
(02:57):
and joint research. They have quite a lot of golf
experts on staff and so that we kind of solidified that
partnership a few years ago by having a lab here.
And it's not exclusively with love for there's other
universities around the UK that we work with and we do a lot of
work. The golf industry in the UK is
thriving. There's a ton of golf nerds just
(03:18):
like there are in America and Canada and elsewhere in the
wild. So we, it's a small team.
We have just six based here and the mothership still in Phoenix.
But it's nice we we focus on more human performance, you
know, kind of athlete performance, you know, where the
the golfer meets the equipment and why humans get in the way
(03:38):
around nice engineering and try to understand that better.
That's the main aim of the lab. Well, I'm sure we could do a few
podcasts on that, but but we better stick to the topic before
I I take us down any rabbit trails here.
So the Congress, I guess. So if people don't know there's
academics, there's yeah instructors as well, like coming
(04:00):
up with ideas, doing a study andthat everyone comes and kind of
presents it and all talks about it together.
Is that the gist of of what happened?
Exactly. You know, I come from academia
and in academia conferences are,you know, ubiquitous.
You, you host a conference, people present their latest
work. Academics like argue about it.
That's, you know, that's where everyone meets and and talks
(04:23):
about the latest research. The idea of the World Golf
Scientific Congress came from Alastair Cochran and Martin
Farley in the late 80s. The very first one was 1990s.
So we've been going for what's that a long time, 34 years?
Yeah, this was number 11. And the idea was to bring
together academics and practitioners.
(04:43):
So maybe a little different to the average conference where
it's usually 99% academics. The idea of this one is there
are academics presenting their work, but there are also
coaches, practitioners, just people who are interested who
swap ideas and we host some morepractical workshops.
And so it's a it's a mixture of,you know, people from the
(05:04):
equipment industry, people from academia who study golf coaches,
people from the PGA, you know, we had workshops from a
psychologist, a bio mechanics expert and the strength and
conditioning coach, for example.Are you covering a lot of
different things? But anything to do with sort of
the science of golf that's in scope for this conference?
Awesome. Well, let's get into the meat of
(05:26):
it. I, I assume you attended a few
sessions. You're kind of like an attendee
yourself, kind of like taking some of this in.
What stood out to you? What was what were some of the
things that you remember here a week after?
Yeah. So there was a bunch.
So it's three whole days. So there's some really
interesting keynotes and maybe we'll, you know, we'll touch on
a couple of those people that, you know, some of the people
(05:48):
watching or listening might haveheard of.
But there's a few interesting themes.
And maybe a good one to start with would be there were a
number of papers and presentations all on the topic
of how parts roll on sloping surfaces, which was kind of
interesting. So that probably was the biggest
single area of the whole conference that a ton of people
right now are doing research on.What happens when you're putting
(06:11):
on a downhill slope, an uphill slope, the side of a side slope.
How does that change the physicsof the role of a part, maybe the
optimal conditions of the part, the optimal equipment for you?
So that was interesting to me. You know, there's always
something that's kind of a hot topic and I think this it was it
to me, it makes a lot of sense because the technology to
measure that stuff has come on in leaps and bounds in the last
(06:34):
three or four years. So I don't think people suddenly
magically started asking, hey, Iwonder what happens to sloping
parts. It was now we have the ability
to answer some questions. There's obviously plenty of
outdoor potting greens with slopes that you can go out and
use, but often a way to measure parts on the green.
You know, you can maybe measure where it finishes with a tape
measure, but to actually measurehow's the ball slowing down,
(06:56):
when's it skidding, when's it rolling?
Those things require a bit more sophisticated kit.
And one example of that is the called the quintic overhead
systems with the camera that sits overlooking the green,
either an indoor sloping green or an outdoor sloping green.
And it tracks the whole part andtells you what's the
deceleration on the ball? When does it go from skidding to
(07:18):
rolling? When there's a what we call the
decay phase of the part, the last foot or two where the ball
starts to like meander. Is it just those last few
wobbles? And you a lot of golfers have
probably seen that right before it gets the whole, it just sort
of seems to take a little dive one way or the other.
That's called the decay phase. So that was fun for me watching
a number of people coming at it from different angles, you know,
(07:40):
from whether it's just pure physics modeling and then using
the measurement tools to validate the model.
There was some dogs who built anapp where you can, you know, you
can program and I'll get them ona 2% download slot.
Well, how should I adjust my speed?
You know, what does that say? A 15 foot pot?
What is that effectively now youknow, 15 foot pot when you're
(08:02):
downhill, a certain slot might be the equivalent of a 10 foot
pot. And how do you fast track
learning those skills? So as a goal for you don't have
to do it all by trial and error.You can get some help to learn
it quickly. I thought that was like a pretty
interesting part of the conference and to see and you
know, ladies, I don't know how in depth into the science you
(08:22):
want to go over. There's some interesting stuff.
There's the, you know, you can calculate the coefficient of
friction basically as the ball is slowing down, how fast is it
slowing down or how you know how, how is that rate of
changing the speed? And you can calculate in a high
school textbook that coefficientof friction is a constant.
And you can you can teach a highschool student how to solve
(08:44):
those equations and go right by if I take your part and it has
this speed to start with, you can plug in a cognition of
restitution and calculate how far it would roll.
Except in real life, that cognition of friction isn't
constant and changes across the part.
And it actually can increase or decrease on a downhill part in
interesting ways and grain on the green and how bubbly the
(09:07):
green is and things like that can make a difference.
So it's it's some quite youth physics to understand that.
And it makes a difference to a golfer, right, Because two more
inches of roll might be the difference between a two-part
and a one part. So a couple of inches makes a
difference on a part which is fun.
So I'm guessing the the skid androll is very important to you
(09:29):
guys as you're, you know, thinking about putter design.
Is there anything that you didn't know going into it as far
as like how it reacts with slopes that was that was
surprising or outside of kind ofwhat what you guys know?
Yeah, I think that's what I think the big thing is that that
coefficient of friction can actually increase during a part
(09:49):
or decrease based on the specific conditions.
And that for Full disclosure, one of these papers presented
was was one of our engineers. So we had one of the papers, but
then there were a number of other papers of different
aspects that we hadn't tested that in the whole kind of adds
to our knowledge and at least corroborated the yeah, they were
(10:11):
doing this test slightly different guys, but they saw
some of the same things as we did.
I think it's part of what makes putting difficult to pin down
because you would think based onjust the physics and what's
going on, you would think, well,I just, if I can just make the
ball start rolling as quick as possible and minimize skid, that
should be the best all the time because rolling is more
consistent than skidding. But in real life, it doesn't
(10:33):
seem to quite play out that way.And we did some tests when you
presented a different paper on giving players higher lofted
butters and lower lofted Pottersand seeing how they react to
different slopes on the green. And it's not as simple as
actually the Potter that gets the ball rolling the quickest
goes in the hole better. Actually, there was some
evidence that a bit more loft can help players adjust the
different slopes more easily. You basically don't have to
(10:55):
adjust quite as much, but uphillto a downhill or so that was a
good learning for us. I think as always, a research,
there's more to learn and one test doesn't prove anything.
So backing it up with more testsand I'm really understanding,
OK, if we poke at this a number of different ways, do we still
see the same effect? But.
Why do you think more aloft is potentially better?
(11:18):
Yeah, I think so. In simplest terms, I think with
more loft you don't have to makeas big an adjustment to
different conditions on the green.
And to back up a little, at a previous World Scientific
Congress trying to think 2016, so quite a while ago now, there
was a paper presented on lookingat consistency of role using a
(11:40):
pot of pendulum on flat greens. That kind of showed, if you
squint a little bit, that getting the ball rolling
quicker, at least in that condition led to more consistent
roll out. You know, so if you, if you use
a pendulum and you use a low lofted powder and get the ball
rolling quicker, then the balls are collecting in a smaller area
(12:01):
down near the hole. And so people took that to go,
well, that must be better than right, Ball gets falling
quicker, more consistent. So we had a lot of our
engineers, they're going to build 0° lofted powders.
And actually none of them, I don't think kept it in play.
And the feedback was well on thecourse.
I get some weird results and it's quite hard to pin down
exactly what we had results and what caused you.
(12:23):
But the reality is players are pretty good and go, OK, it's not
working. Maybe I don't know exactly why
it's not working, but it's not working.
And then we go back to, you know, they would go back to
using more loft. And I think this test we did,
making players adapt to different slopes and we showed
in those conditions where players are not getting into a
group and in the same part, but they're adapting the different
(12:44):
slopes, they actually had betterdistance control with a bit more
loft and with a bit less. Interesting, was there anything
I'm always curious on like setupand swing changes based on
slope? Is anybody doing any research on
that of how how those things change?
I didn't see anything at the conference on that, but I'm sure
that people are looking at it and you know, interestingly,
(13:06):
measuring setup can be notoriously tricky, right?
And you know, you can, you can see it right.
If you're a coach or you're a keen don't for, you know, you
can, you can have a keen eye andgo over that.
I can describe that setup. But actually then measuring
where are the feet in relation to the ball and how have you
aligned your body like that getsinto reasonably complicated
motion captures stuff. But I would bet that people are
(13:31):
looking at that. It gets studied along the full
swing, but maybe not as much in putting.
Got it. Got it.
OK. So we got due to technology
improvements, we're able to lookmore at putting on slopes, skid
roll, friction, all that kind ofstuff is now getting more
measured, more documented. We're trying to figure out how
to best navigate all those thosethings now.
(13:53):
Yeah. Cool.
What else? What else you got?
What's? A good one.
I think another one was quite ofa very different, I guess,
flavor, but an interesting There's quite a bit of stuff on
women in golf. It is a fact that women in golf
are strong minority, but it's also a fact that they're the
biggest growing segment in golf.And there are a lot more women
(14:16):
coming into golf. And the percentage of golfers
who are female is growing from apretty low base.
And the reality is there's not aton of good research out there
that studies female golfers and how are they different to male
golfers? There's a lot of studies that,
hey, we studied 20 players and one of them was a female, right?
And you're not going to learn too much from studying one
(14:37):
female. And so most studies tend to be
around male golfers. But there was a little section
of a conference and then there'salso a panel on specifically on
women's golf. And what can golf do to better
understand how women swing, whatwomen need.
You know, some of it was some ofit was more the bio mechanics,
some of it was the cultural side.
(14:58):
And there's an interesting thing.
I mean, I spent my life studyingmore the, you know, how people
interact with equipment. But there's a whole section of
strength and conditioning and, you know, how would you tune
strength and conditioning for female golfers, which is
interesting and so right. But also some cultural stuff of
a lot of female golfers are hesitant to do strength and
(15:19):
conditioning. And we had some women on that
panel kind of say, you know, yeah, that's that's the real
thing. And often it's a fear of getting
too bulked up, you know, that I'm not looking to get big
muscles. And the strength and
conditioning coach was like, youknow, I think people
underestimate how much you've got, how much time you're going
to spend in the gym to get to that point, right?
(15:40):
It's there's a lot of people that would love to get bulked up
and spend their life trying and don't get there.
But actually it puts people off going and doing any strength and
conditioning because they're worried about I don't want, you
know, I think at least from thispanel for women in particular,
that was a worry. That's culturally that's not, I
don't, that's not a look I want to have.
(16:01):
But then they end up not gettingthe benefits of strength and
conditioning for hey, look, you know, we can increase you want
to be quite a bit here without bulky, without just by being
more functionally strong in the right areas for golf.
So that that whole panel I thought was really interesting.
There's a number of research presentations.
(16:21):
People are starting to do more female only studies, or at least
studies where it's like an equalnumber of women and men.
And you start to look at how do women swimming differently?
You know, women are not just small men.
Like there are differences biologically, biomechanically in
how they swing, but it's not super well, other than, hey,
(16:42):
they're a little smaller, they don't weigh as much, they don't
have as much muscle mass. So there's more than just that.
So that's an area that I think is going to continue to keep
growing, but. Do you think we're going to see
change in like structure of studies maybe going forward?
Because like, thinking back, it's like either only men or
like you said, there's like 22 ladies and, you know, in the
(17:04):
study. So it's like, do you think we'll
see studies put together differently, maybe here?
Yeah, I'd like to think so. And there was there was an
interesting debate in the conference about, you know, how
do you, how do you set up research studies to be more
inclusive? What does that mean if you're,
if you're doing a research studyand you want to get 20
participants, like how do you choose those 20 people?
(17:28):
And do you try to get something that represents kind of the bell
curve of golfers? Do you try to actually get
something that represents the full gamut of golfers?
Do you? We had an interesting comment
and we had a panel on adaptive golf and one of the guys in on
the panel said one thing I like about working with adaptive
golfers is we're really solving for the edges, the edge cases,
(17:52):
the people who are not in the middle of the bell curve, but on
the periphery of the different possible ways to swing a Golf
Club. And you learn a lot from the
extreme cases, just like we learn a lot from working with
PGA Tour players who are extremecases, right?
99.999% of us do not swing like Big Dog or do not swing like
(18:13):
Bryce in this chamber. But you learn a time for working
with those players because they are the extreme side of how to
swing a Golf Club. I think more and more studies
are starting to realize you and you can learn a lot by
deliberately picking people on the edges of the bell curves and
adaptive golf. A very good case study of that.
You work with say, a seated golfer.
(18:34):
Well, they're not using their lower body at all.
In fact, their lower body is, you know, pinned down to the
golf cart. And so it's a totally different
mechanism. I've been studying the bio
mechanic rule books kind of go out the window and which makes
things pretty interesting. Yeah, No, it is super
interesting. OK, next thing, you had
mentioned in the little list ahead of time angle attack on
(18:57):
wedge shots. What was interesting there?
Yeah, this is so you know, this,this was a ping study, but it
was a it was a big one that I think had a lot of interest and
and has a lot of particularly a lot of interest in the Gulf
country world. It's a questions come up with
time like how do people deliver like partial shots on wedges?
Again, there's not as much research on it.
(19:18):
It's actually very difficult to measure.
You're talking about, you know, a much smaller motion than a
full swing. Anyway, Long story short, we we
tuned our motion capture system to really focus on getting that
moment of truth around impact captured as well as we possibly
could. And particularly when does the
club first brush the turf? Where is that in relation to the
(19:40):
ball, whether you're catching ball and turf and you're
catching turf and ball, if you are catching some turf, how much
are you catching it and what does that do to you?
Angle of attack, You know, does the does the club just kind of
plow on through like you would have or is it actually bending
your angle of attack like the direction the club's coming in
back up a little? And a good example of at least
(20:03):
that idea would be Phil Mickelson's talked a little bit
about using the ground and almost feeling like he's
bouncing the club up into the ball when he wants to hit a
really high spinning one. And he wants to deliver a lot of
loft to it and deliver it prettyneutral.
When we measured 4000 wedge shots, it was a rain.
We had people heading to targetsat 15 yards, 30 yards, 60 yards.
(20:26):
Didn't tell them how to do it. We just said that's the target.
You know, there's a little bit of fairway, there's a green,
there's nothing. It's a kind of vanilla chip.
You'd play it the way you want to play it and just get the ball
to stop as close to the pin as you can.
And across 4000 shots we measured over 1000 with a
positive angle of attack where the club was actually moving up
(20:47):
into the ball. So what the ball sees when the
club gets to the ball, it's actually moving upwards, which
really surprised us because a couple of years ago we were
talking about is it possible to measure a positive angle attack
with a wedge? Like that's things are changing
in this one or two inch period around the ball really fast
without with this system that wedevised, the focal system, we
(21:09):
can measure that and suddenly now we have 1000 positive angle
attack shots. And as you might expect, there's
a real correlation between whereyou first kissed the ground and
what that angle attack is at theball.
So everybody is coming down intoit and that first contact with
the ground, the Cubs moving down, obviously it has to be
moving down. But but then it was sort of
(21:31):
roughly 30% of all shots involved the club then bouncing
up into the ball in some way, which drastically changes what
the physics the ball see. And it knocks a bunch of spin
off. And so you might have pretty
similar technique where you're coming in kind of the same, but
on one shot you hit the ground alittle behind the ball and
another you're right next to theball and your angle attack can
be 10° different pretty easily. Like that's not a particularly
(21:54):
extreme case. We actually measured one where
the Anglo attack had changed 25°from from about 10° down to 15°
up, and that was an extreme one.But it was a huge data set and
it showed that actually there's this huge variety and how the
club is getting to the ball, even though there's less variety
(22:15):
and how the players are delivering it.
And that exactly where you firstkiss the ground is hugely
important. And it was about 86% of shots
that touched the ground before the ball.
And just because you touched theground before the ball doesn't
make it a fat shot or a chunk. Like it could be a good shot
that you've clipped pretty well.You just brushed a little bit of
grass. And actually, I think a lot of
(22:36):
the best ones are sort of maybe first kiss with the ground as
they can inch behind the ball. Even an inch and a half.
Players describe that is still feeling pretty crisp.
And then once you get more than about two inches by, that's when
the player starts saying, I feellike I caught that heavy.
But now we can quantify that. We can really look at what did
that do to a term we call spin off, like the loft.
(23:00):
The ball is seeing the difference between the angle of
clubs moving and the loft on theclub.
That's your spin off. You know if you're a little
sloppy on where you catch the ground, you're changing your
spin off by maybe 10° from shot to shot.
That's a huge amount. You don't do that with your
driver. You change your driver by 10°
shot to shot. You have one that's knee high
and one that's way up in the sky.
(23:22):
Obviously some people do that, myself included every now and
again. But like that's a, that would be
a huge difference on a driver. But on a wedge, it's quite
normal. And I think it really explains
why a lot of players find these partial wedge shots so
frustrating. OK.
I think I've got 100 questions about this, this study
potentially, but narrowing it down, were these all tour pros
(23:44):
or these were all variety of? This was a variety of players.
We do what we do, what we call our company wide test, which is
kind of everyone who can swing aclub and is not, you know, not
too embarrassed to come and hit shots on our system.
There were how many do we have? It was about 8 tall players that
did the test and then probably about 20 scratch and better
(24:09):
golfers. And then it's sort of a bell
curve. The average handicap and the
whole test was about 8. And we did look at, you know,
what do the scratch and better golfers do and what do the zero
to 10 golfers do? What are the 10 above golfers
do? And as you would totally
imagine, the better the golfer, the more precise they are
hitting the ground kind of rightwhere they want to best spot.
(24:29):
There's some variety of player to player to what clipping the
ball means to that player. So we're saying tour pros and
and really good golfers, they donot clip the ball.
There's some ground interaction.Some level of ground interaction
and and that is changing the attack and it's basically
bending the natural arc of the swing that the ground is
(24:50):
actually having an impact. It's not necessarily making it
go up into the ball, but it's maybe instead of being 10° down,
it's 7° down because there's a little bit of tough interaction.
So how does this I'm affecting this like impacts bounce and
that may maybe that's why you guys are kind of looking at this
like how does that factor in then?
Yeah. And so this was like this test
(25:11):
was always kind of asked our standard sole, our main grind is
kind of the bread and butter that fits most people.
We've really started doing testslooking at, OK, great, let's
have you play a low bounce wedgeand a high bounce wedge and see
how that changes. We actually have the ability to
take real grass and bring it into our lab.
And so we get a bit messier, butwe can look at how does natural
(25:37):
turf compared artificial turf. And then I think everyone would
have a feel for different types of conditions really change
things, right? So there's a big difference
between clipping them off, you know, around the greens of
Pinehouse where it's hard and it's really tight or Saint
Andrews or True, versus somewhere where the ground is
(25:57):
soft, maybe it's fluffy grass, but certainly, you know, when
it's wet and the club just kind of digs right through.
And those are very different conditions we need to
understand. But if we know exactly how
you're delivering in the lab, wecan then start to model what's
happening and try to predict, OKHoward, this club for this
player work in wet conditions out and work in Pinehurst like
(26:19):
conditions. And I'd like to look at how to
play as adapt, you know. So does the player adapt their
technique or is it better just to give him a different wedge
and use the same technique? We know there's a bit of both
goes on. We know that a lot of the better
players will change their wedge for certain courses, but then
there's obviously don't. They just know I want.
I want to know exactly what I'm getting with the wedge, but I'll
(26:41):
change my technique to suit the cause.
So what's the take away then? Like what do we need to remember
from from this study? For that one, I think you use
the ground in some way. Use the ground.
It may be an emotive term. The ground is getting involved
in what's going on almost all the time with partial wedge
shots. It is changing what's happening
(27:01):
in bank and the 86% shots have some level of ground
interaction. 58% of the shots wemeasured were changing the angle
of the tag by a meaningful amount.
You know, enough to notice in terms of the spin you're
getting. And so I think when you're
seeing results where maybe you know, you're not spinning in
like you think you should be, the chances are that's a, the
(27:25):
ground thing in terms of exactlywhere you're catching the
ground. Unless a technique thing of you
suddenly go super steep or you suddenly go super shallow, it's
more likely to be you just made a very small change in where
you're impacting. And that's where sometimes we
see like putting a different wedge in someone's hand can
dramatically change their results, even though 99% of
everything is the same or we change.
(27:47):
There was a little piece on the sole of the club.
It just helped helped or hinder your turf interaction.
Very cool, very cool. What else do we have here?
Performance on sloping lies or some studies around that?
Yeah, we've there's, again, there's some technology that's
that's out there and is more readily available to researchers
now where you can actually put aplayer on an artificial slope.
(28:09):
But one way you know exactly what it is and you can
manipulate it and then look at how they adapt to slopes.
The company called Zen who make the partying platform that moves
also make a swing stage that's starting to get out into the
into the world. That's basically a hitting that
you can give yourself different sloping lines.
(28:29):
And obviously you can do this out on a real course.
You just it helps if you're a scientist, you want to control
variables. It helps to know what the swap
is rather than just sort of randomly pick out spots on a
course. So the nice thing about these
stages, as you can see, right, this is a 5° downward slope or
this is a 5° out of slope. One study that was presented
(28:50):
showed kind of how players adaptto cycle lights when the boards
below your feet or the boards above your feet, the better
players will kind of go with theslope and then just sort of
factor in, OK, I'm just going toaim a little left, I'm going to
aim a little right. And just, but actually in terms
of their posture, they kind of go with the slope and just
accept that I'm swinging, I'm moving my whole frame of
(29:12):
reference on to this slope wherethe less experienced golfers
tend to try to kind of more bring it back to a flat swing.
But then of course, they end up in this sort of posture that
relative to the slope is now in a spot that I used to and they
don't complete the task as well.So I think a learning is, you
(29:33):
know, if you're on a line when it comes below your feet, just
kind of go with that, go with the slot, just your aim
accordingly and make your normalas much as you can make your
normal swing relative to that's one.
Useful, useful. So it kind of just affirms the
thing that we that we've kind ofassumed here over the years.
Yeah, I think a lot of good golfers, most good golfers, work
(29:55):
that out through trial and error.
Yes, let's see, you should do one.
One more that you have on here that I'm interested in is face
angle variability and irons. Yeah, that was a fun one.
That was one of our workshops. Dr. Sasha McKenzie did a whole
workshop on on that. He'd done some studies looking
at players using smaller blades and larger blades on ions and
(30:18):
trying to look at measuring workability.
So the ability to delivery, it wasn't paid to look at the just
the ability to control face angle.
And how do you, that's one of the things that's very important
in golf, right? You know, distance is important,
but like controlling the face toget the ball starting in the
direction you need to is goes without saying, super key, super
(30:41):
key and golf. So like, what is that?
What can you do to minimize phase angle variability is a
huge one. And Sasha did the whole workshop
on that. It's kind of it's kind of
interesting. There's a good debate around and
I'd say a very active debate right now and then golf coaching
world around, Is it better to hit a particular shot shape
right? Is it better to just go, I'm a
dual player, I'm only going to hit drawers, never anything
(31:02):
else? Or is it better to say, you
know, when, when the whole dictates it, I'll hit a draw
when the whole dictator fade or a straight ball?
And I don't know that that's certainly not everyone agrees on
that. But one of the questions that
Satchel was asked was, you know,is it easier?
The players just naturally biomechanically find it easier
(31:22):
to hit fades or drawers or whatever.
And he made a pretty compelling bio mechanics argument as to why
a drawn fade are no different bio mechanically.
You know you can. You can be a drawer player and
we can just close your eyes, youmove the club in your grip,
point you a different direction,make you make the exact same
(31:43):
swing, and now it's fading. Biomechanically, nothing changed
at all. So biomechanically, there's no
reason why a draw is easier thana fade or vice versa.
And yet, you know certain clients, for whatever reason,
find it just more comfortable inone than the other, and you try
to make them hit something against their natural shot
shape. You know how much of that is
(32:05):
just that learned thing about this is what I'm used to seeing.
I'm so dialed in seeing this both like when I see a different
both like it just kind of makes it harder for me to get the
feedback. Any whatever it is, it just
biomechanically there's no difference.
But there's yet there's still this persistent thing that for
some players it seems to work best to just pick your shot
(32:26):
shape and go with it. And then for others they're very
comfortable going No today. I mean, father example, Bob
Watson would be the perfect example of that's not how he
operates. He does not pick a shot shape
and go with it. He sees every shot differently.
And the guys won two majors and a bunch of PGA Tour events.
And so it clearly works for him.But there's still that question,
(32:47):
is there a way that inherently is better for masses for most
people? And that was, you know, Sasha,
definitely beyond the camp of itdoesn't matter by mechanics
wise, whether it's a draw or fade, but still an open debate.
And that's what as a perfect example of where like, you know,
there's the scientists coming out from one side.
This culture is coming out from a different side of world.
(33:07):
This is what I see on the course.
So help me explain it. And this is what I you know,
what players feel they do is important because they're super
dialed in. But then it's up to us as
scientists to try to explain it.And sometimes it's a myth and
sometimes it's the truth, and wejust, you know, scientists catch
it up. What was the most buzz this year
in like what category was it Biomechanics?
(33:28):
Was it maybe throughout equipment?
Because that might be where you live most of the time.
Yeah, it's a good question. I think there was certainly
there was a decent amount of buzz around where's golf going
in terms of, you know, the future of golf.
We had one of our keynotes with Steve Auto from the RNA, which
was great. You know, he got a lot of
questions about world ranking, some good players.
(33:49):
How where's that going? You know, which obviously is a
big topic in the whole golfing world.
There's a lot of questions aboutreining in distance and and why
and how and how much is this done deal and what where are we
going next? And would you ever consider
changing clubs? And I think that's on a lot of
people's mind, like the future of golf, whether you're coming
at it from the sustainability side, and certainly here in
(34:12):
Europe, I think that's a big conversation, whether you're
coming at it from, you know, protecting the pro game and
making that the best part of thewhen you're coming out from
what's the best thing for 66 million people in play to grow
the industry. And as an equipment company,
obviously that's something we care very deeply about.
You know what we want golf to bea healthy sport that's popular.
(34:34):
That's the those are the bread and butter of the game.
So don't make a change purely for the pros if it's going to
harm 66 million golfers. But all those voices and there's
a lot of discussion around that.You know, we have another
keynote from an equipment manufacturer that was, was
really cool. There was, I think, you know,
just a quick, there was a littlebit of talk about
(34:55):
sustainability. It's because I don't think it's
a huge thing in the golf industry right now, but it's
coming just like it's coming in lots of other industries.
So where's golf going to be in the future?
I think was quite a quite a big topic.
Got it. Before we run any other studies,
you're going to remember here asyou as you go back, go back to
work and start thinking about things, anything else you're
(35:16):
going to kind of like maybe I should look into that more.
Gosh, that's going to that makesyou think.
I don't know, I think I think that stood out to me.
Maybe not a study that was wrong, but there's a really nice
tribute to Alastair Cochrane, who was the founder of golf
science and kind of linking, I think one of the quotes was, you
know, science injuries. And for people who don't know
(35:37):
who he was, Alastair Cochrane was the godfather of golf
science. He created The Search for the
Perfect Swing, which is still the best book in golf science,
even though it was published 5456 years ago.
He founded the World Scientific Congress and his vision was, you
know, having a forum for for people to publish, you know,
(35:58):
golf scientific work and talk about it and debate it.
We had, you know, two different equipment manufacturers and a
ruling body up on stage together, you know, laughing and
enjoying it. Talking about Alastair Conkin
and the effect he had on all of our careers, which was really
good. And I think it's it's an area
where the golf science communitycan be quite a positive thing of
(36:21):
science is science. And it doesn't really matter
which company you work for and whether you agree with it or
not. And Alistair was very good at
that. Like do a study that probably
answers the question and no one needs to run that study again
because the science endures. And that was, for me like a real
highlight of the conference to have that.
(36:42):
Love it, love it. When's the next one?
This is every every two or four years.
Yes, what goes, in fact it couldbe, I think we're aiming to try
to have them every two to three years.
We've been in the early days there every four years.
The last couple I mean every twoyears, but obviously it's quite
a lot that host a conference every two years.
So there's a reasonable chance that we'd be looking at 2027.
(37:05):
We're actually actively looking for the next host.
There's a couple of different places that are interested.
You know, we'd like to, we like to take it around the world a
little bit, but obviously a big part of the kind of population
in the States and in Europe. And so potentially the next one
will be looking at the states, although that's not a guarantee.
And that's our goal is to have them regularly enough that
(37:26):
people who are interested can see that we do video the whole
thing and we're working on editing all those videos and
we'll make those available for small purchase fee.
People want to look at just particular talks or if they want
to get access to the whole lot. So that last year's conference
or 2022's conference are up on our website
rightnowgolfscience.org this morning and give us a couple of
(37:48):
weeks and we'll have them all edited and ready to go.
I'd recommend Saint Andrews the next location if I can put my
vote in. Yeah.
That's, that's fair. That's a good draw.
We'll, we'll work on that. That was good.
That was the last one I went to and I would definitely come back
if it was if it was there. But no, I'm excited to keep
diving into this. Are you guys going to release
(38:10):
the the book again of all the apps?
Yeah. Actually, more recently, rather
than publish a whole book, we wejust put the abstracts that were
submitted each, but each presentation is A2 page kind of
summary. We'll put those on our website
once we have them. In the digital age, it's easier
just to download and those will be available for free.
But we do charge a little for the video.
(38:31):
It's just to try to feed some funds back into running the
conference because we also have a journal that we published.
It's Open Access and there are some costs to running things.
So that that keeps us, keeps us going for the next few years.
Well, thank you, Paul for the time letting us know some of
what happened this year and I'llkeep covering it.
I'm going to dive into a lot of those studies.
(38:52):
So we'll keep looking into all those.
And I, we need to hear more on this wedge study.
We might have you back to to go deep on deep on what you guys
did there. I'd love to.
It was a, you know, a 15 minute presentation did not cover the,
you know, three months of work, the one into collecting the
data. So there's a lot to be dived
into. There.
Awesome. Thanks, Paul.
Have a good day.
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