Start a Free 3 Day Trial

Get access to 900+ instructional videos
No credit card required
Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in America AND its list of Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America. Meet your new instructor.

Click here to join now and get full access.

Discussing Rate of Clubface Closure

A few points about the rate of closure:

  • Just looking at the club face angle in the follow through is very misleading.
  • Better predictors of rate of closure are
    • Timing of the club passing the chest
    • Amount of supination
    • Timing, and amount, of arcwidth max

 

  • For a given golfer:
    • Draws will have slightly higher ROC than Fades
    • Irons will have slightly higher ROC than driver

 

Playlists: Train Your Release, Squaring The Club Face Explained

Tags: Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Driver, Fairway Wood, Release, Member Question, Concept, Advanced, Intermediate

00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,000
This concept video is discussing measured rate of closure.

00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:09,000
Now, rate of closure is one of those hot topics in golf instruction,

00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:13,000
because it seems to be closely tied to consistency,

00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:15,000
or at least that's the way it's being taught.

00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:20,000
That it is more consistent to have a club that has a lower rate of closure

00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:23,000
compared to one that has a really fast rate of closure.

00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:26,000
Now, what we're going to talk about in this video is

00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:29,000
some of the actual numbers that I've seen, either with AMM,

00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:33,000
or I'm going to reference some data from Johnston Claire,

00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:36,000
who's done both AMM as well as gears.

00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:39,000
I think he's one of the bright minds out in golf,

00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:43,000
and he's really, he's unbiased in how he analyzes

00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:46,000
different systems and pins them up against each other,

00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:49,000
just looking for accurate and factual data.

00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:53,000
Okay, so, rate of closure is a little bit more tricky

00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:56,000
than just looking at the follow-through position and saying,

00:00:56,000 --> 00:01:00,000
okay, if the club is there, it was slower than it was there.

00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:03,000
In fact, one of them will show you is it's usually the opposite.

00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:07,000
So, when looking at the data, I look at AMM,

00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:12,000
and I'm going to share my experiences with looking at the axial velocity,

00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:15,000
which is looking at one of the two more common ways

00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:18,000
that rate of closure is measured, which is basically looking at

00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:21,000
how fast the club is rotating like this.

00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:25,000
One other way that gears measure is it, it presents both.

00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:31,000
It'll measure the club as it's rotating compared to the target line.

00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:39,000
You could, there are a number of different other ways that you could measure it,

00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:41,000
but those seem to be the most common too.

00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:44,000
So, either compared to the target or the shaft rotation itself.

00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:47,000
Those two are highly correlated together.

00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:51,000
So, with most of the data on AMM and most of my experience with rate of closure,

00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:54,000
I'm looking at that axial rotation graph.

00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:59,000
What I've seen is that golfers with a lower rate of closure

00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:03,000
do tend to complain about, they complain less about consistency.

00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:07,000
The guys I've seen who have the higher rate of closure tend to be the ones

00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:11,000
who come in saying, you know what, I just kind of have that two way miss

00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:15,000
or I spray it, my misses are really big, they tend to struggle more with face control.

00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:21,000
So, in this video, we're going to talk about the couple key concepts that I think will help you

00:02:21,000 --> 00:02:23,000
understand your rate of closure issue.

00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:28,000
So, now that we have a definition, let's talk about what I think are the three main predictors.

00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:32,000
So, we're going to look at supination amount, not necessarily rate.

00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:38,000
We're going to look at the club passing your chest and we'll look at the arc width.

00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:44,000
Those are, I think, three really good indicators for looking at what is your rate of closure.

00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:49,000
So, the first one we're going to look at is the club passing your chest because that's the one that

00:02:49,000 --> 00:02:54,000
Johnson Claire found had the highest correlation and totally makes sense to me.

00:02:54,000 --> 00:03:01,000
Basically, if I'm, I'll go slightly off angle so that you can see right around when it would happen.

00:03:01,000 --> 00:03:07,000
If the club is straight out in front of my chest, the earlier that happens and the club passes my body,

00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:16,000
that's going to have a faster rate of closure than if the club is yet to reach its widest point or more behind my body.

00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:27,000
So, from the down the line view, something that looks like that, I'll try to get it a little higher so that it shows up on camera.

00:03:27,000 --> 00:03:34,000
Where the club face is pretty square as in perpendicular to the ground,

00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:39,000
that will actually have a higher rate of closure because my body is stopped turning and it passed it,

00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:46,000
compared to that where the club face has rotated much more but is well behind my body.

00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:55,000
Now, I've had a couple other questions relating to supination and the one I'll tie in from my own experience as arc width.

00:03:55,000 --> 00:04:03,000
I find that arc width has one of the higher predictors of the rotation speed or the axial velocity.

00:04:03,000 --> 00:04:09,000
And that would make sense with what John seeing because arc width is basically the distance the grip is from your chest,

00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:13,000
and it will be widest roughly when it's passing your chest.

00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:22,000
So, amateurs tend to have it passed the chest much earlier, that gives them a lower arc width and a higher rate of closure.

00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:29,000
Tor pros tend to have the body lead longer and so it won't catch up or get to its widest point until later.

00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:41,000
So, those two, the club passing and the club getting wide, you delay those of the lead as possible and that's going to bring down your rate of closure issue or your rate of closure number.

00:04:41,000 --> 00:04:46,000
Now, the one that's kind of the most tricky conceptually is looking at supination.

00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:55,000
Now, to be clear, I'm talking about anatomical supinations, so I'm looking at the forearm rotation to the elbow.

00:04:55,000 --> 00:05:04,000
Alright, not necessarily the hand compared to the absolute, because I could have a whole lot of shoulder rotation, for example.

00:05:04,000 --> 00:05:09,000
Here I have a lot of shoulder rotation, but not a whole lot of supination.

00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:22,000
I've still got a good 30 degrees left in the tank, where here I have pretty much maxed out my supination, but I don't have nearly as much shoulder rotation.

00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:38,000
So, what I tend to see is in order to have your body rotated inside bent and in order to have those arms extend, you're going to have to have a higher amount of supination compared to those golfers who stay facing the golf ball and don't turn their body quite as much.

00:05:38,000 --> 00:05:51,000
Now, the key is it'll usually be a more gradual rate, so it'll supinate for a not necessarily a little start a little earlier and go maybe a touch later in the

00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:55,000
the follow-through, but it will be slower going through that phase.

00:05:55,000 --> 00:06:02,000
The guys who tend to have really fast supination values tend to have the least amount of actual supination.

00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:11,000
So, tying that together, if you want to lower your rate of closure, you want to be more open to impact, you want to have more supination on the way through,

00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:17,000
and you want to have the club stay behind the midpoint of your chest as long as possible.

00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:31,000
If you want to have a faster rate of closure, you're going to let the club pass your body and bend quickly in the follow-through, and you're going to have less form supination.

00:06:31,000 --> 00:06:38,000
So, hopefully that helps you understand the pattern that I tend to teach, especially as it relates to the longer clubs.

00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:47,000
If you're going to try to have consistency with the driver three would typically a swing that is built around a lower rate of closure is helpful,

00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:57,000
and those swings tend to have more body irritation, body powering the swing, and later arm extension with more supination during the follow-through.

00:06:57,000 --> 00:07:03,000
Now, let's look at some actual data using a few slides from Johnson Clear's presentation about rating closure.

00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:09,000
I want to thank John again for being gracious enough to share some of his presentation with us.

00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:19,000
So, here we have one of his slides, and it's showing two swings that had about the same amount of draw, but using two kind of different swing styles.

00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:28,000
And you'll see that the one on the left, the club face, is not quite as rotated as the one on the right, looking from the down the line camera angle.

00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:44,000
But if you look at the actual data down here at the bottom on the screen, you'll see that the one where the club has rotated more actually had a slower rate of closure at impact, significantly slower, compared to the one where the face was held off.

00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:53,000
Now, here's that same swing further into the follow-through, and you can see that the one on the right, remember these both drew about the same.

00:07:53,000 --> 00:08:02,000
The one on the left was holding the face, but you can see it passes body, the one on the right, there was more body turn, and the club was being held more out in front of his chest.

00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:15,000
You can see that even though the one on the right has significantly more rotation at this point, down it impact, the one on the right had slower club face rotation compared to the one on the left.

00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:21,000
Now, this is my favorite slide from the whole presentation, because I really like the image at the top of the screen.

00:08:21,000 --> 00:08:30,000
So what we'll see if we zoom in on that top image is John's got a little wise sticking straight out of his chest, so this line is pointing roughly at his chest.

00:08:30,000 --> 00:08:35,000
Similar to one of my content videos on Iron Man movement.

00:08:35,000 --> 00:08:47,000
So over here on the left, the one with the slower rotation down it impact, you can see that the club is roughly still in front of his chest, and this is probably close to a chef parallel.

00:08:47,000 --> 00:09:00,000
Over here on the right, you can see that the club has passed his chest much quicker by a greater degree, and down it impact it had significantly faster club rotation speed.

00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:13,000
Regardless of the effort to hold the face, it's really this amount of the club passing your body that will have one of the bigger effects on your rate of closure speed.

00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:24,000
If your goal is to get the club out in front of your chest at impact, then you're really asking yourself to have a higher rate of closure and potentially some more variability to your swing.

Click here to start your free 3 day trial. No credit card required.