Ross Oct 30, 2017
Hi Dan
It is all about angles. You want to find your ideal launch angle. This is one reason I teach playing the ball out in front of the front foot, so you’ll already be hitting up (or ascending into) the ball. This gets the “angle of attack” into the ball, after the arc has bottomed out and the club face is traveling up again*.
Now for the tough technical stuff… “Effective Loft”. If you have a Driver with “X” loft and you hit the ball before the club head has reached the bottom of the swing arc, you’ll be de-lofting or reducing the loft (causes lower flight). Now, if you play the ball like I teach, the effective loft at impact is “X+” because the club face has more loft as it is ascending… SO, you may need to be changing the loft to “less” depending on where you’re playing the ball. Another thing that happens is when the club face loft is optimized, you’ll be catching the ball on the upswing which will turn into roll later when the ball lands vs. too much loft kind of slipping under the ball adding backspin and not much roll. Hope this helps.
* This assumes you’ve kept the club face square through impact and have not flipped (which can ruin everything).