Watch professional golfers putt and you’ll eventually notice three
common features about their style, says Robert Grober, an expert on
the physics of golf at the Yale University.
First, the putter head always moves at a constant speed when it hits
the ball. Second, the length of time the putting stroke takes has
little impact on the speed of the ball (and therefore the length of the
putt). And finally, a professional golfer’s backswing takes about twice
as long as the downswing.
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Grober has used these observations to construct a mathematical model
of a putting swing and to explore other properties of such a system.
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It turns out that the model that best accounts for this behaviour is a simple pendulum driven at twice its resonant frequency.
That explains a number of other observations about professional
golfers, says Grober. For example, a common putting tip is that longer
backswings equate to longer putts. This model has exactly this
characteristic: the length of the backswing is proportional to the
speed of the club at impact.
It is also relatively straightforward to get a sense of the tempo of
the required putt by swinging the club back and forth in resonance,
like a pendulum. The duration of the actual stroke is exactly half the
length of the putter cycle (i.e. from the address position moving
backward, to the address position moving forward). “In fact, one often
observes golfers instinctively doing this before they hit a putt,” says
Grober.
So now the secret is out. Make a careful note for next time you’re out on the links.
