Managing the Rhythmic Complexity of Hitting a Golf Ball

The authors investigated how the force pattern exerted on a golf club is coordinated with the golfer's weight shift, which supplies power to the swing. Moderately skilled golfers (n = 10, 5-10 stroke handicap) hit short golf shots requiring different amounts of force. Across these different shots, the timing of the force pattern applied to the clubhead was approximately invariant even though the force magnitude varied. In contrast, the weight shift timing and magnitude both varied with the required force of the shot. Across repeated attempts at the same shot, temporal variations in the clubhead force pattern were either uncorrelated or only weakly correlated with temporal variations in the weight shift. Together, these data indicate that the weight shift is a relatively independent, adjustable rhythmic unit from the invariant clubhead timing pattern for moderately skilled golfers.