Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Tue Jan 2 11:34:01 2001

Jack-
Happy New Year!

I have a question about torquing of the bat itself.

In golf,a lot of time is spent matching the stiffness of the shaft to the players swing.The player theoretically controls club speed so that acceleration stops before contact.The acceleration will have flexed the club so that once acceleration stops,the club unflexes which continues to accelerate the club head through contact in spite of the fact that the body is no longer accelerating the club.

Occasionally when I see high speed freeze frame of pros,it looks like the wooden bat is bent toward the ball at contact,as if it has torqued and detorqued before contact.There was a picture on hitting.com of Dmitri Young at contact that seemed to show this,and recently I saw an overhead shot of Sosa("Sluggers-Baseballs heavy hitters"-or something close to that,p.81)that seemed to show the same thing.
Does this happen or is it just an artifact of video of a rapidly moving object or a result of collision forces?

If it does happen,would it be more significant for aluminum bats?

If it does happen and you do see it, it would certainly be a sign that you have finished accelerating by contact or just before which would require good mechanics.

Do players ever mention this or associate any feel to it as some golfers do?