FORCE AND MOMENT EXERTED BY EACH HAND ON AN INSTRUMENTED GOLF CLUB

Abstract

This article shows an issue of the analysis on golf swing motion, and then introduces an instrumented golf club as a solution for the issue. During the golf swing motion, the upper limbs and a club make a closed multisegment loop, where it is impossible to calculate the forces and moments exerted by each hand via inverse dynamics due to the kinetic redundancy of the closed loop system. An instrumented grip handle equipped with twelve sets of strain gauges was designed to measure the forces and moments exerted by each hand. The results of kinetic analysis for a professional golf instructor indicates that 1 ) the force exerted along the club shaft by the grip-end side hand shows significant large values toward the ball impact, and 2) the forces exerted by both hands in the axes that are perpendicular to the club shaft show coupled force patterns.