CHARLEY HULL

Average drive 266.4 yards

HARNESS VERTICAL FORCE FOR MORE DISTANCE

While Charley’s open hips reveal she is using the same rotational forces we spoke about with DJ, the fact she is up on the toes of both feet shows just how much she is also using ‘vertical force’; in effect jumping upwards, almost off the ground, to fire speed into the clubhead.

Picture a golfer just before impact. Their hands are almost over the ball and the club lags behind, shaft around parallel with the ground. Now picture what would happen if the golfer pulled the handle upwards – away from the ground – from this position. As the handle moves up, the clubhead responds by kicking powerfully downwards. The more aggressively the handle moves upwards, the more sharply the clubhead accelerates down. This is vertical force in action… and it is what Charley is harnessing here.

The down before the up

Vertical force is a powerful beast, and we see it in the swings of some of the game’s longest hitters (check out the slo-mo impacts of the likes of Justin Thomas and Bubba Watson). But it’s important to understand that these spectacular upward impact jumps are only the second part of the move. Just as in a standing jump, we have to first squat down to create the leverage to leap upwards. In full flow, Charley’s upward thrust – mostly achieved by pushing down through the lead leg – is set up by a squatting move through the first part of the downswing. From here, it’s the pushing up off the ground that creates her massive vertical force. Force plates have shown that professional long drivers effectively triple their body weight during the pushingup stage.