Inside-out and Outside-in Golf Swing

You may already know that if your golf swing is outside-in, you will hit a weak slice to the right. If you have outside-in swing, it means you are cutting across the ball. This will put slice spin on the ball. On the other hand, if your clubhead approaches the ball from the inside the target line,  your swing is either inside-in or insdie-out. Ideally, you want to swing inside-in for straighter shots.

 

How the Clubhead Path affects the Distance

Taylor Made once tested golfers to see how their clubheads approach the ball at impact. They found out that most of golfers' clubheads were coming into impact about 11 degrees out to in. This means most amateurs are cutting across the ball. If your swing was perfectly inside to in, that's neutral or 0 degree. On the other hand, most of tour players' swing path was neutral to 3 degrees inside coming into impact. This means tour pros are swinging from inside-in or a bit inside-out. Golf laboratories Inc. used the robot to see how the swing path affected distance and other aspects. They programmed the robot to swing from inside-in (0 degree), inside-out (9 degrees in to out) and outside-in (9 degrees out to in).

 

Here are the results.

• Ball Speed. Not much difference in ball speed.
• Launch angle. The more you swing from the inside, the higher the launch angle.
• Backspin. Outside-in path had the largest number of backspin per degree of launch angle.
• Distance. Inside-out swing path produced more distance than other types of swing path such as inside-in or outside-in. But there were not so much difference between inside-out path and inside-in path. In terms of distance, the shot with inside-out swing went 40 yards farther than the shot with outside-in swing. So by swinging from outside, you could easily lose 40 yards on your drives.

To hit it far with your driver, you want to increase the launch angle and limit the number of backspin. However, the robot was programmed to swing 9 degrees from inside to out. So you don't want to swing extremely from inside. If  you do, you will hit lots of push shots.

 

Hitting lots of Pust Shots?

You might read golf tips on the magazine about hitting it from the inside and try them on the course. And you end up hitting lots of push shots and push-slice. You may wonder why this happens. If you are hitting and try to swing from inside-out, you will end up hitting push slice for sure. The ball flight is not only determined by the swing path or the path of the clubhead through impact. The clubface angle also affects the ball flight.

 

To hit a draw, you want to close your clubface in relation with the clubhead path. For example, if your swing path is inside-out the clubface is looking right of the target at impact, you will hit a push shot.

 

In this case, you want to have your clubface looking at the target to hit the shot that starts right of the target and come back to the target. So if you try to fix your swing path, you need to pay attention to the things such as grip, posture, alignment and ball position that affect the clubface angle at impact as well.

 

Reference: http://www.golfsamurai.net/golfswing/inside-out-outside-in.htm