Mathematics Higher Level Internal

Assessment - Exploration

“The Most Efficient Angle

Orientation of Shoulders for a Golf
Swing”

Candidate Number: Rudi Sun

School Number:
Examination Session: May 2019

 Table of Contents

Introduction ………………………………………….… 2

Rationale ………………………………………………… 2

Aim ……………………………….……………………… 2

Methodology ……………………..……………………… 3

Presentation of Data with Observations .……….……… 4

Data processing ………………….....…………………… 7

Extrapolation of data ………………….………………. 11

Conclusion ……………………………………..……....… 12

Reflection ………………….....………………………… 12

Bibliography …………………………………...……....… 13

1
Introduction
It has not been a long time since I first played golf. To most golf lovers, it is a recreational
sport that can free ourselves from city and enjoy the beauty of nature. The main moving mechanism
of golf is swinging a club to hit balls into holes with a particular order. A golf swing consists of four
parts, a backswing, a downswing, an impact and follow through. The driving force for most people
to play golf is how far a ball can travel because longer distances would bring people more
satisfaction and motivation. The energy of the impact, which determines the distance a ball can
reach, mainly comes from torso rather than arms, by turning upper body as a torque with the middle
of shoulders as the centre. Thus, it is important for golf players to know what kind of posture can
make more efficient use of body strength because according to previous studies approximately one-
fifth of the energy developed by the body during the downswing is transferred to the club (Nesbit
and Serrano, 2005).

Rationale
Every time I go to practice field, I see people turn shoulders as hard as they can to maximize
the strengths of stroke. As the golf swing is acknowledged as one of the most difficult and complex
sport motions (Nesbit and McGinnis, 2014), I believe the random motions based on amateurs’
intuition are not reliable and effective enough to achieve their goal.
In the past few months, my coach has recorded numerous videos of my golf swing to show
me the improvements and errors, which makes me think of visualizing the relationship between
angle orientations of shoulders and the velocity of the club head. There are boards showing distance
on practice field. Therefore, I can estimate the angle I need to reach a certain range and to improve
my golf skill, which will be useful in golf course by decreasing the number of handicaps.

Aim
I would like to explore the mathematical relationship between angle orientation of my
shoulders and velocity of the club. I will generate the equations by modelling golf swing of various
shoulder orientations, then using the idea of Taylor Series and different modeling functions to fit the
trajectory and predict the possible optimum angle for a golf swing. The exploration will allow for a
practical comparison of golf technique, helping other players to improve their skills with scientific
evidence as well as acquiring a deeper understanding of the sport.

2
Methodology

Nesbit and Serrano. “Work and Power Analysis of the Golf Swing.” 2005. Figure 2

Videos of a front view of my golf swings were taken by the coach on the practice field. I
extracted 4 continuous frames from the video for each angle orientation of shoulders with interval
of 0.067 seconds. Then I tracked the trajectory of the club head, which should be similar to Fig.1,
by number of pixels in Preview (MacBook Pro) (Fig.2) instead of superimposing a Cartesian plane,
simplifying the process of counting grids.
A golf swing should be three-dimensional with
approximately 11 degrees between the plane of the club head and
the plane of the path of the hands (Nesbit, 2005). In this
exploration, the model is considered to be two-dimensional for
simplification. The angle orientation of shoulders can be obtained
by calculating the angle between the planes of shoulders before
swing and at backswing (the angle between the two red lines in
Nesbit and Serrano. “Work and Power Fig.3), recording by a camera with a front view.
Analysis of the Golf Swing.” 2005.
After plotting the coordinates on a graph of horizontal
displacement against vertical displacement, we can obtain the equation of the trajectory using
Excel. Next, I will calculate the velocity of the club at the impact by differentiation in calculus.
Afterwards, I am going to plot the second graph which is the velocity at impact against the
corresponding angle orientation of shoulders using MATLAB, a modelling software. Two
regression modals will be covered, polynomial curve fitting and Gaussian Function. By comparing
their graphs, I will choose the better one, then predicting the maximum velocity.

3
 Presentation of Data with Observations
Below are screenshots taken of me at Dongjiang Golf Club, Shanghai, China.

Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6

Figure 7 Figure 8
Fig. 4,5,6,7,8: The photos are extracted from the same swing, including backswing (Fig. 4) and downswing
(Fig. 5,6,7,8). Fig. 5,6,7,8 are four continuous frames in the video; I did not calculate the time lag between the
frames because it does not affect the graph of trajectory of the club head.

Then I increased the transparency of Fig. 4 and

overlaid a Cartesian plane on it to calculate the angle
of shoulder orientation a. (Fig.9) In this swing,
𝑎
α = 180˚ − arctan - 0 = 180˚ − arctan(1) = 135.0˚
𝑏

Figure 9
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 To calculate the velocity of club head at the impact when my shoulder turned 135°, I need to
have the function of trajectory of club head first. I used pixel automatically showed in Preview, an
app in MacBook Pro, instead of counting grids on a Cartesian plane, which is more accurate and
efficient.

Fig.10: Centre of the golf ball is the origin. The club

head is 361 pixels left and 184 pixels up from the origin.
Therefore, the coordinate of the club head in this frame
is (-361,184).

Figure 10
135.0˚
After that, I placed the four data points in a Frame Horizontal Vertical
table, using ‘Trend line’ in Excel to approach the Displacement Displacements
function of the trajectory. The trajectory of club head
(pixels) (pixels)
1 -526 514
follows the shape of a concave upward quadratic
2 -361 184
function. I recognised that velocity of club head should 3 -21 15
be the minimum near the impact because the stationary 4 184 63
Figure 11
point is located there, while the coach told me the
opposite.

y = 0.0021x2 + 0.1305x - 16.794

Trajectory of Club Head (135.0˚)
600
Vertical Displacement (pixels)

500

400

300

200

100

0
-600 -500 -400 -300 -200 -100 0 100 200 300
-100
Horizontal Displacement (pixels)
Figure 12
5
 The velocity at the impact is the derivative of the function when 𝑥 = 0; since the golf ball
locates at the origin of the graph, the club head hits the ball at 𝑥 = 0, making the impact. The
derivative should be equal to the coefficient of x in the equation 𝑦 = 0.0021𝑥 9 + 0.1305x −
16.794, because:

𝑦 @ = 0.0042x + 0.1305
Substitute 𝑥 = 0 into the equation
@
𝑦 = 0.0042×0 + 0.1305 = 0.1305

The entire video is 2 minutes’ long and has 12 swings in it. I processed the swings
separately and placed the data points in a table (Fig.13), allowing the comprehensive information of
the relationship between angle orientation of shoulders and the velocity of club head.

Angle Velocity of
Orientation of Club Head
From this table, we can observe that Shoulders (°) (pixels per
velocity reaches peak in the range of 90° to 115°
frame)
41 0.0134
and then goes down. Therefore, I plotted the 45 0.0387
60 0.0798
data points in a scatter graph (Fig.14) to keep
90 0.1969
the original data and eliminate uncertainty, 93 0.2086
preparing for modelling and the analysis of the 100 0.1976
107 0.203
coordinates of maximum velocity. 115 0.2064
117 0.1685
121 0.1725
135 0.1305
141 0.1247
Figure 13

Velocity of Club Head vs. Angle Orientation of Shoulders

0.25
Velocity of Club Head (pixel per frame)

0.2

0.15

0.1

0.05

0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
Angle Orientation of Shoulders (˚)

Figure 14

6
 Work Cited

Nesbit, Steven M. "A Three Dimensional Kinematic and Kinetic Study of the Golf Swing." Journal

of Sports Science and Medicine, vol. 4, no. 4, 2005, pp. 499-519,

www.jssm.org/volume04/iss4/cap/jssm-04-499.pdf. Accessed 23 Mar. 2018.

Nesbit, Steven M., and Ryan S. McGinnis. "Kinetic Constrained Optimization of the Golf Swing

Hub Path." Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, vol. 13, no. 4, 2014, pp. 859-73,

www.jssm.org/volume13/iss4/cap/jssm-13-859.pdf. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.

Nesbit, Steven M., and Monika Serrano. "Work and Power Analysis of the Golf Swing." Journal of

Sports Science and Medicine, vol. 4, no. 4, 2005, pp. 520-33,

www.jssm.org/volume04/iss4/cap/jssm-04-520.pdf. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.

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