I have been asked many times about my opinion of what occurs during the Impact Interval. This Interval begins as the Clubface touches the ball and lasts until the moment the ball leaves the clubface.
There are many thoughts, pictures, videos which try to explain what is occurring during the .0004 of a second or 4/10 or a millisecond; scientists are even debating the duration of the Impact Interval and are questioning their findings. Therefore, for our discussion we will us the above numbers which are based on a driver being swung at about 100 miles per hour.
In order for us to understand the Impact Interval we need to be grounded in time. By this I mean we must understand the time duration of the Impact Interval and compare it to something more tangible. You may have heard the metaphor “it happened in a blink of an eye”. Well scientists have timed the eye blink and the average time it takes a human to blink – open to close and back open again is one third of a second (1/3 of a sec) or 333 milliseconds (there are 1000 milliseconds in a second).
We are looking for the duration of the Impact Interval in “real” time. So how many Impacts at .0004 are there in one eye blink? Therefore, 1/3 of a second is .333 divided by .0004 which represents Impact to Separation there are 832.5 Impacts in every eye blink, or 100 rounds of golf shooting 83 each round!