Scott Lynn delivers one of the most technically rich presentations in Open Forum history — a deep dive into how the frontal plane moment creates (and limits) club head speed, and why deceleration strategy may be the most important and least understood piece of the golf swing.
Lynn introduces the "net swing plane continuum" — every golf swing falls between a pure frontal plane (lifting the club up and dropping it) and a pure transverse plane (spinning like a baseball bat). Matt Kuchar lives on the transverse end; Jim Furyk on the frontal. The magic of instruction is matching the ground-force engine to where the hands are in space.
Using Swing Catalyst's new markerless motion capture system, Lynn shows how the frontal plane moment arm — the "wrench" — is created by the relationship between center of mass, vertical force unweighting, and mediolateral force timing. The longer the wrench, the more efficient the power. This is what "effortless power" actually means.
The talk culminates with Lynn's Barry Sanders analogy for deceleration: just like the legendary running back would plant and change direction while defenders kept going, the best golfers create frontal plane deceleration that transfers energy distally into the club. But human braking takes only 126 milliseconds — faster than conscious reaction time (250ms) — so it can't be taught in a lesson. It must be trained through the nervous system using tools like slide boards.