Here's a fascinating video of what impact looks like. Notice two things: first, how much the club slows down at impact. A lot of swing speed gets removed when the club meets the ball.
It looks like the club doesn't slow down when you see players hit on TV, but I've read that impact removes about 30% of swing speed and this video confirms that number to be in the ball park.
The second thing to notice is what happens to the clubface when the ball is hit off center. Do you see the clubface turning? That's because impact was off-center. That decreases the distance of the shot, because some of the energy of impact is being used to rotate the clubface.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dG9hb3_blo (The poster does not allow embedding)
The clubs, in order, are:
Sand wedge
9-iron
7-iron
5-iron
3-iron
Driver
Putter
Did you notice, with the putter, how the ball slides across the grass rather than rotates? For the first few feet of a putt, the ball does skid along the ground before it starts turning.
You might not think that a putt has trajectory, but it does. The skid you're seeing here is what you want. If your putter face is too lofted at impact, or too delofted, the ball will hop, not slide, and distance will be affected.
Contact between the club and the ball in these shots lasts 1/2,000th of a second.
Note also that these films do not support the myth of backspin being created by the the ball rolling up the clubface.
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