[tongzilla]

Originally Posted by tongzilla

Cue ball and stick. If struck at the centre, cue ball will obviously go straight. If struck towards the right, it will spin to the left. Back to golf. If the face strikes the ball on the outside aft, ball will spin to the left, known as draw/hook. If struck on the inside aft, ball will spin to the right, known as fade/slice. Ok, I hope the above is correct.

No, it's not. The problem with your analogy is that there is a longer period of contact between a club face and a golf ball than there is with the cue ball and stick. The clubhead can make contact inside aft, but the clubface can rotate to square (relative to the target line) by the time the ball separates from the clubhead. Result--straight ball flight.

(Firstly, this analogy was suggested by EdZ, not me. I was told to use it as a model to help me further understand its application in G.O.L.F.). Please take a look at my next post where I discuss in detail about this inside aft quadrant issue, and the confusion with using this term.

You are correct in the sense that the clubface contacts the ball on the visual inside aft quadrant, but in fact, relative to the real centre line of the ball, the clubface contacts the ball right in the centre, in between the inside and outside aft quadrants. This real centre line points to the right of the target. Why? Because the tangent of the Arc of Approach is to the right of the target at impact point, and that is the direction of the centre line. This is because the club is swung on the Inclined Plane and the ball is struck before Low pPoint. Which is why this same centre line has rotated, so that it is now pointing at the target, by the time the ball has come to separation.

Basically, we should always clarify whether we're talking about the visual quadrants, using the visual centre lines (one of them pointing directly at target), or the real quadrants, using the real centre lines (one of them pointing as a tangent on the Arc of Approach at Impact Point, to the right of target) .