Correlation between maximum in-shoe plantar pressures and clubhead speed in amateur golfers

Abstract

Disagreements exist in the literature regarding the manner in which weight should be dynamically shared during the golf swing, both within-feet and between the back- and target-foot, to generate maximal clubhead speed. The purpose of this study was to determine whether preferential foot-loading locations underlie weight sharing by examining the correlation between clubhead speed and maximum plantar pressure (PP) distributions. Thirty-two amateur golfers with handicap indexes ranging from 2.7 to 25 performed 10 driver swings on artificial turf following a warm-up. PP distributions were recorded at 100 Hz, and clubhead speed was recorded using a ball-tracking Doppler radar system. Maximum PPs were extracted from a 2-s window approximately centred on ball contact and were regressed against clubhead speed. Significance was assessed over the entire foot surface using statistical parametric mapping (SPM), a spatially continuous technique. SPM revealed, at relatively high anatomical resolution, significant positive correlations between clubhead speed and PPs in the lateral target-foot (P < 0.05). This suggests that not only weight transfer but also weight-transfer location may be an important determinant of clubhead speed in amateur golfers.