André Rennes

1 Executive summary

2 Ball flight — range screen

Metric	André (Oct 28)	LPGA Tour avg	PGA Tour avg
Ball speed	89.2 mph	86 mph	102 mph
Carry	113 yds	107 yds	136 yds
Flat carry	113 yds	—	—
Total	115 yds	—	—
Launch angle	28°	24.0°	24.2°
Apex	79 ft (~26 yds)	23 yds	29 yds
Landing angle	47°	48°	52°
Spin	not on screen	8,403 rpm	9,304 rpm
Curve	15 ft left	—	—
Hang time	5.2 s	—	—
Proximity	79 (unit not legible, read as ft)	—	—

★ marks a personal best. None are flagged: this is the first pitching wedge range-screen readout, so every number here is a new baseline. Glare and a reflection of the golfer cover part of the screen, so some tiles were read by position (see section 10). Club speed isn't on the screen. At the 1.38–1.40 smash used in these reports, 89.2 mph of ball speed means about 64–65 mph. Wedges usually run a lower smash (the Tour table implies ~1.23), so the real club speed is probably higher, around 70–73 mph, close to the LPGA average of 70 mph.

What it means: Ball speed is above the LPGA average and carry follows, +6 yards. Launch is a little higher than both tours, but the apex (~26 yds) and landing angle (47°) sit right in the tour window, so the ball flies high and lands softly: carry 113, total 115. The 15 ft of left curve is small (about 5 yards). The ball wasn't tracked at 30 fps, so the start direction isn't known.

3 Timing & tempo — measured from the video

29.99 frames per second, so each time is accurate to about ±0.03 s. The backswing starts at about 4.34 s (frame 100), the top is at 4.87 s (frame 116), and impact is at about 5.07 s (frame 122).

Tour figure: John Novosel, Tour Tempo. One frame either way on the downswing moves the ratio between ~2.3:1 and ~3.2:1.

What it means: The ratio sits in the good band (2.5–3.5:1) and is close to the Tour's 3:1. It is the second best of his three pitching wedge swings (PW #2 is still the best at 2.8:1). Both halves are short: the backswing (0.53 s) is quicker than the Tour's 0.80 s, and the 0.20 s downswing is his fastest with this club so far. The ratio holds up because the whole swing is compact, and it is far steadier than the 9-iron logged the same day.

4 The reference frame — how this swing was measured

• Grid: each square is about 5 inches (~68 px). It is scaled from the 4 × 4 ft hitting mat (13.65 px per inch), because his height wasn't given, so treat distances as ±1 inch.
• Center lines and diagonals: a vertical line through the center of his stance (feet) and a horizontal line through the ball line are the fixed references. The two corner-to-corner diagonals cross at the belt buckle at address and give a fixed perspective scaffold for depth.
• Depth rays: only one red alignment stick is on the mat (just beyond the ball), so a vanishing point can't be fixed from sticks. The rays are the mat edges extended to the horizon. Anything moving along them moves toward the target, not sideways.
• Address references: the white line is the top of the cap (head height). The dashed orange line is waist height. Dashed light-blue lines mark shoulder and knee height. The dashed red tush line is the back of the hips at address: at impact the hips sit 0.0 in from it, so they stay on the line. The red trail is the head path and the yellow trail is the hands' path.
• Rotation and ball: shoulder and hip turn are visual estimates from the down-the-line frames (about ±10–15°). X-factor is shoulder turn minus hip turn at the top. The ball could not be tracked because it is gone between two frames at 30 fps, so there is no start direction. Slow-motion would fix that.
• Tracking: body points were tracked automatically on 225 frames (1.0–8.5 s), then checked by eye at each key position. The top comes from hand tracking (the last frame before the hands reverse). The camera stayed still: the background moved less than 1 px (median 0.4 px).

5 Swing sequence

Nine key positions, filmed down-the-line from behind the hands, slightly elevated. The target is straight into the picture.

Photos are numbered in the order they happen in the swing. The frames follow the standard swing positions.

6 Position-by-position biomechanics

Photo 1 — Address Good

• Feet along the thin line across the mat; the red stick just beyond the ball points the way to the target.
• Athletic, tall-ish posture: knees flexed, arms hanging, hands just ahead of the ball.
• Cap, shoulders, knees and tush lines are all set here as the reference for every later frame.

Photo 2 — Takeaway Head sinks

• The hands are only ~2.4 in from their address spot, yet the head is already about 3.3 in lower and ~0.8 in toward the ball. Most of the dip happens in the first ~0.17 s of the backswing.
• Hips are quiet (~0.3 in away from the ball), so the dip comes from the upper body and knees, not a hip slide.

Photo 3 — Lead arm parallel Good width

• Hands are ~13.7 in from address: a wide arc with the arms and club moving together.
• Head is ~4.2 in down, its deepest point of the backswing; hips stay steady (~0.5 in away, ~0.4 in up).

Photo 4 — Top Full turn

• Shoulders turned about 85° and hips about 40°, so the X-factor is about 45°: a big, strong coil.
• High-hands top again, like his earlier pitching wedge reports.
• Head is ~3.5 in down (a bit back up from the lead-arm frame) and ~2.1 in toward the ball; hips ~0.4 in away.

Photo 5 — Arm parallel (down) Good

• The hands drop fast: from ~22.0 in away from address at the top to ~12.8 in just 3 frames (~0.10 s) later.
• Hips hold their depth (~0.1 in), and the head stays steady at ~3.6 in down.

Photo 6 — Delivery Solid

• Hands are ~5.8 in from their address spot and closing fast, with the arms in front of the chest.
• Hips begin to clear (about 0.1 in toward the ball, ~1.0 in up), which is the start of the small rise seen at impact.

Photo 7 — Impact Head low, rest good

• Hands return to their address spot (~0.4 in), the same quality as his best swings.
• Head is ~4.1 in lower than at address (just over the 4 in line) and ~1.6 in toward the ball.
• Hips stay on the tush line (0.0 in, no early extension), rise ~1.2 in, and are open about 35° while the shoulders are only ~15° open. That gap keeps the club lagging nicely.

Photo 8 — Release Keeps turning

• The ball is already gone and the chest keeps rotating toward the target.
• Head is at its lowest here (~4.7 in below address) and still down, with the eyes staying on the spot; hands are ~10.6 in from address.

Photo 9 — Finish Excellent

• Tall and balanced on the lead leg, trail foot up on its toe, belt buckle to the target, about 0.8 s after impact.
• The head has risen to ~3.3 in above its address height: a full, relaxed finish, held as in every report.

Overlay — head at address, top and impact

Depth note: from behind, the head's ~1.6–2.1 in toward-the-ball shift sits partly along the depth rays, so it mixes "toward the ball" with "toward the target". With only one stick on the mat, the rays come from the mat edges, and a single camera can't split the two. A face-on clip of the next swing will settle it. Rotation values are visual estimates (±10–15°).

7 Where the pitching wedge sits in the bag

Heads-up: on the same session day, the pitching wedge carried only 3 yards less than the 9-iron (113 vs 116), with 3.0 mph less ball speed and a launch just 1° higher. That's a tight pair. Two single swings can't settle it, so a few balls with each club will show the real gap. There is also a ~30-yard hole between the 7-iron (147 total) and the 9-iron (117), where an 8-iron report is still missing.

8 Diagnosis

9 Next steps — keep it simple

10 Limitations & next capture

• One swing is a snapshot. The readout is the screen shown right after it.
• Glare and a reflection cover part of the screen. Only Total distance, Landing angle, Hang time and Proximity have clear labels; the other tiles were read by position. Proximity has no readable unit, and spin and club speed aren't shown.
• The ball could not be tracked at 30 fps, so the start direction and the cause of the 15 ft left curve are unknown.
• Distances come from a grid scaled to the 4 × 4 ft mat, not to his height. From behind, depth mixes with sideways motion, and the single stick leaves the vanishing point undetermined.

Next capture: Next capture, to sharpen the reference frame: (1) the same down-the-line spot with two target-line sticks, filmed in slow-motion (120 or 240 fps) so the ball can be followed, (2) a face-on clip at chest height, (3) 3–5 balls for an average, with a clean, glare-free photo of the screen, and (4) André's height, to lock the grid scale.