Laws of physics

I didn't get physics at school, which is probably why my teacher Mr Dick (believe it or not that was his real name) didn't like me very much. He thought I was either a) bone idle or b) thick. I think it's a shame he overlooked option c) confused. Had he thought to give me extra support rather than extra lines I may well be an engineer by trade now. Anyway the point of this seemingly aimless preamble is to establish quite clearly at the outset that physics is not my forte.

I made a minor tweak to my putting stroke on the weekend and was subsequently overhitting my putts by as much as two feet more than normal. If I overhit a putt I'm pretty good at knocking it no more than two or three feet past the hole. On Sunday that was becoming more like four or five feet and I missed more return putts than normal. My stroke felt smoother and the ball was rolling better. So I got to wondering does skidding make a ball travel more or less distance. And then I thought of another possible explanation.

From my memory force in = force out. The reason a rubber ball will not bounce back to the same height as it was dropped from is because it loses heat and energy through friction. My question is that by moving the ball a few inches further forward in my stance but maintaining the same length backswing am I inadvertently applying more force. If the clubhead continues to accelerate from the top of the backswing to just after the point the ball is struck, then surely the answer should be yes, in the same way that a half swing shot won't travel the sane distance as a full swing even when the tempo remains consistent. Hopefully this will mean it will take a couple of weeks for my brain to recalibrate to the new ball position and my pace judgement to return to normal.

If nothing else it has served as a reminder that perhaps I should have paid more attention in GCSE physics, rather than drawing phallic cartoon's parodying my physics teacher's rather unfortunate name.