Robert M. Gary wrote:
But wait a minute. A good frisbee thrower can make a frisbee rise
straight up (like a golf ball does). The frisbee may take one path for
awhile but then starts heading up, just like a properly hit golf ball
(although not mine golf balls ). The golf ball is well understood to
rise as a result of its backward spin and low pressure on top (B).
Anyone who claims that a golf ball just follows its original path has
certainly never seen one properly hit.

I haven't seen an analysis of a golf ball, but I saw an analysis a while
ago on a baseball. I think it may have been in Popular Mechanics, but
I'm not sure of that. The claim was that a baseball could be thrown so
as to rise (I forgot which type of pitch it is called) on its way to the
plate. The article pretty clearly debunked this myth. The spin
imparted to the ball can make it sink a little less slowly than a strict
ballistic trajectory, but the RPM required to actually make the ball
rise was something simply unattainable by a human.

I suspect the same is true of a golf ball (I'm a golfer, but not a
terribly good one). I've watched a number of balls hit by amatuers and
pros and I've never seen one rise above the launch trajectory. The
backspin will certainly make the trajectory much flatter than a
ballistic trajectory, but I don't think the ball will rise above a
tangent line to the path leaving the club face.


Matt