[BCrosby]

John -

The indispensable Cochran and Stobbs did a study of exactly your issue and concluded that extra weight in the head makes only a marginal difference in ball speed. Whatever difference it makes is usally more than offset by the obvious drawbacks of a lot of weight in the head. I.e., loss of control and the extra energy necessary to get things accelerated.

Bob

[BCrosby]

Rich -

My understanding is that the "sound" thing is purely subjective. But no less important for that.

Bob

[JakaB]

Rich,

Is it a farce to adjust your follow through based on the feel or sound of a shot you are currently hitting...we have all tried to hold on to a shot that feels like it is going left..but is that just a waste of effort if the ball has already left the club....or are at least the pros reaction times that fast...that would explain why they like the feel and sound of a given club..

[Brent Hutto]

Well, Iron Byron is pretty securely anchored to a large building which is pretty securely anchored to a large planet so I don't think increasing its weight from 500 pounds to 600 pounds or whatever could make much difference...

The only weight that matters at all is weight in the clubhead (or to a lesser extent weight in the first couple inches of the shaft). If Howell's hypothetical ten extra pounds of muscle would let him swing a 230g clubhead at the same clubhead speed as he can currently swing a 200g clubhead then he'd gain several yards of distance.

However, if he's that much stronger he can probably gain an extra three or four miles per hour using his current 200g clubhead and that would gain him even more distance.

Which is why clubhead weights for strong players using 43"-45" drivers have tended to cluster right around 200g give or take five percent. That works out to be optimum for most real-world non-hypothetical golfers.

[JakaB]

Bob,

Don't you think the advancements of the modern swing has more to do with the method of weight transfer than swing speed....Does getting your wieght behind it not mean a damn thing...

[JakaB]

Why does getting punched by a heavy weight hurt more than getting punched by a feather weight when their gloves travel at the same speed...

[BCrosby]

John -

Yes and no. "Getting your weight behind it" has more to do with the location of the center of your swing arch than getting more weight into the clubhead. Getting your weight behind the ball with a driver means you have a longer arch (it is more likely your arms will be fully extended at impact), thus more centrifical force.

But yes, some of the increase in distance has to be due to a better understanding of the golf swing and the swings that result from that better understanding.

Bob

[TEPaul]

John B. Kavanaugh asked;

"If Iron Byron gains or loses weight will that change the force applied to a ball....I'm thinking that if you add weight closer to the club it might help....Would Charles Howell III hit the ball further if he gained ten pounds of muscle but retained the same swing speed...."

John B;

Are you trying to sneak up on the rationalization that you should not go on a diet?

[JakaB]

John B;

Are you trying to sneak up on the rationalization that you should not go on a diet?

That is a funny true conversation that many of me and my other fat friends have had in the past....I'm really not sure if I would gain enough flexibility or not lose strength to gain any distance by losing 90 lbs....A better question would be if losing weight would hurt either Stadler...Father or Son...I am not sure if Craig could hit the ball as far if he dropped 35lbs...I just doubt it..

[Brent Hutto]

Why does getting punched by a heavy weight hurt more than getting punched by a feather weight when their gloves travel at the same speed...

Well, for starters you are not a golf ball. The golf ball is much, much lighter than the thing hitting it. Also, the golf ball can't report to us how much it hurts but if it could I think the pain would be considerable with any weight clubhead.

The problem with your line of reasoning is the same as I pointed out in my original post. Only what happens during the first tiny fraction of a second matters because after that the golf ball is gone. During that first tiny fraction of a second the weight of the golfer can not affect the ball because on that time scale the shaft is extremely flexible (as in "so flexible it might as well not be there"). That said, it is true that a heavier clubhead hitting a ball will make it go farther than a lighter clubhead, given the same velocity at impact.

Now a great many things matter in the split-seconds leading up to impact. The golfer's strength and whether he shifts his weight and all that other stuff have great bearing on the velocity with which he can propel the clubhead into the ball. However, at the 1/10,000 second of truth all that matters is how fast the clubhead is moving (and in what direction of course), what it weighs, what the ball weighs and the squishiness of the ball combined with the flexibility of the club. That's it. Everything else is too far away to have an effect that quickly.

[TEPaul]

"This is slightly OT, but vis a vis "sound" can somebody tell me what it means when a pro tell you that a driver has "good sonics"?  Does it just mean it sounds good, or is there more to it than that.......?"

Rich:

What a pro really means when he says that is he could hear the fact that he actually "accelerated" the clubhead so fast during that milli-second the ball was on his clubface that he actually doubled his clubhead speed during that milli-second of ball/clubface contact. There's actually a formula for that---check it out with your wife.

[TEPaul]

Rich:

I've noticed that since professor Hutto entered the room you've grown strangely silent on your "accelarator" theory on some of Sir Isaac's ideas and the effects of clubface on the golf ball, and that in fact you moved on to the area of sound.

Would you mind getting back on the subject or else write 100 times, "I will refrain from posting my wacko physics theories on GOLFCLUBATLAS.com"?

[ForkaB]

Rich:

I've noticed that since professor Hutto entered the room you've grown strangely silent on your "accelarator" theory on some of Sir Isaac's ideas and the effects of clubface on the golf ball, and that in fact you moved on to the area of sound.

Would you mind getting back on the subject or else write 100 times, "I will refrain from posting my wacko physics theories on GOLFCLUBATLAS.com"?

Tom

That makes a lot of sense, and since the club is going faster it probably changes the frequency and thus a different set of harmonics.

You must have been reading your Newton, or were you just chewing a fig newton or two......?

[TEPaul]

Yeah, right, Rich---PROBABLY!

[TEPaul]

John B:

Rich Goodale's Law of Acceleration can actually prove if Craig Stadler lost 90 lbs he would hit the ball 25% farther which means he'd be the longest driver on any professional tour!

Are you going to go on a diet now?

Actually Stadler has always been a finely honed professional ball hitting machine. Those from San Diego and SoCal can tell you that one time during his college years he rolled, hungover, out of his car after sleeping in it all night at the tournament parking lot and went out and won the tournament going away by getting into this interesting shot-making pattern where he could hit a shot that started out as a fade and then drew---or vice versa.

When they asked him how he was able to do that he said;

"Well, for starters you have to wear a golf shoe on your right foot and a desert boot on your left foot as I did today because I couldn't find my golf shoe for my left foot anywhere in my car it was such a shit-hole and I was so late I didn't have the time to really look for it!"

[JohnV]

Tom P.  Thanks for the pointer, I should have remembered to go there.  On page 265 of my copy (The Classics of Golf edition)  CBM says how the 1.62x1.62 became standard for both associations in May of 1921.

CBM also says the Americans wanted the heavier ball rather than the floater, which the R&A was "more or less in favor of" and yet 5 years later the positions had reversed.  On July 23, 1926, the New York Times ran and article stating that WC Fownes (then President of the USGA) and others had returned from Britain and were unable to get the R&A to go along with the proposed change to a floater.  Fownes is quoted as saying, "There is a general impression that the larger and lighter ball, such as we adovcate, would curtail length."  He also says that the USGA had been arguing this for 2 or 3 years.  So even as early as 1923 or 1924 the positions were reversed from what CBM states above.

[TEPaul]

JohnV:

Through the book there're some opinions on this subject from some significant people in golf in those times. Their thoughts are generally actually directly quoted (which make them more accurate and most interesting to us) as they were obviously letters back and forth with Macdonald on the subject. It seems to me they all had opinions on the actual subject of the ball but with a lot of them there was always the more important subject (to them) of the dangers of lack of unity between the two bodies.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Dave,

How the hell did he hit a golf ball 253 in Soldier Field?

It was a combination of factors.

A drought, firm, fast conditions, a good wind at his back, and a few hard headed spectators, and no ambulance chasers in the gallery.

Now, those were the days.

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