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Padraig Dooley

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Re: Unintended consequences, driver
« Reply #25 on: July 22, 2013, 06:42:21 PM »
Here's a little experiment I did with driver lengths a few months ago, shorter is better for nearly everyone.

http://0to300golf.blogspot.ie/2012/12/normal-0-false-false-false-en-ie-x-none.html

Easier to hit the center of the club face with shorter drivers meaning longer and straighter drives. What's not to like about that.



 
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
  - Pablo Picasso

Doug Siebert

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Re: Unintended consequences, driver
« Reply #26 on: July 22, 2013, 09:09:15 PM »
The results of your experiment seem to indicate that a shorter shaft made no difference for you, in either distance or shot dispersion.  I don't know why you then extrapolate at the end that it will work better for other golfers.  I would assume some people do get higher clubhead speed out of the longer shaft, it is just a matter of whether the likely increase in shot dispersion is worth it.  If your normal dispersion is only 10-15 yards, going to 15-20 yards is probably not a big deal if the courses you play have wide fairways, and even 3 or 4 extra yards would be worth it.

The fairways on my home course pinch in to <25 yards in places, and there are only a few holes where you have more than 35 yards - and more than 5 yards off the fairway is in almost all cases in the trees.  I can play 10 shots worse on a bad driving day because of how costly this can be.  Since I only beat 50% fairways hit on that course on a good day, taking any hit on shot dispersion isn't worth it for me, even if I could somehow gain 10 yards with a longer shaft.

It would be interesting to measure this for myself like you did, I admit I've never tested the assumptions that 1) I'd hit a driver with a long shaft further and 2) I'd hit a driver with a long shaft less accurately.  Perhaps like you, it makes no difference for me.  It makes sense that a longer shaft would increase clubhead speed, but I'd have to swing it a bit flatter which may cause me to lose some mechanical advantage during my swing.  I really don't know for sure.

Its not necessarily easy to test this 'objectively' since you never seem to swing equipment you're not familiar with quite as well. I borrowed someone else's driver a couple of times a few weeks ago during my visit to Sand Hills and the 5th Major, and both times I hit a drive that I felt like I absolutely nutted, but it went the same distance as a heel hit with my driver.  Both times I was expecting it to be 20 to 30 yards further than it was based on how it felt.
My hovercraft is full of eels.

Garland Bayley

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Re: Unintended consequences, driver
« Reply #27 on: July 22, 2013, 09:13:57 PM »
Here's a little experiment I did with driver lengths a few months ago, shorter is better for nearly everyone.

http://0to300golf.blogspot.ie/2012/12/normal-0-false-false-false-en-ie-x-none.html

Easier to hit the center of the club face with shorter drivers meaning longer and straighter drives. What's not to like about that.



 

Exactly what Tom Wishon has been teaching for a long time.
The golf OEMs are about marketing a concept that will make money, not about helping golfers.
"I enjoy a course where the challenges are contained WITHIN it, and recovery is part of the game  not a course where the challenge is to stay ON it." Jeff Warne

Brent Hutto

Re: Unintended consequences, driver
« Reply #28 on: July 22, 2013, 09:19:42 PM »
I agree with Doug's take on Padraig's experiment. Basically the shorter and slightly heavier driver performs identically to the longer and slightly lighter one, within a reasonable margin of error for the experiment.

Doug,

It may be the couple of drives that you felt you "nutted" were simply louder and/or sounded with a different timbre than your normal driver. I have a driver that I hit quite well, in fact noticeably better than drivers I've used in the past. But it is way, way louder than any driver I've ever used and when I play with my buddies the first time since making the change they notice the longer (somewhat, maybe 10-12 yards typically) longer result and exclaim that I must have hit it 30 yards longer than last time they played with me. It's that louder sound amplifies, so to speak, the perception.

Although I'm not poo-pooing the 10 extra yards by any means!

David_Tepper

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Jerry Kluger

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Re: Unintended consequences, driver
« Reply #30 on: July 23, 2013, 07:15:13 AM »
What about Phil's putter grip - the Super Stroke Grip which he blacked out because they aren't paying him.  Here's a guy who went to right hand low, then claw, then belly but is back to a conventional grip using a Super Stroke oversize putter grip.  That to me is the most significant piece of equipment that has made him a really good putter again and a winner.  But are we going to see it banned by the USGA and the USGA because of its shape?   

Doug Siebert

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Re: Unintended consequences, driver
« Reply #31 on: July 23, 2013, 01:46:32 PM »
I agree with Doug's take on Padraig's experiment. Basically the shorter and slightly heavier driver performs identically to the longer and slightly lighter one, within a reasonable margin of error for the experiment.

Doug,

It may be the couple of drives that you felt you "nutted" were simply louder and/or sounded with a different timbre than your normal driver. I have a driver that I hit quite well, in fact noticeably better than drivers I've used in the past. But it is way, way louder than any driver I've ever used and when I play with my buddies the first time since making the change they notice the longer (somewhat, maybe 10-12 yards typically) longer result and exclaim that I must have hit it 30 yards longer than last time they played with me. It's that louder sound amplifies, so to speak, the perception.

Although I'm not poo-pooing the 10 extra yards by any means!


Pretty sure I base my perception almost entirely on how it feels in my hands at contact, rather than the sound - I think I'd say the same thing even if I was wearing earplugs and couldn't hear the hit at all.  Maybe I'm wrong, I guess I should try hitting a few shots with earplugs, maybe the sound is something I'm subconsciously taking into account.

At any rate, I generally have a pretty good sense of exactly where on the face I've hit a shot, though I admit hitting with an unfamiliar club perhaps it may take a few shots to figure it out.  If I'd thought to wipe off the face first I could have seen where I hit it to see if it was just a case of a driver (or more likely, shaft) that doesn't work as well for me, or if I was mistaken about making good contact.

I have been experiencing something similar with a 3 hybrid I bought last year to experiment with, which is the first hybrid I've ever owned and indeed before that I hadn't carried a fairway wood at all for over 20 years (I bought a 3W at the same time, though I don't use it because I found I still hate fairway woods just as much as I always did)  That hybrid seems to randomly fly between 200 and 230 yards, on shots that feel equally 'good' to me.  Maybe it is too well perimeter weighted to the point I can't tell the difference between a center face hit and slightly off center hit.  Perhaps it is because I hadn't carried any fairway woods for the preceding two decades so I'm not used to hitting a club with that sort of shape so I'm not well attuned to how it feels in the way I am with my irons and my driver.  Balls don't appear to leave a mark on it, so I can't look at it to tell how I'm hitting it.  The usefulness of it is pretty limited if I have that large of an uncertainty factor with the distance, so I pretty much limited to layups from rough on par 5s and that sort of thing where I'm not trying to hit it a certain distance.
My hovercraft is full of eels.

David_Tepper

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Unintended consequences, driver
« Reply #32 on: July 24, 2013, 01:35:11 PM »