I need some help buying a new driver. I am working on the NSA2 pattern to get more club face control. I demoed Ping and tried the g20 but was leaving it right to much so the demo guy switched me to the k15 which I was hitting down the middle pretty consistently. It is more heel weighted to help close the club face. My question is really about drivers that have a draw/fade bias or are weighted to promote launch angle or closure rate. If I am really going to commit to the NSA2 pattern is it a bad idea in the long run to use a driver with any kind of built in bias? I am concerned that once I get the pattern down I will start to hook it off the planet with this driver. I currently try to use a more flat left wrist at the top as full twistaway leads to pulls and pull hooks for me. Any advice would be appreciated.
Buying new driver
- Thread starter Walt
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Virtuoso
New
2 things Walt:
1. Heel weighted drivers do indeed create more draw spin or less fade spin but this has nothing to do with closure rate. A heel weighted driver means the cg is heelward, which means the sweetspot is heelward.....which means if you hit it in the center, the club reacts as if it was being struck on the toe (because the center really is the toe now, and the toe is now super toe). Everything else being equal (ie face angle and path), a toe hit produces a gear effect which increases hook spin or reduces fade spin. Why? Because the ball cg and the club cg are misaligned and the club spins clockwise, and just like intermeshed gears, it spins the ball the opposite way.
Summary: Drivers that are internally weighted to create draw bias or fade bias are changing the nature of the ball-club collision, not changing the clubhead delivery pre-impact.
2. You have a valid point about changing your swing and thus not needing draw bias anymore. Ok, get an adjustable driver....but make sure the adjustability is not just for face angle; the adjustability needs to be through internal cg shift, ie, screws, weights, etc...
Lindsey Newman
New
^^^^^^^ one of the "best ,all time"equipment posts I have seen.
Jim Kobylinski
Super Moderator
Find a neutral driver or one you can adjust, otherwise you'll just have to buy a new one once you fix your slice because now you may draw the ball too much
birly-shirly
New
Presumably also, if you move the sweetspot into the heel AND hit the ball there, then a clubface which "looks" square will actually be slightly closed at the point of contact with the ball, due to bulge.
Having said that, I have no idea whether the amount of weight that can be redistributed in an adjustable head makes for a "big" effect or a very small effect. I think Tom Wishon has said in the past that attempting to change the ballflight characteristics of a clubhead by adding lead tape is, if it works at all, nothing more than placebo.
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curtisj76
New
If you can be patient I'd hold off on the driver and get that swing down first. I know it's always exciting to buy a new driver but you don't want to do what Jim said and start hooking it off the planet cuz THAT'S NO FUN. Then you might try to develop an anti-hook swing that you really don't need for the rest of your bag. IDK JMO
Really outstanding. My only was to understand this before was conservation of angular momentum-- this is a much more intuitive way to see it.
Frans@France
New
If you go the the tutelman site you will see that he estimate that the cog for weigth displacement of 15grm will move the cog 0.15''
Virtuoso
New
The reason a driver has more gear effect than an iron is because the cg is farther from the face. When the cg is far from the face, the clubhead acts more like a merry-go-round on a mis-hit. As the cg is moved forward or closer to the face, the clubhead acts like a see-saw on a miss-hit. So, back cg, merry-go-round, sideways sheer force on the ball. Forward cg, face just falls away from the ball, not as much sheer force.
If you move the cg down, it's more likely that the ball will hit above it. The clubhead rotates upwards, thereby raising launch angle and reducing backspin. But if you still hit below it, the ball will launch lower and have increased backspin. Remember, gear effect happens in all 3 dimensions and every axis.
So, down and forward means higher launch and reduced backspin, but less effect than if you hadn't moved it forward.
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Virtuoso
New
That's enough to do the trick. When cg is being shifted to create bias, it takes a lot of weight displacement to move cg even a small amount, but it doesn't take a big shift to have a large effect. Birly, to answer your question, a typical draw bias set-up in a driver will add about 300 rpm of draw spin, or 300 less fade spin--about 30 feet of movement...everything else being equal. If you are struggling with an 1800 rpm slice, the 30 rpm correction will help but you're still a long way from home.
Of course, the problem with just adding 15 gms of weight to one side of your driver head is that you're really not displacing weight that much. You need to actually REMOVE 15 gms from one side and then move it to the other side. If you just add tape, then you will now have a 215gm head (instead of just 200--holy swing weight batman) and you won't have shifted cg very much.
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