Need help with Trackman translations

mgranato · Nov 5, 2009

Tuesday evening I had a driver fitting with Trackman. This was my first experience with “the man”. It turned out to not be the ideal conditions for an outdoor fitting (57* with mud all down range from the recent showers/flooding), but I kept the appointment anyway – too anxious to see what needed to change.

I thought I had at least a 3 finger grip understanding of the D plane, but after getting my email with the data, I’m lost. I understand the fitting data no problem, but the swing data I’m very confused on. I’d like to understand how far from neutral my swing is.

The fitting process was a lot of fun. I’ve played the same brand shaft for 10+ years, and was curious to see how far off the equipment curve I’d gotten. I took my pre-op driver from last year and the post-op “recovery” driver I put together a few weeks ago. From having played the same basic shaft for so many years, I was blown away with how different so many of the shafts played. They used the Callaway Opti system with a starting number of 10 shafts based on the specs of my two drivers. We got rid of 6 pretty quickly. After a few more balls, we dropped two more. The two remaining shafts, plus my recovery driver, were all very close and pretty much a wash. The fitter recommend I stay with the driver I brought – fine by me. The numbers below are the averages from the last 3 drivers tested.

I plan to go back as I start to regain more strength. And I definitely plan to go back in the spring for a “gapping” session for the rest of the bag. Everyone always says this, but I would strongly recommend anyone who has reasonable access to go have their swing/specs analyzed.

CLUB

swing speed = 106.6

attack angle = 4.3*

club path = -.07*

vertical swing plane = 50.8*

horizontal swing plane = 2.8*

dynamic loft = 14.8*

face angle = -1.8*

LAUNCH

ball speed = 159.3

smash factor = 1.50

vertical angle = 13.4*

horizontal angle = -1.6*

spin rate = 2,387

spin axis = -2.1*

max height = 36.8 yds

LANDING

carry = 260.2 yds

side = -9.0 yds

flight time = 6.9 sec

landing angle = 45.1*

MikeD2 · Nov 5, 2009

Great smash factor number!

TROYNYGOLFER · Nov 5, 2009

mgranato said:
Tuesday evening I had a driver fitting with Trackman. This was my first experience with “the man”. It turned out to not be the ideal conditions for an outdoor fitting (57* with mud all down range from the recent showers/flooding), but I kept the appointment anyway – too anxious to see what needed to change.

I thought I had at least a 3 finger grip understanding of the D plane, but after getting my email with the data, I’m lost. I understand the fitting data no problem, but the swing data I’m very confused on. I’d like to understand how far from neutral my swing is.

The July Trackman newsletter will provide a lot of those answers with some excellent additional info. http://trackman.dk/getmedia/2f6c5cdc-e153-466c-9e1a-f8b612947435/TMNewsJul2009_1.aspx

ggsjpc · Nov 5, 2009

It is very close to neutral as I see it. Your swinging up and to the right which brings club path just left of 0.

Face looks slightly lefter of that for a 9 yard miss to the left. Must have caught it a hair on the heel as it didn't go as left as it should have.

Correct me if I'm wrong trackman owners.

Jay845 · Nov 5, 2009

From my knowledge (very limited mind you). Those numbers look great. The only thing that jumps out at me is your landing angle. If you could lower that by a 5 degrees or so, but without significant impact to your other numbers you would like get some more rollout on your drives. Having said that, this is a very minor detail and may not be worth tinkering with.

Jay

mgranato · Nov 5, 2009

Thanks for that link, Troy. I'm trying to get my head around it.

GGSJPC, with my horizontal plane angle, it is as "simple" as getting the face closer to 0* to tighten up that leftward movement?

Jay, is 40* considered optimal?

savydan · Nov 5, 2009

Remember, these numbers are averages.

You could hit a home run off the left field foul pole, and another off the right field pole and Trackman would say you hit 2 home runs to dead center if you're getting the average.

Having said that, mgranato is a good player and he is probably around those numbers above. But really his extremes are averaging those numbers above.

I'd ask for the data for the 3 (or more) actual hits.

Jay845 · Nov 5, 2009

mgranato said:
Jay, is 40* considered optimal?

I actually got this from another website (Richie3Jack's actually) but if you watch this youtube link, it talks about Trackman numbers. About 1:30 into the video landing angle is discussed. It says optimal landing angle to maximize Carry and Roll is between 35* to 40*.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oPN0mSeipM

mgranato · Nov 5, 2009

savydan said:
Remember, these numbers are averages.

You could hit a home run off the left field foul pole, and another off the right field pole and Trackman would say you hit 2 home runs to dead center if you're getting the average.

Having said that, mgranato is a good player and he is probably around those numbers above. But really his extremes are averaging those numbers above.

I'd ask for the data for the 3 (or more) actual hits.

Never thought about it like that, but you're 100% right. I'll try to get the acutaul numbers for each shot posted up later tonight.

mgranato · Nov 5, 2009

Here are the numbers shot by shot. Had to do a little cutting and pasting to get them big enough to read.

DRIVER 1

DRIVER 2

DRIVER 3

cmow · Nov 6, 2009

Below is a shot out of my recent trackman session. It is somewhat similar to the 2nd shot in each one of your series in ball speed. Look at the difference in carry yards and total distance. Not sure if it was because of the cold, or if you were hitting into a headwind, but it looks like you are leaving some on the table.

It looks to me that your overall height and landing angle are too much. I'm guessing you need to launch it lower - take a degree off of your head and hope it doesn't reduce your spin too much?????

I'm just a newbie at this too, so take my advice for what it is worth

, but the guy at Cool Clubs was trying to reduce my landing angle down near the mid 30's.

cmow · Nov 6, 2009

Just thought about something - the balls being used could probably be a big factor, too????

Matt 4-L · Nov 6, 2009

I don't know much about trackman numbers, can you tell me why the vertical swing plane is around 50° with the driver, I thought it was suppose to be around 45°? Is it a product of an upright swing or are you really tall? I don't know if it matters much just wondering.

mgranato · Nov 6, 2009

cmow said:
Below is a shot out of my recent trackman session. It is somewhat similar to the 2nd shot in each one of your series in ball speed. Look at the difference in carry yards and total distance. Not sure if it was because of the cold, or if you were hitting into a headwind, but it looks like you are leaving some on the table.

It looks to me that your overall height and landing angle are too much. I'm guessing you need to launch it lower - take a degree off of your head and hope it doesn't reduce your spin too much?????

I'm just a newbie at this too, so take my advice for what it is worth, but the guy at Cool Clubs was trying to reduce my landing angle down near the mid 30's.

This shot of mine is almost identical to yours with respect to swing speed, ball speed, and smash factor. As you pointed out the difference is pretty large considering the numbers are pretty much identical. I'm guessing the temp was 20+ degrees colder here than it was in SoCal. We had a 7 mph wind that was moving right to left. Would those differences in the conditions equate to a 15 yard shorter carry? For what it's worth, the ball was a Callaway ix.

Something interest to note as well was the "roll out" numbers from my session. A good number of my shots plugged on impact, some squirted backwards and some creeped forward. Trackman showed positive rolls on all shots, so I'm guessing that part of the equation was "calculated"?

mgranato · Nov 6, 2009

Matt F. said:
I don't know much about trackman numbers, can you tell me why the vertical swing plane is around 50° with the driver, I thought it was suppose to be around 45°? Is it a product of an upright swing or are you really tall? I don't know if it matters much just wondering.

Don't know either. I'm 6'5" and am on the TSP at the top, would that translate to the higher number?

Matt 4-L · Nov 6, 2009

6'5" that explains it.

dannyc · Nov 6, 2009

mgranato,

there is about one drive with each club that had a spin axis of -12 to -13. if you don't mind, can you tell me what caused these? seems aoa, hor plane, etc. were pretty similar. i am just having a hard time reading the data (maybe cause there is so much of it lol).

thanks

mgranato · Nov 11, 2009

Dan, I have no idea. I've been trying to learn what goes into these numbers from the articles in the Trackman Newsletters, but the numbers you referenced don't seem to make sense to me either.

In "Driver 1", hits 1 and 2 had almost identical club path and face angles (CP of -1.4, FA of -2.4 and CP of -1.3, FA of -2.2 respectively) yet hit 1 had -12.8 deg of axis spin while hit 2 had only -3.3 deg.

These are the kind of "oddities" I'm hoping some of the Academy members will weigh in on and be able to explain.

savydan · Nov 11, 2009

Is there an error on Page 1 of the July Trackman newsletter?

It says above the diagram, "The angle of the D-plane is actually the spin loft."

Shouldn't it be - The angle of the D-plane is actually the spin axis?

softconsult · Nov 11, 2009

I am certainly no expert on Trackman numbers,but I did do theTrackman Driver Fitting two weeks ago and posted my numbers.

Once we got down to the two finalist combinations of Head / Shaft, they recorded more like about a dozen shots with each club and with my current driver. Fitter mentioned that there target is to reduce spin appropriate to swing speed, have a flight time of 6 seconds, and an angle of descent 35 to 40 degrees. We were also looking closely at dispersion. My dispersion numbers were much tighter than your numbers. My swing speed 101.

We used the interchangeable head/shaft systems for Titleist and for Ping. I was getting consistent shots that went left of target line with many of the combinations. So one thought might be that if your goal was finding the best driver, and you did not try a bunch of combinations, then this could explain the numbers.

So my amateur hour guess is that your are hitting it full tilt, swinging up, with low spin, and massive height. Therefore, you hit it left, then right, then left, because of really going after it. My Vertical Swing Plane was 50 degrees, 6' 3". Fitter didn't say much about it.

My average max. height was 30 yards, which he said was fine. Angle of descent,40, I think. You also said you were coming back from surgery, so that is going to make you
more inconsistent.

Finally, fitter made the point that Trackman has something called Normalize. This mathematically compensates for a bunch of factors like temperature, humidity, wind speed, etc. He gave me both actual and normalized data print outs.