Clubface Roll - Affect of Loft
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There are numerous things that affect the overall distance you will hit your drives and one of the biggest factors is not your golf swing, it's your equipment. Today's modern high performance drivers are far more advanced then drivers of just 10 years ago, but some old "technology" remains the same. In this video, I am discussing the effect of the "roll" designed into the clubface and how it can dramatically help or hurt your driving distance.
- Learn about the characteristics of the driver face so you can take them into account and hit longer drives
- The driver has bulge from heel to toe, developed to improve huge hooks & slices when hitting near the heel or toe
- The face also has roll, a curve on the vertical axis that changes the loft of the club by several degrees depending on where it is hit
- Each additional degree of loft adds about 300 rpm of spin to the ball, which affects distance
- Use a loft/lie gauge to learn more about your club, and a dry erase marker to show where the ball is striking the club face
As part of the Balm Your Driver series, one of the things that's incredibly important to maximize our driver distance is our equipment.
And so today I'm going to talk about the way driver heads are designed, Especially the modern driver, because it makes a massive difference in maximizing your driver yardage.
I've got a driver head here that's on the bottom is listed at 7 .
5 degrees.
Now, many of you know that what the manufacturers state on the bottom of the club is not always accurate.
And there are tolerances within typically one plus or minus one degree.
That says any club that you go and buy off the shelf, if it says 7.
5 on the bottom it could actually be 6.
5 or 8.
5.
So there's a two degree possible variance that's built into their machining tolerances.
That could make this club play very different than what you actually think you're buying.
So the simplest way to check that is.
I have a wood loft gauge here, and what this does is it actually allows me to sole the club properly and see what the true loft of the face is.
But that's not exactly the trick here, because what's actually really important to understand is that all club faces these days, and I know it's difficult to see in the video here, but club faces aren't actually built perfectly flat on drivers.
They have something called bulge which is the way the club face is rounded from heel to toe, And they have something called roll, which is the way it's radius from the bottom of the club face to the top of the club face.
Now the reason this is built in there as far as the bulge is concerned is for gear effect.
Many, Many years ago, the golfers figured out if they hit it on the toe, it would create a nasty wicked hook, or if they hit it on the heel it hit a nasty wicked slice, so they started building in curving the faces in it, and what they found is instead of hitting a big nasty wicked hook, if the face was actually pointed a little bit right, it would create the effect of a little draw and vice versa on the heel.
So that's why driver faces and a lot of fairway wood faces are not actually perfectly flat.
Now on the opposite side, when you're looking from the bottom of the club face to the top, now we're looking at something that's actually impacting our launch characteristics, because this actually affects the loft of the club face.
The actual playing loft of the club face is very different, from the bottom of the face to the top of the face.
So if we use our gauge here, once we have it set up, I can put this on the face, and you'll see, as we get in a little closer here, that that driver face doesn't actually sit, and again, it's talking about a minute amount here, but it doesn't actually sit perfectly flat on that face.
There's some rockering here.
So what you can do with this simple little gauge is you can actually take it on here, and once you get it sold properly, and I know where the sole spot is on this, I can actually set it up so that I can measure where the center of the club face loft point is.
And so in doing so, I know that this, I've already measured of course, the actual direct center of the club face is about seven and a half degrees.
This is a hand-picked club head, so I know that the loft is accurate.
Now what's interesting though is, that's assuming that I hit it in the center of the club face, I'm going to get the desired seven and a half degrees of loft on the club face that I'm looking for.
Now however, let's say I make a good swing and I hit it on the top of the club face, now we're looking at some very different characteristics.
So as I sole it up properly here, and I go to the very top of the club face, this is going to have to move a little bit, but we'll get close here.
Let me get it here, it's about seven and a half there.
So we go to the top, we're closer to 12 degrees of loft.
So now I've gone from a seven and a half degree driver to closer to 12, and these things aren't incredibly accurate, so you can throw a little bit off here, but you can tell that if somebody's playing a seven and a half degree driver, they certainly don't want 12 degrees of launch or 12 degrees of loft.
So within reason you can tell that there's a massive difference in the loft and higher on the face.
And we're only talking about moving the, you know, a mishit from the dead center of the face, moving up a half an inch.
And the same is true when I go down to the bottom of the face.
So I'll sole it up to where I know seven and a half degrees is again.
And then as I go down to the bottom of the face, I move in closer to four degrees, five or four or five degrees.
So now I've taken this driver, which I purchased to be seven and a half degrees, and I mishit it a little bit, and now I've got a driver that's going to play at 12 degrees.
So now I'm looking at massive amounts of spin, because for each degree of loft that you go up in your club head, for each single degree, it's about 300 RPMs of spin, roughly.
So going from a seven degree driver head, hitting it in the center, to a 12 degree is five degrees, obviously.
So that's going to be the equivalent of about 1,500 RPMs of spin.
What is that going to mean in terms of driver distance? Depending on your swing speed and your typical launch characteristics, it could cost me personally as much as 40 yards.
So it's a dramatic difference.
Now for you, you may actually find that hitting it higher on the face gives you more distance, because you actually need the loft and you need the increased spin.
So it's very, very important that you start to understand how your equipment is designed to work, and how it actually is shaped.
Now, not very many driver faces.
If you go to Tom with Shawn Golf, he actually has driver faces that have a perfectly flat face.
So the loft is true from top to bottom, and that's ideal.
But very few manufacturers do this.
It's simply, it's kind of a way that they've always done things and they haven't changed it.
And that's the way it is.
There are some pros and cons.
People believe in the vertical gear effect and those types of things.
But long story short, the biggest thing is how much loft you have on the club face at impact.
Because it's going to dramatically impart a lot more spin if you have a lot more loft.
So depending on how your club head speed is, if you have a lower club head speed, hitting it higher on the face, you may find that you gain a lot of distance.
And certainly, most everyone will find more distance versus hitting it very, very low on the face, unless they've got a driver that's got entirely too much loft for them.
So start to understand your equipment.
If you can take, you know, spend a little bit of money or go to a club fitter and get a club, a loft lie gauge, you can start to measure your equipment and see, gosh, you know, when I hit it really high on the face, At different lofts.
And this is going to help you in choosing the better driver for you in the future.
So understand your equipment and it's going to help you hit longer drives.
Mark
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Fred
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Christopher
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Marc
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Marc
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Christian
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Andrew
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Andrew
Mike
R.J. (Certified RST Instructor)
Grant
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)