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Driver Center Of Gravity
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Modern driver head design is an exact science with powerful CAD software being used by every manufacturer these days. With these powerful software applications, the center of gravity (COG) can be moved up and down, forward and back to dramatically alter the performance of a golf club. This video focuses on the COG because it impacts where the ball should be struck on the face for maximum performance.
- Center of gravity (COG) imparts maximum energy transfer, minimum twisting, and less spin than below COG
- Find and mark COG (not the center of the face) by balancing the driver head on a point
- Use a loft/lie gauge to determine loft at the COG (generally greater than loft stamped on the club)
- The point of max COR is the true center of the face - this point imparts greater spin than the COG
- The higher your swing speed, the more detrimental spin is to your overall distance
- Reduced spin at the COG more than compensates for the slight loss of ball speed from hitting above the point of max COR
The center of gravity is something that's tossed around a lot in golf lexicon, and it's not something that really is given enough credit.
And most people don't understand it enough.
So, we're going to talk about the center of gravity very in detail and looking at several different driver heads here, and discussing the massive impacts that determine what the center of gravity has on ball flight.
So you can see here.
I've got a simple little device set up, just a little clamp with a pin in it, and I've got a driver head here balancing on that point.
This is how you determine the center of gravity, and there are basically two centers of gravity more or less, or two ways to measure center of gravity.
I should say, both on the face by balancing it on the face, as I have here.
And then you can also measure how far back the center of gravity is away from the face by balancing it on its sole.
So both ways you can measure the center where the true center of gravity is on the head.
Now the key is why is this important? So when you look at a head everybody looks at the center of the face and they say well that's why I want to hit the ball.
You want to hit the center of the face that's going to give us the highest ball speed that you know the best spin etc.
Unfortunately, nine times out of ten that's actually not true and there's a lot of reasons for that and I'm going to talk about them.
First of all, As you can see here on this head that I have balanced.
You would assume that the actual center of gravity would be right in the center of the face, but unfortunately, that's not the case.
As I pull this head off of here, you can actually see that.
There's a small little dot here that I've drawn on with a marker.
And this dot actually represents the true center of gravity.
So in other words what does the center of gravity do in terms of performance for a club? And, long story short, it gives you the highest energy transfer with the minimal twisting of the club face at impact.
And there's other things that it's going to influence as well.
We're going to talk about those but those are the main keys.
So now as I draw as I look at this face the actual center of the face this is about two and a quarter in terms of height from the top to the bottom.
So at an inch and an eighth we would say that that would be the actual center of the face.
Now, this black dot here's an inch and an eighth here, the black dot is actually three eighths of an inch above the center of the actual, the actual center of the face.
So what that means is if I actually hit this ball in the center of the face, which is below this mark.
I will actually get a little bit of twisting in terms of how much the face moves at impact, and I will lose a little bit of ball speed.
But more importantly, the biggest key is it will alter the spin rate drastically.
So let's talk about each one of those in a little bit more detail.
If I hit the ball low on the face where I will benefit is this is the max core on the face or the coefficient of restitution.
In other words, this is the point in the face where the face can actually deflect the most to absorb the most energy and without over compressing the ball.
Obviously, the furthest you are away from the center or from the outer edges, that's where the face can bend the most.
Just like on a trampoline, if you imagine it, you know, a trampoline you played on as a kid.
If you jump right in the center, that's where it gives you the most kick.
And as you move further and further away from center, you lose a little bit of kick until you get far out on the edge, and then you lose a lot.
So now, granted, there is not actually a trampoline effect in measuring coefficient of restitution.
The truth is it is actually measuring or what it is actually beneficial for is keeping the ball from over compressing.
By giving, by having the face give a little bit.
It keeps the impact, the force of impact, from absorbing too much energy of the ball and helps the ball fly off the face faster.
So it's not actually that it springs the face, springs the ball off the face.
The difference is more.
Imagine hitting a golf ball, hitting a marshmallow with a golf club.
That marshmallow is going to completely compress and smash into the face.
There's not going to be any energy to send it off the face.
But now, if you hit that with, you know, a marshmallow with something very, very soft, it would have a chance of reflecting off the face.
And that's what the coefficient of restitution is really valuable for.
So next time somebody tells you that there's some trampoline effect of the ball, launching it off the ball, off the face, it doesn't happen.
So anyway, so that's one thing.
So now we know that actually moving up to the true center of gravity, where this dot is, that we're going to lose a little bit of core there.
How much? It's hard to say it's going to vary from head to head.
On some head designs, this is a cobra head, a long drive head.
That's actually six degrees degrees, and it's got a pretty broad face, and it doesn't do anything crazy in terms of dipping in.
What I mean by that? If you look at this Ping head, this is a Ping G5 head.
There's a big dip right here, where the actual face gets a lot smaller from top to bottom than it is out here on the toe.
Now, and we'll talk about this head in a minute, but this is actually a problem, because, just like all the other heads, the true center of gravity is above the center of the face.
So as we move closer and closer to the edge of the face, the more and more ball speed that we're going to potentially lose.
Because our core goes down at the higher, the closer we get to the edge.
So now, as this is moving closer to the edge, this is actually not that far away from this big dip here.
And this head actually loses more ball speed than a similar head, let's say this one here, which is a Nakashima head than some of the other ones.
So the reason for that is because it's just getting closer and closer to the edge.
So now, as I go back to this cobra, head in having a nice big, flat face here, with no crazy design ideas in here.
I can still get a pretty good core this far, even though I'm, you know, three eighths away from the true center of the face, I'm still going to get a good core rating.
Now again, as I move closer and closer, just like we were on the trampoline.
The further and further we get away from center, we lose more and more ball speed.
But this isn't that drastic, so, but it definitely does have an impact.
So then we know if we don't want to hit it in the exact dead center, because the center of gravity isn't there.
What are we going to do to make up for losing a little bit of ball speed there.
Well the simple thing is that the higher your swing speed is the more and more and more important that spin becomes.
So, and that's where the center of gravity becomes very important to understand where it is on your driver head and you're talking.
The higher your swing speed is, the more that you're throwing away distance by actually hitting it in the center of the face.
So a few things here.
So now, as we get into looking at where this actual dot is, where it was balanced on the face, the true center of gravity being above the center of the face.
We know that we've lost a little bit of core here.
But the further that you strike the ball below, so say, if I was to hit the ball here versus higher up on the face.
The further I get below that center of gravity, the more the gear effect takes place.
So, in other words, when I hit it low on the face, or relatively low, even if I hit it in the dead center of the face.
But below the center of gravity, it's actually going to spin more, and it can become drastically significant, thousands of RPM, potentially depending on your swing speed, depending on your angle of attack, and other things.
Just by missing by a quarter of an inch you can increase it by as much as a thousand RPMs.
So that's why we understand that the center of gravity is actually more important than the center of the face.
Because you can lose a mile or two, an hour of ball speed by missing the center of the face a little bit, by hitting it actually in the center of gravity, because the core is a bit lower, as I mentioned.
But even there, you will make up for the distance and loss of ball speed by lowering your spin rate.
Because the closer you get to being on the center of gravity, or even above the center of gravity, which I'm going to talk about in a minute, the more that you're going to lower your spin rate.
So this is why it's okay to actually it's actually preferable.
You don't want to actually hit it in the center of most faces of most drivers these days.
And I have several here that we can take a look at.
You know, here's a tidalist head where the actual center of gravity again, is about a quarter of an inch above the center of the face.
Here is a Nakashima head, where, again, it's about a quarter of an inch or so above the center of the face.
So all of these heads that we've tested simply, we get the biggest bang for the buck is hitting it on the center of gravity or above it, primarily because of spin, so as we get closer and closer to hitting it on that center of gravity, spin rate goes down.
And we still get a tremendous amount of energy transfer with minimal twisting.
Now, the further we get side to side, now we're starting to talk about side spin and those types of things.
We're just assuming that we hit it relatively close to the center here and around that center of gravity.
So we know A hitting it in the center of the face not the best thing to do.
You'll get great energy transfer, it will feel really solid, you'll get a great kick, you'll have high core, but you're going to get high spin as well.
And spin is more detrimental than throwing away a mile or two of ball speed and hitting it just slightly higher on the face.
So here's the other catch here.
Now, at some point, there's a point of diminishing returns, depending on how high you hit it on the face versus your club head speed.
So with this driver head, like I said, this is a six degree long drive cobra head.
I've actually taken my loft lie gauge here and measured where the actual center of the face is, or where the center of gravity is.
And in doing so, we found that the true loft at that point in the face is actually seven degrees.
So now the six degree head, if I hit it perfectly, where the club head is designed to transfer energy, avoid twisting, optimum spin rate, etc.
I'm actually going to have a seven degree driver at impact, assuming the shaft doesn't kick.
We're just assuming everything's constant here.
That's not too bad, you know? Going from one degree to another is not so bad.
But here, in an example, with the Titleist head, this is a 983 head, that's a nine and a half degree.
The actual center of gravity, where the center of gravity is the loft, is actually degrees.
So now you've gone from a nine and a half degree driver to an 11 and a half degree driver.
And obviously, if the higher your swing speed is, the more that becomes an issue.
Because you may not want 11 and a half degrees aloft, you may actually want nine or eight.
Without getting properly fitted, there's no way to know without using a launch monitor, but this is where it becomes very, very important.
Because each head that you're possibly buying off the shelf cost, you know, as a random deal.
Which is the worst thing in the world you can do if you're serious about your golf game.
But here's a seven and a half degree Ping G5 head.
The actual center of gravity spot is at nine degrees.
I've written it on here with pencil so I can see that.
So, and a Nakashima head that's at eight and a half degrees is actually at nine degrees in the center of gravity.
Now, the center of the face is actually eight and a half degrees.
I know this because Nakashima hand measures all their heads before they put the loft on there.
Most manufacturers, they simply have a degree of tolerance of a degree or so in either direction.
So your nine and a half degree tidalist could be eight and a half, and it could be nine and a half, you don't know, it could be ten and a half.
So with Nakashima, they actually CNC machine the loft after they measure it.
But it's not just stamped on there at the time of production, so it's a little bit more costly for that.
But, you know, when you order eight and a half degree head, the center face of the face is actually eight and a half degrees.
So that's a very good benefit of getting hand-picked heads.
So now we've got ball speed we've talked about the core we've talked about a little bit about the spin rates in terms of what that's going to do so the next thing we want to talk about in looking at a head like this is talking about like I said the true loft so now we're looking at you know this eight and a half degree head is actually nine degrees where does the trade-off happen between having too much loft on the head versus hitting it too high on the face and having not enough spin so in looking at these and doing a ton of research with our flight scope launch monitor we have found that somebody who gets the optimum launch numbers let's say they've gone through a fitting process they know that their launch angle is 12 or 13 degrees or whatever it is that we've found that's optimum for their swing speed their angle attacks so on and so forth that they can err on the side of being above that center of gravity up to on most heads a quarter of an inch in other words you can still actually hit this eight and a half degree head a quarter of an inch higher which would take you from about a nine degree head a nine degrees of loft to about nine and a half almost ten degrees of loft and still get away with it that one extra degree of loft is counterbalanced by the vertical gear effect now i know there's a lot of con you know a lot of discussion out there about vertical gear effect and how much it actually impacts spin rates and so on and so forth all the research that we've done shows empirically it has a dramatic impact the higher your swing speed now if you're measuring somebody who's swinging at 80 miles an hour on a daily basis or you know those are the types of golfers that that you come across or that's your swing speed not going to make that much of a difference when you get to somebody 110 120 130 miles an hour vertical gear effect becomes huge and the more your positive angle of attack the more you're coming into the ball on a positive angle the more it becomes even more important so so do note that the vertical gear effect does have a significant impact the higher your swing speed the higher your positive angle of attack is in determining optimum launch conditions for you so so for instance in using this head an eight and a half degree head it's okay to actually hit it higher on the face because the vertical gear effect will take over for a higher swing speed player and he'll actually even though he's getting 10 degrees aloft and we may actually want him to be at nine his launch angle has gone up a degree but his spin rate's gone down so the actual apex of the flight might actually end up being the same and the spin because the spin rate might be two three four hundred rpms less which may not sound like a lot but when you're talking about optimizing everything four or five rpms is is a is a big difference so and again the higher the swing speed player the more that becomes important so so there are three things now that we've discussed we've got the max core which we know is in the center of the face the furthest point away from all the edges that's going to give us the highest potential ball speed the problem is the spin rate is going to typically be higher there because the center of gravity is above the equator of the ball when we're striking it so we know that we need to measure the center of gravity the only way that can be done is taking the head off which if you're again if you're a serious player you need to pull that head off get it measured and put a dot on i actually just take a little dry erase mark or excuse me a permanent marker put a little dot on there done it's on there now you know exactly where you need to hit it on the face every time for optimum distance so so we've got the actual center of gravity mark now we know the true loft because we can use a simple loft lie gauge to measure the actual loft and once we have the actual loft we know what we're dealing with in terms of launch conditions so when we do a fitting or or we know what you know we're looking for in terms of conditions we can get the right head with the right loft for your drop launch conditions then we know in terms of hitting it up slightly above that we can get the highest highest launch conditions with the lowest spin rate so now let's take a look at one other piece here in dealing with the actual construction of the head one of the main things that that we look at is the actual mass of the head so in other words how much does the head weigh and i've got a scale here just a simple little gram scale and i'm going to weigh a few of these different heads just to kind of give you an idea so this one here the cobra head 194 grams compare that with the ping 198 so a little bit heavier with the ping head the nakashima has a weight system so this one's going to come in really light because there's no weights actually in it this is all the way down at 186 and then the tidalist head all the way up to 203 grams so there's a tremendous difference between from one head to the next what difference does the mass of the head weight make well if we look at a simple little application here that allows us to mimic driving conditions and launch conditions and spin rates and ball speeds and club head speeds we can also input the mass here so on the low end the lightest that the head that we can actually play with because the nakashima head requires that we got to put some weights in there was the cobra which was at 194 so i'll punch that in here and we're just going to assume someone is swinging at 100 miles an hour uh hitting a great solid shot three degree positive angle of attack getting 11 and a half degree launch condition launch angle which is a little bit low but this person's going to carry the ball about 235 yards with 194 gram head now we'll look at that tidalist so we're 235 there and i'm going to put the tidalist numbers in which was 202 picked up two yards three two and a half yards of carry so it's not that dramatic at 100 miles an hour but now when we go up to 120 mile an hour player let's say he's at 296 carry with these conditions which again aren't optimum but just to give you ballpark figures and so at 296 with the tidalist head and 293 it's again about three yards of difference so it's not that dramatic of a difference in going from those light of heads to heavier heads but there are some heads on the market who that are under the 190 gram mark and there are some heads that are 205 206 for instance cobra made an l4v head in 2008 that was very very heavy and some of them we measured came in all the way up to 206 208 grams and then we've measured some heads from stoltz golf who specialize in trying to make a very long driver 46 inch driver in order to keep the swing weights within spec they made a super light head you know 180 185 grams so now you're talking massive differences in terms of head weight so if we just punch in two extremes 180 grams he's going to get 289 yards of carry and the heaviest l4v was about 208 grams so between those two he's carrying at 298 and the other one's carrying at 289 so it's about nine yards of difference from you know a high swing speed player with relatively decent launch conditions so biggest best case scenario there in terms of the mass of the head you might pick up from one extreme to the other nine yards or so just call it 10 yards around number so you will notice that a lot of tour players they they do what's called hot melting their heads they put this rattle glue rat glue in there is what we call it and it's basically just designed to help stop rattles in the head when epoxy or other things break loose in there it also helps deaden the sound and gives them a little bit more of a solid feel based on what they hear because feel and what you hear has a lot to do with each other in terms of driver performance so a lot of tour players are used to that the older the older heads the smaller heads had a little didn't have such a high rattling tinging sound so that's why a lot of those guys do it but there's a little bit of performance benefit and getting a little bit higher mass head but you can see even in in the best case scenarios with a very high swing speed player you're talking a total of 10 yards but if you are trying to eke out every single last bit of yardage 10 yards can be you know a significant difference from one extreme to the next so in general there might be a trade-off going to a very heavy head because you won't be able to swing it as fast it's just simply physically heavier and 20 30 grams does make a big difference so that's what you might find in terms of getting the the heaviest head that you could play it wouldn't be it's not going to make a tremendous difference and on realistic expectations you could change maybe three yards with putting heavier weights in in some of these adjustable heads and those types of things but wouldn't expect much more than about three yards
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