Dimples in relation to Driver spin

[BogeyGolfer]

Am I correct in thinking that the fewer dimples on te golf ball the less of a chance of sidespin when hitting your driver causing less severe hooks and slices. My buddy told me this and I had never heard of it before. What are some of the other benefits of having fewer or even more dimples on your golf ball?

[Pat007]

I believe a ball with less dimples (bigger dimples) will carry more, therefore making it more apt to slice. Case in point: the Titleist DT Carry. Huge dimples. I don't know what the RPMs are on the ball though. The Titleist DT Roll has more (smaller) dimples. Spin also depends on the composition of the cover. A ProV1 will spin more than a Top Flite, making it slice or hook even more. Just my humble non-scientific opinion.

[iacas]

No, you're both over-simplifying things dramatically. Dimple size, coverage, depth, ball compression, generated spin rate all tie in together. I doubt you can make sweeping generalizations like you've done here.

[The Gill]

I work at an airplane company that makes commercial jets (big ones) thus I'm surrounded by aerodynamic engineers.

Dimples themselves don't create spin. The impact conditions do: club face angle/vector, gear effect, ball material composition, etc. Dimples change how the ball interact to the atmosphere... There are two types of airflow involved laminar and turbulent. For airplanes, laminar is the holy grail. It's smooth and doesn't have nearly the drag as turbulent flow. The problem with it and golfballs is that it will violently separate halfway over the ball. The last half trips to turbulent and creates suction on the back half of the ball . The dimples interrupt the airflow from the beginning:

1. The front half of the ball is now LESS aerodynamic
2. The back half of the ball creates LESS "suction" From livescience.com: knetgolf.com:

This is awesome for golfballs, but bad for airplanes. If we made the leading edge of our wings dimpled or covered your car with dimples, poor fuel economy would result. Unless of course the car or plane was shaped like a ball... Now for the answer to your question. It's more to do with the DEPTH of the dimples. The deeper dimples impart less spin. Start looking at distance balls of similar core design. You'll find that they have deeper and sometimes wider dimples. The ProV1x has deeper and wider dimples than the ProV1. The Tour ix has deeper but not wider dimples than the Tour i... One of our engineers actually left our company and invented the hex cover for Callaway... Erik is right though, it's not just the dimples... The core and cover material have a lot to do with initial launch angle and spin, so you have to match the cover geometry (dimples pattern) to launch and spin. The bottom chart is a good representation... http://www.knetgolf.com/GolfBallDimp.aspx http://www.livescience.com/mysteries...olf_balls.html http://www.fi.edu/wright/again/wings...r/golf-01.html

I believe a ball with less dimples (bigger dimples) will carry more, therefore making it more apt to slice. Case in point: the Titleist DT Carry. Huge dimples. I don't know what the RPMs are on the ball though. The Titleist DT Roll has more (smaller) dimples. Spin also depends on the composition of the cover. A ProV1 will spin more than a Top Flite, making it slice or hook even more. Just my humble non-scientific opinion.