Offset irons make my slice....worse?

[Audaxi]

Originally Posted by ScfdRookie

at impact club face determines where the ball starts, swing path determines how you work the ball.  At slightly open club face compared to swing path will produce a draw......a ball doesnt have side spin, it has a spin axis.

No, I meant what I said. People's knowledge on ball flight is often misunderstood. A ball does not have "side spin" it has spin axis which is tilted by swing path. Much like an NFL kicker, he does not "close" his foot when kicking the ball and hitting those beautiful draws!

Ask anyone here what an open clubface compared to the swingpath does, and they'll all tell you it creates a fade. For a right hander, if the face is pointing more to the right than the swing path, you will get a shot that goes to the right, or a fade. When I put it in these terms does your error make sense? Just because it has a spin axis doesn't mean that an open clubface to the swing path will create a fade, nor does it mean that you can't express it as rpm of sidespin and backspin separately. It may not be accurate, but it gives the majority of people the idea of what is causing the ball to curve.

[Golfingdad]

Originally Posted by ScfdRookie

at impact club face determines where the ball starts, swing path determines how you work the ball.  At slightly open club face compared to swing path will produce a draw......a ball doesnt have side spin, it has a spin axis.

Your first sentence is correct but the second is not.  A clubface open to swing path will ALWAYS produce a fade.  Always.  A clubface open to TARGET but closed to path will produce a nice push draw ... maybe that is what you meant?

Originally Posted by Audaxi

I used to open the clubhead at impact. It happens when you have too strong of a grip, and you end up closing it on the way back and opening it back to square on the way through. I've fixed this, but offset irons do make that worse. However, whenever I start to see 4 knuckles on my left hand at address, I know it's just waiting to happen again(I normally have a fairly strong grip anyways). It happens if you have a clubface that points to the sky - or worse - at the top, provided that the person has a normal swing except for the wrist rotation at impact. In this scenario, you can either choose to hit the ball with a fairly closed clubface, or you can rotate it open to square through impact. In that case, the offeset will give you more time to open the face than an iron without it. However, it could also be purely mental (like it is for me) if he doesn't have a swing like that. I apologize if this was hard to visualize, but to understand it you have to just try to swing from the top with a fairly to very closed clubface, and I guarantee that you'll end up opening the face through impact unless you do something odd in the downswing.

The way I understand it, club to ball contact is virtually instantaeous, therefore the fact that the club is closing or opening is irrelevant.  It's where it happens to be AT impact.  And I'm inclined to agree with Gaijin on the idea of opening it as well.  I don't get how your anatomy even would allow that unless you were doing something really funky with your wrists.

Furthermore, I think you guys have it backwards anyway.  Woods all have convex faces and when you hit one way out on the toe it jerks the club to the right, basically opening the club at impact.  But when that happens, it imparts hook spin and you draw the ball.  (Read: Gear effect.)

[ScfdRookie]

Your right maybe I wasn't expressing it correctly, that's why I put up that video link, ball flight is explained very well in the video.

[Audaxi]

Originally Posted by Golfingdad

The way I understand it, club to ball contact is virtually instantaeous, therefore the fact that the club is closing or opening is irrelevant.  It's where it happens to be AT impact.  And I'm inclined to agree with Gaijin on the idea of opening it as well.  I don't get how your anatomy even would allow that unless you were doing something really funky with your wrists.

I wasn't meaning to imply that the opening of the face causes a fade, I was just stating that it can happen. It was a compensation move I used to have due to an extremely shut clubface at the top of the backswing, because my grip was far too strong and I had to open the face coming into the ball to square it. Didn't make sense to me until I saw it on video, where it became obvious as it looked like the club didn't turn at all from parallel to parallel (shaft angle, not arms) on my downswing/follow through. When the ball hits the toe, it's a completely different thing, at least, to the best of my knowledge. I was just stating how I used to open the club through impact, and how that means that the offset gives you more time to rotate the clubface open before impact (instead of giving you more time to close it if you were to actually release properly), which makes for a bigger slice since the clubface is opened further at the moment it hits the ball. Sorry for the confusion.

[Datsyuk]

Wouldn't a very weak grip (grip strength as opposed to hand position) make it hard to keep the face on target at impact for off-centre hits- even a little bit?!?

[iacas]

Originally Posted by Willie Malay

It makes perfect sense IF you are opening the face when in the hitting zone. I didn't say EVERYONE does that. Is said IF you are opening at impact. Does that make sense now?

Opening at impact causes a fade, closing causes a draw. You don't work the ball well, do you?

Note: My point about the left hand was for a right-handed player.

Offset doesn't really give you more time to close the face. It just makes you set it up more closed to begin with. I did the math on how much "longer" you had to close the face somewhere on here a year or two ago, and it was negligible at any swing speed over about 75 MPH.

[mvmac]

Quote:

Originally Posted by iacas

Offset doesn't really give you more time to close the face. It just makes you set it up more closed to begin with. I did the math on how much "longer" you had to close the face somewhere on here a year or two ago, and it was negligible at any swing speed over about 75 MPH.

Did it look like this?

[iacas]

Originally Posted by mvmac

Did it look like this?

Nope. It was very simple: how long does a clubhead traveling 75 MPH take to travel an extra whatever distance.

0.115" (5I Titleist MB)

0.290" (5I PING K20)

That's 0.175 inches.

75 MPH = x inches/second = (75 mi/hr * 5280 ft/mi * 12 in/ft) / (60 min/hr * 60 sec/min) = 1320 inches per second.

So... 0.175 in / 1320 in/sec = ~0.00013 extra seconds to square the clubface. Note that impact only lasts 0.0004 seconds... roughly three times longer than you've got to square the clubface (and again these are at only 75 MPH), which is not a particularly fast 5I swing.

Conclusion: offset "works" by making people aim more left, not by "giving the player more time to square the face."