Jump to content
Check out the Spin Axis Podcast! ×
Note: This thread is 4526 days old. We appreciate that you found this thread instead of starting a new one, but if you plan to post here please make sure it's still relevant. If not, please start a new topic. Thank you!

Recommended Posts

Posted
Kinda new here and had a question. I just traded in the driver I had been using (Taylormade Superfast 2.0 with regular flex) and got fitted for a new Cobra Amp Cell with stiff flex. The guy doing my fitting at Golf Galaxy mentioned that with my swing speed of 104 (rough average) he would want to see a higher ball speed. My ball speed averages around 140 and he allowed that 10 mph faster would be more normal. Disclaimer: I travel so I wasn't truly prepared and had on my usual cowboy boots instead of tennis shoes. The wife gave permission for a new toy so I took the opportunity when I had it. My question is how can I change that? Is it simply a matter of not hitting the sweet spot or am I doing something else wrong? I apologize for the wordy post but would appreciate any insight y'all might have. If I need to provide any additional details let me know. Thanks.

In the bag:

 Amp Cell Driver (red) 9.5*D

 Amp Cell 3-4FW (silver) 3D, 5-7FW (silver) 6D

 Amp Cell 3-4H (silver) 3D

 CG2 irons 5-PW

 CG14 56*, CG 16 52*, 60*

 Prestwick blade putter

 Hex Hot Yellow Balls


Posted

The theoretical maximum (given the USGA rules governing driver construction) "smash factor" is 1.50. So a 104 mph swing speed could theoretically produce 156 mph of ball speed with perfect contact. The most common factors that will lower your smash factor and hence ball speed are missing the sweet spot (particularly towards the heel) and/or a "down-and-across" club path that results in more "glancing" contact with the ball. Get a dry erase marker and color in the face of your driver (don't worry it comes off with a wet wipe) so you can see where your impact location is. If you are consistently hitting it off center, try choking down on the shaft a few inches. Modern driver shafts are generally too long for average golfers.

Stretch.

"In the process of trial and error, our failed attempts are meant to destroy arrogance and provoke humility." -- Master Jin Kwon

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted
Originally Posted by agross

Kinda new here and had a question.

I just traded in the driver I had been using (Taylormade Superfast 2.0 with regular flex) and got fitted for a new Cobra Amp Cell with stiff flex. The guy doing my fitting at Golf Galaxy mentioned that with my swing speed of 104 (rough average) he would want to see a higher ball speed. My ball speed averages around 140 and he allowed that 10 mph faster would be more normal. Disclaimer: I travel so I wasn't truly prepared and had on my usual cowboy boots instead of tennis shoes. The wife gave permission for a new toy so I took the opportunity when I had it.

My question is how can I change that? Is it simply a matter of not hitting the sweet spot or am I doing something else wrong?

I apologize for the wordy post but would appreciate any insight y'all might have. If I need to provide any additional details let me know.

Thanks.

Ball speed is a function of swing speed, quality of contact, and the properties of the clubhead and ball. With a swing speed of 104, ball speed around 140 isn't too far off. Generally speaking, the maximum "smash factor" is 1.5, meaning a well struck drive should have a ball speed about 1.5 times the swing speed. So in your case, a perfectly struck drive would have a ball speed around 155.

Tyler Martin

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted
Originally Posted by agross

Kinda new here and had a question.

I just traded in the driver I had been using (Taylormade Superfast 2.0 with regular flex) and got fitted for a new Cobra Amp Cell with stiff flex. The guy doing my fitting at Golf Galaxy mentioned that with my swing speed of 104 (rough average) he would want to see a higher ball speed. My ball speed averages around 140 and he allowed that 10 mph faster would be more normal.

I just had a fitting a couple weeks ago, and I started with the same driver! When I did my normal driver swing, he said that I was holding back and swinging too slow (as compared to my irons). He thought that the regular flex TM driver might have been erratic as I sped up my swing, so I self-regulated it to the 90s. When I tried other drivers, I started to swing at a faster speed for some reason... maybe the feel of them?  My max was 103, but most were low 100-102.  I hit about 5-10 different drivers with various differences, allowing the TrackMan guy to zero in on what he thought was best (they all felt decent to me). He settled on:

Titleist D2 loft 7.5, A1 setting, stiff shaft, 45"

My overall recollection of the stats for my drives was a ball speed around 150mph, when I hit 100-103mph. The "smash factor" was typically 1.47-1.49. He didn't worry about distance because we were hitting into a stiff headwind, but they were longer carries than I was hitting with my TM, that's for certain.

Anyway, I only posted, because I had a recent TrackMan experience and my parameters were nearly identical to you, and thought you'd be interested. I wish I had the $399 for their driver recommendation, but I doubt I'll buy anything quite yet. What's interesting is that the whole experience gave me more confidence to swing harder with my current TM driver, and I am hitting more confidently. But it's good to know that I'd likely benefit from stiff shafts when I'm ready to make the plunge.

My Swing


Driver: :ping: G30, Irons: :tmade: Burner 2.0, Putter: :cleveland:, Balls: :snell:

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted

Another easy way to check driver impact is to use masking tape on the face.

Awards, Achievements, and Accolades

Posted

Thanks for the responses.  I didn't know about the smash factor and numbers and all that - good to know.

In the bag:

 Amp Cell Driver (red) 9.5*D

 Amp Cell 3-4FW (silver) 3D, 5-7FW (silver) 6D

 Amp Cell 3-4H (silver) 3D

 CG2 irons 5-PW

 CG14 56*, CG 16 52*, 60*

 Prestwick blade putter

 Hex Hot Yellow Balls


Posted
Originally Posted by agross

Kinda new here and had a question.

I just traded in the driver I had been using (Taylormade Superfast 2.0 with regular flex) and got fitted for a new Cobra Amp Cell with stiff flex. The guy doing my fitting at Golf Galaxy mentioned that with my swing speed of 104 (rough average) he would want to see a higher ball speed. My ball speed averages around 140 and he allowed that 10 mph faster would be more normal. Disclaimer: I travel so I wasn't truly prepared and had on my usual cowboy boots instead of tennis shoes. The wife gave permission for a new toy so I took the opportunity when I had it.

My question is how can I change that? Is it simply a matter of not hitting the sweet spot or am I doing something else wrong?

I apologize for the wordy post but would appreciate any insight y'all might have. If I need to provide any additional details let me know.

Thanks.

There's "normal" and "optimal". As said above, balls and clubs are limited by regulation and design, so that a ballspeed of 1.5 x clubhead speed is a maximally efficient strike. Impact efficiency is bound to be a function of your ballstriking efficiency - so I don't see how "normal" can have any real meaning without a reference to your current playing ability. I don't have empirical data, but 140mph ballspeed might be better than average, or worse than average, for other players of your standard - and still have little or nothing to say about how well your current driver fits you.

Face tape, or ink, or talc to record where on your face you impact the ball is interesting - but it doesn't tell you the whole story. What matters is how the clubhead CoG and the centre of the ball align through impact. The clubhead's CoG is set far enough back from the face that I believe the point of impact recorded on the face could, depending on the face and path alignments, give a misleading impression of how "centered" your impact really was.


Note: This thread is 4526 days old. We appreciate that you found this thread instead of starting a new one, but if you plan to post here please make sure it's still relevant. If not, please start a new topic. Thank you!

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Want to join this community?

    We'd love to have you!

    Sign Up
  • TST Partners

    PlayBetter
    Golfer's Journal
    ShotScope
    The Stack System
    FitForGolf
    FlightScope Mevo
    Direct: Mevo, Mevo+, and Pro Package.

    Coupon Codes (save 10-20%): "IACAS" for Mevo/Stack/FitForGolf, "IACASPLUS" for Mevo+/Pro Package, and "THESANDTRAP" for ShotScope. 15% off TourStriker (no code).
  • Posts

    • Nah, man. People have been testing clubs like this for decades at this point. Even 35 years. @M2R, are you AskGolfNut? If you're not, you seem to have fully bought into the cult or something. So many links to so many videos… Here's an issue, too: - A drop of 0.06 is a drop with a 90 MPH 7I having a ball speed of 117 and dropping it to 111.6, which is going to be nearly 15 yards, which is far more than what a "3% distance loss" indicates (and is even more than a 4.6% distance loss). - You're okay using a percentage with small numbers and saying "they're close" and "1.3 to 1.24 is only 4.6%," but then you excuse the massive 53% difference that going from 3% to 4.6% represents. That's a hell of an error! - That guy in the Elite video is swinging his 7I at 70 MPH. C'mon. My 5' tall daughter swings hers faster than that.
    • Yea but that is sort of my quandary, I sometimes see posts where people causally say this club is more forgiving, a little more forgiving, less forgiving, ad nauseum. But what the heck are they really quantifying? The proclamation of something as fact is not authoritative, even less so as I don't know what the basis for that statement is. For my entire golfing experience, I thought of forgiveness as how much distance front to back is lost hitting the face in non-optimal locations. Anything right or left is on me and delivery issues. But I also have to clarify that my experience is only with irons, I never got to the point of having any confidence or consistency with anything longer. I feel that is rather the point, as much as possible, to quantify the losses by trying to eliminate all the variables except the one you want to investigate. Or, I feel like we agree. Compared to the variables introduced by a golfer's delivery and the variables introduced by lie conditions, the losses from missing the optimal strike location might be so small as to almost be noise over a larger area than a pea.  In which case it seems that your objection is that the 0-3% area is being depicted as too large. Which I will address below. For statements that is absurd and true 100% sweet spot is tiny for all clubs. You will need to provide some objective data to back that up and also define what true 100% sweet spot is. If you mean the area where there are 0 losses, then yes. While true, I do not feel like a not practical or useful definition for what I would like to know. For strikes on irons away from the optimal location "in measurable and quantifiable results how many yards, or feet, does that translate into?"   In my opinion it ok to be dubious but I feel like we need people attempting this sort of data driven investigation. Even if they are wrong in some things at least they are moving the discussion forward. And he has been changing the maps and the way data is interpreted along the way. So, he admits to some of the ideas he started with as being wrong. It is not like we all have not been in that situation 😄 And in any case to proceed forward I feel will require supporting or refuting data. To which as I stated above, I do not have any experience in drivers so I cannot comment on that. But I would like to comment on irons as far as these heat maps. In a video by Elite Performance Golf Studios - The TRUTH About Forgiveness! Game Improvement vs Blade vs Players Distance SLOW SWING SPEED! and going back to ~12:50 will show the reference data for the Pro 241. I can use that to check AskGolfNut's heat map for the Pro 241: a 16mm heel, 5mm low produced a loss of efficiency from 1.3 down to 1.24 or ~4.6%. Looking at AskGolfNut's heatmap it predicts a loss of 3%. Is that good or bad? I do not know but given the possible variations I am going to say it is ok. That location is very close to where the head map goes to 4%, these are very small numbers, and rounding could be playing some part. But for sure I am going to say it is not absurd. Looking at one data point is absurd, but I am not going to spend time on more because IME people who are interested will do their own research and those not interested cannot be persuaded by any amount of data. However, the overall conclusion that I got from that video was that between the three clubs there is a difference in distance forgiveness, but it is not very much. Without some robot testing or something similar the human element in the testing makes it difficult to say is it 1 yard, or 2, or 3?  
    • Wordle 1,668 3/6 🟨🟨🟩⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    • Wordle 1,668 3/6 🟨🟩🟨🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Should have got it in two, but I have music on my brain.
    • Wordle 1,668 2/6* 🟨🟨🟩⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Welcome to TST! Signing up is free, and you'll see fewer ads and can talk with fellow golf enthusiasts! By using TST, you agree to our Terms of Use, our Privacy Policy, and our Guidelines.