Side spin / gear effect persimmon / steel / titanium

[sirhacksalot]

Would you get less or more side spin from wood / steel / or titanium.  I saw a guy playing my local course the other day with the old metal woods.  I think they may have been burners or one of the tommy armour variants i couldn't tell.  But when he seemed to hit a bad shot it seemed to be playable.  i.e  just at the edge of the trees not in the middle of them like i seem to be.  Is there less gear effect / side spin on off hit shots of the older versions of the driver?

Edited December 23, 2015 by sirhacksalot

[mvmac]

Clubs are more forgiving now and it's mostly because of the design. Modern drivers have larger faces with the weight low and back (high launch/low spin/higher MOI).

[SavvySwede]

When you mishit the old woods they drop down earlier from loss of ball speed, often keeping them just short of trouble. Hit the new stuff offline and they just keep going.

[sirhacksalot]

In my mind I was wondering if the spring effect of the modern drivers would add to sidespin causing larger misses

[DaveP043]

I actually think that the newer clubs have less gear effect spin.  Please understand that I'm talking about gear effect spin.  If your clubface isn't square to the path, you'll get sidespin, but for a different reason.  Gear effect spin is kind of self-correcting.  For a ball hit on the toe, with a clubface square to the path, the tendency is for the clubhead to rotate open, pushing the ball to the right (RH golfer).  However, as the clubface opens, the gear effect induces draw spin, tending to curve the ball back to the left.   The clubhead rotation is what induces gear effect spin.  If you look at old persimmon heads, they had much more pronounced face curvature (bulge and roll)  If I understand correctly, this was a trial and error solution to problems cause by relatively high gear effect spin.  The curvature would cause a shot hit on the toe, for instance, to  start a little further right in order to counteract the  draw spin from the gear effect.  Higher MOI in the newer clubeads means, with an equivalent shaft, the club itself will rotate less due to an off-center strike than a club with a lower MOI.  Consequently, less gear effect spin.

In addition to the clubhead design, shafts have been improved too.  The very first graphite shafts could be made stiff against bending, but weren't very torsionally stiff.  Consequently, clubhead rotation was often unpredictable, especially on off-center hits.  Apparently it was really tough to hit these clubs straight, but the lighter shafts made for improved distance.  Newer graphite shafts are much more torsionally stable.  Consequently, you'll generally get less gear effect spin and higher ball speed even on off center strikes,  Off course, if the ball starts offline, with good velocity, and no self-correcting gear effect spin, the result is further into the woods.

[caniac6]

I would guess the gear effect would be reduced considerably because of the lower spinning balls, regardless of the club.

[DrvFrShow]

Another thing. My neighbor found the old Ping ISI driver that came with his set. It's 43.5" long. He took it out on the range and hit a few shots with it. Dead straight but only about 240 yds total distance. He hits a cut with his Ping G25 driver about 260 - 270 yds. 

The thing about short drivers - straight, but you sacrifice distance.

[mvmac]

12 hours ago, sirhacksalot said:

In my mind I was wondering if the spring effect of the modern drivers would add to sidespin causing larger misses

No, the higher MOI is more "resistant" to the gear effect caused by off center/COG hits.