Less is (definitely) more! Are club manufacturers still chasing distance too much?

[saevel25]

2 hours ago, RussUK said:

Do you think that was down to lighter shafts and very low CG?

I moved from my Wilson Staff Di9's as the shaft was so light everyting went straight up in the air. Not even good old lead tape seemed to help.

No. The clubs had KBS Tour shafts in them. 

It was do to the lower CG. 

[DaveP043]

I'll go back to the original post.  To me, its a matter of marketing.  In my experience, a large majority of golf club purchasers are interested in distance above all other factors.  Being accurate isn't nearly as "sexy" as being long.  So what's a club manufacturer to do, each one has to continue to improve the distance of their clubs.  Some of it is certainly revising the loft of the clubs, some of it is also due to clubhead design, and some is do to changes in shafts.  But by and large, the purchaser is going to say "Wow, I hit this new 7-iron 8 yards further than my old one, this is GREAT!"

[Blackjack Don]

18 minutes ago, DaveP043 said:

Being accurate isn't nearly as "sexy" as being long.

Ego is the bane of golf. Two days ago, a little man teed off on the first hole, from the blacks, and hit his drive a hundred and fifty yards. He was left with 250 to the hole, but his ego was stroked I guess because he was playing from the championship tees.  Gotta hit it far, make people ooh and ahh. 

I believe Jack is right, more than I ever did when I was only watching golf on TV. The ball goes too far, esp for pros. This little guy must see Hidecki hit his drive 300 yard and believes he should be playing from the tips, like his countryman. It's ridiculous. But you can't blame marketers. They have products to sell. They can't make them go straighter, so the do the next best thing, and it's the very thing many want.

If the pros were hitting tour balls that go 250, and we are hitting amateur balls that go 250, that might change perceptions? It might even make golf better.

Just another opinion from the cheap seats.

[iacas]

13 hours ago, Buckeyebowman said:

Hmmmmm. Much scientific talk here, but it all makes me wonder. If the modern clubs are so much "better" the average Handicap Index should have dropped like a rock! Has it? Uhhhh, NO!

It has actually.

And @Blackjack Don, pros swing faster now than they did in the 80s. The ball is still legal. There's still an Overall Distance Standard.

[Blackjack Don]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

It has actually.

Source, please?

1 hour ago, iacas said:

And @Blackjack Don, pros swing faster now than they did in the 80s. The ball is still legal. There's still an Overall Distance Standard.

Maybe, but that's due to weight training, diet, and purses which allow them to have coaches, trainers and chefs. However, Hogan hit 250 and there are over 50 pros this year on tour who averaged--AVERAGED?--over three hundred. So courses get longer, costs go up, and at some point there will be a bigger cost to golf itself.

Golf is one of the most extremely conservative spots in all cultures. People naturally hate change, and golfers are no exception. Change only comes when the cost of staying in the same place is more than the cost to change. Golf does not take kindly to iconoclasts, who spout heresy in anything other than a Scottish accent.

I support Jack's efforts. I think they are laudable, but if they won't listen to him, they are surely uninterested in my opinions. But I'll keep trying. It's my nature.

[WUTiger]

22 hours ago, jbishop15 said:

A 4 iron at, say, 24 degrees now, versus like 28-29 in the 1960s, would not be that much easier to hit.

In terms of head design, cavity-back irons get the ball up higher than blades. That said, Tom Wishon still promotes his 24/38 rule: The average golfer struggles to hit an iron with less than 24* loft and more than 38" length in shaft.

[Hardspoon]

13 minutes ago, WUTiger said:

 That said, Tom Wishon still promotes his 24/38 rule: The average golfer struggles to hit an iron with less than 24* loft and more than 38" length in shaft.

I hadn't heard that before. It seems silly to draw some arbitrary line, as if the difference between a 37.9" club and a 38.1" club is greater than 34.9" and 35.1".

Also, how many "average golfers" are there? Probably not enough to make this rule actually have any value.

It sounds like a vast oversimplification to me; enough to make it basically worthless.

[Blackjack Don]

It's not really a rule. More of a suggestion. Like a theory. Doesn't matter if it's exact or not. Only that it starts a good conversation?

[WUTiger]

1 hour ago, Hardspoon said:

It sounds like a vast oversimplification to me; enough to make it basically worthless.

Wishon has been a long-time designer of golf clubs, and has had golfers of different abilities test his clubs for years. 37.9 vs. 38.1 inches is not the point. The point is, lots of average golfers have trouble hitting anything longer than a 5i.

It's not worthless... it has value in suggesting people see if they can hit a 5i or a 4i before they blindly buy one for their next set of irons.

For example, look into Callaway Preowned and their available iron sets. Lots of the used sets start out with 5i as the longest iron.

Also, consider the Bridgestone  J15 Cast iron set. Standard mix is 5i-AW, with 4i a custom order. In the Callaway line, whether it's the new Steelheads or the older XRs, a common combo set offered for both is 3H, 4H, and 5i-AW. In fact, that club section is called Iron/Combo.

Check the specs and see if the 5i doesn't lurk in the 24/38 zone.

[iacas]

20 hours ago, Blackjack Don said:

Source, please?

GHIN.

The trend has continued since that article was posted, too.

20 hours ago, Blackjack Don said:

Maybe, but that's due to weight training, diet, and purses which allow them to have coaches, trainers and chefs. However, Hogan hit 250 and there are over 50 pros this year on tour who averaged--AVERAGED?--over three hundred. So courses get longer, costs go up, and at some point there will be a bigger cost to golf itself.

Longer shafts. Lighter shafts. Bigger clubheads. The increased understanding of the importance of distance. Better athletes in general playing pro-level golf.

Swing speed increases - and the fact that ball manufacturers were able to get the lower spin of the 80s distance balls into a urethane cover that preserves higher short-iron spin - are almost entirely responsible for the distance increase.

And, there were fewer than 30 players on the PGA Tour who averaged over 300 yards. If you meant to say "on tour" to include, I don't know, every tour (?) then yeah I'm sure it's over 50.

http://www.pgatour.com/stats/stat.101.2016.html

FWIW, the median is just under 290.

[saevel25]

Here is a sample of the driving accuracy on tour. As you can see it has been decreasing consistently over the past 16 years.

2016: 60.3%
2012: 61.3% 
2008: 63.2%
2004: 64.3%
2000: 68.9%

This has less to do with the inability to strike the ball solidly since the scoring average has not suffered. Swing faults translate to all aspects, not just driver. This has more to do with game management. They are hitting driver more often. 

If I had to say what has caused the increase average in driving distance. (Not ordered)

1. More athletes on tour.
2. Low spinning, higher launching profile that fits faster swing speeds. PGA Tour players use to hit as low as 4-6 degree driver heads. Now the fastest swings are using near 10 degrees. 
3. Drivers being hit more often.
4. Better golf swings across the tour.
5. PGA Tour players learning to swing up on the ball. Going from negative angle of attack to positive angle of attack can add a ton of distance to the drive. You can easily drop over 1000 rpm in spin and raise the launch angle by 5-6 degrees. 

Honestly, I have no qualms with what the golf club manufactures are doing. The golfers they are targeting with these clubs need the clubs designed this way. If a golfer can hit the ball higher and longer it is a bonus.