Thwack!?

[Lihu]

15 minutes ago, Blackjack Don said:

If I said that I didn't mean it the way it sounded. The G30s and the GMax felt like hitting a cloud. Hardly any feeling at all when the club made contact. Nice click sound. Not at all like hitting rocks, which some of the others felt like. I mentioned Mizuno because I never found a seven iron that gave me the same feeling of the GMax, esp. It's odd. I hit the GMax and over and over it felt silky smooth. The G30 7i wasn't always, and nothing else could I hit the same at all. Even some of the Ping clubs I hit.

Good stuff.

Yeah, I suppose each of us likes a certain sound or "feel". I've just always heard Mizuno and "Butter" in the same sentence. I guess it's possible it's just marketing hype. . . 

[Hacker James]

The feeling and sound of a well struck, if not perfectly struck ball is a wonderful feeling. It is a fleeting thing however. There are times during practice and occasionally during play that I have experienced this. The click sound at impact, the absence of feeling at all in the hands and fingers, almost soft feeling. During those practice sessions in which I experience this, sometimes, after awhile, the feelings disappear suddenly and try as I may, carefully and methodically trying to recoup it to no avail. I simply stop.  On off days, even when fully rested, and knowing I am going through all the correct mechanics and swing thoughts, I just can not pull it together. I continue.

Sometimes, (not often enough), I just as suddenly "find" IT again. 

If you think about it, perhaps that is what this game is all about., searching for that "feeling" you know is there......somewhere.   "click.,..swoosh".

[Ernest Jones]

4 hours ago, Lihu said:

The sound of my better shots don't even sound anything like a gunshot***, more of a muffled "Thwap" or "Thpoof"?

Yup. 

[Rainmaker]

I practice a lot in my garage - hitting shots off a mat into a net.  In a closed space like that and with no ball flight to be distracted by, I hear and feel a LOT about my impact.  

I have 4 sets of irons in my garage and they all sound different.  I have 4 kinds of balls in rotation right now and THEY all sound different.  The differences are not huge but they're there.  The harder the cover, the clickier the contact sounds.  The softest balls I have - Precept Laddies . .sound so quiet when I hit them.  They are my go-to ball for late night practice - it makes enough of a difference.  

On the extreme other end of the spectrum . .I have a few older Top Flites.  These sound just like hitting brass bolts or something.  In the middle, much closer to the Precepts, are Titleists . .I don't have any ProV1's in my practice area but I have some random mid-range Titleists - they are louder and clickier than the Precepts but nothing like the Top Flites.  Probably the biggest differences I hear between balls are 1. the overall volume and 2. the "clicky-ness" or, on the other end of the spectrum, the deadness /flatness of the sound.

The 2 irons I use the most are my Callaway Big Bertha's and my Mizuno MP-53's.  2 more different sounding irons there may not be.  The BB's, when struck on the sweetspot have a dull "clank" undertone that reminds me a little of an aluminum bat.  The tone on TOP of that, though, is a loud, flat, dead type tone.  Overall it makes a cool sound and you know when you hit the (huge) sweetspot.

The mp53's have this really great sound that is actually hard to describe . . .the undertone of it sounds like,,,bear with me here, lol . . maybe a beanbag filled with tiny glass shards.  There's a definite "smash" that I can hear that doesn't sound just like a ball hitting metal.  And when I hit one of the top-flites it almost sounds like I'm hitting a big glass marble (that doesn't break).   

Then there is mat noise . .which sounds like a "thwoop" kind of noise . .you can learn to pick all these out if you hit thousands and thousands of shots in a closed space, lol.  

 

What does all this mean?  Not a whole lot, imo.  It's more like a curiosity to me than something I actually care about.  All perfectly struck balls and clubs sound *great*.  

[natureboy]

11 hours ago, Blackjack Don said:

Thanks for all the replies. "There's no stupid question, only stupid people asking them."

You gained a very valuable bit of info by asking though so kudos to you. 

Now you'll know that buzz or twisting feeling in your hands when you've hit it relatively poorly is from bad contact. It's not a high portion of my shots, but when I do get the sweet spot just right it almost feels like 'nothing' or I hit a marshmallow...or maybe I just missed the ball completely. 

[dave s]

Thwack! = missing the sweet spot on the iron face by plenty!  I hear it regularly.  It's not the ball, either.

[Buckeyebowman]

11 hours ago, dave s said:

Thwack! = missing the sweet spot on the iron face by plenty!  I hear it regularly.  It's not the ball, either.

That's good! It's like the baseball player who says they don't feel like they hit anything when they hit a home run. They catch it pure.

There's been a lot of BS on this thread. First of all the "sweet spot" or the "center of gravity" is the size of a pin point! It can't get any larger or smaller. It's simply the size that it is. When club manufacturers talk about a larger sweet spot, what they are really talking about is "Moment of Inertia". The idea that moving mass away from the center of the clubhead to the perimeter in order to resist twisting from off center hits. And it does help, although it does nothing to "enlarge" the sweet spot.

I would suggest that in the clubs that felt great when you hit them, you should look at those shafts very closely. After all, it's the shaft that transfers the impact feel up the shaft, through the grip, and into your hands. And it's important to remember that there is no "objective" standard for shaft flex. Every manufacturer can decide for itself how its shaft flexes should be measured.

[Lihu]

1 hour ago, Buckeyebowman said:

That's good! It's like the baseball player who says they don't feel like they hit anything when they hit a home run. They catch it pure.

There's been a lot of BS on this thread. First of all the "sweet spot" or the "center of gravity" is the size of a pin point! It can't get any larger or smaller. It's simply the size that it is. When club manufacturers talk about a larger sweet spot, what they are really talking about is "Moment of Inertia". The idea that moving mass away from the center of the clubhead to the perimeter in order to resist twisting from off center hits. And it does help, although it does nothing to "enlarge" the sweet spot.

I agree that the sweet spot is just a spot, but I think most people mean "forgiveness zones". Those do seem to be getting bigger with the newer technology? At least, that's how I "feel" when I test modern irons.

Every response I've read in this thread are based upon personal experiences. So while I haven't experienced some of them myself, I'm not so quick to call it BS. Everyone has their own "feeling" what a "Thwack" or "Thwump" sounds like. Personally, I agree that "Thwack" sounds like a mishit, but at the same time there are a lot of people with many types of golf clubs out there with their own personal take on what a "nice shot" feels like.

In the end, that's probably why there are so many types of clubs.

 

Quote

I would suggest that in the clubs that felt great when you hit them, you should look at those shafts very closely. After all, it's the shaft that transfers the impact feel up the shaft, through the grip, and into your hands. And it's important to remember that there is no "objective" standard for shaft flex. Every manufacturer can decide for itself how its shaft flexes should be measured.

Sure, my own feeling on shaft flex is that it's one of the main components on how a club feels. In fact, I don't think that personal feeling is static either.

For instance, I used to hate the "board-like" feel of the S300 on my MP-52. Now, they feel anything but "board-like". I love the sweet way they flex in my hands now. . and just 3 years ago, I hated them.

Perceptions change. I'm pretty sure other people have experienced the same thing?