Technology does change the game

[Lihu]

7 minutes ago, Bryan Kasper said:

 

i don know that i would chalk that up to technology...its an iron. other than making it easier for the average player to keep distance on off center hits, irons cant really change all that much. i have read  couple of articles(which i am currently trying to revisit) that test older model irons vs. newer model irons that show that when struck in the center of the clubface (which all tour players do about 90% of the time) there is no difference in distance. workability might be a little difference story. Im not so sure how you would test that. but the restrictions on head weighting for irons hasnt changed, so Cog meeting COG will carry similar results.

I watched this a couple months ago as it was on my home page in Youtube. Kind of reinforces what you stated. . .

 

[Piz]

The golf ball appears to make more difference than the golf clubs.  I watched a guy, on Youtube, hitting 260+ drives with a modern ball and an 1880's era, wooden, play club.  With a modern driver he gained about 30 yards.  Not much improvement over a chunk of wood on the end of a stick.  The two most famous 1 irons, Nicklaus and Hogan, were struck using golf balls we would now label "restricted flight."

[Bryan Kasper]

45 minutes ago, Lihu said:

I watched this a couple months ago as it was on my home page in Youtube. Kind of reinforces what you stated. . .

Precisely! i think that video was what sparked my search. I always knew that they juiced the lofts of clubs, but i didnt realize that newer clubs werent actually going farther, adjusting for loft. COmpanies tend to trick you with that in their marketing, it wasnt until i started working in marketing that i realized how much BS it entails haha 

[Aflighter]

Their clubs are also illegal from what I saw from guy thats in the know.The spring effect and also your not hitting the same clubs the pros use.Id post link if I can find it.

[Lihu]

4 minutes ago, Bryan Kasper said:

Precisely! i think that video was what sparked my search. I always knew that they juiced the lofts of clubs, but i didnt realize that newer clubs werent actually going farther, adjusting for loft. COmpanies tend to trick you with that in their marketing, it wasnt until i started working in marketing that i realized how much BS it entails haha 

For sure, it doesn't improve the distances or flights for a good player like Randy, but they are much better for off center hits which most of us do.

[iacas]

22 minutes ago, Piz said:

The golf ball appears to make more difference than the golf clubs.  I watched a guy, on Youtube, hitting 260+ drives with a modern ball and an 1880's era, wooden, play club.  With a modern driver he gained about 30 yards.  Not much improvement over a chunk of wood on the end of a stick.

30 yards is a pretty significant increase!

"Distance balls" have always been legal (I'm talking since the 1950s or so… before that, yeah, golf balls sucked pretty hard. ).

[sirsteveo55]

8 hours ago, Lihu said:

I watched this a couple months ago as it was on my home page in Youtube. Kind of reinforces what you stated. . .

 

I was going to post this video, but you already did. I think this video sums up technology in clubs very well. Its hard to argue it when the numbers never lie. I have seen a few SLDR vs the 2017 M1 videos going around lately and they prove the same thing. Its the player not the club. I feel manufactures really hate these types of videos. 

[Buckeyebowman]

8 hours ago, Bryan Kasper said:

Precisely! i think that video was what sparked my search. I always knew that they juiced the lofts of clubs, but i didnt realize that newer clubs werent actually going farther, adjusting for loft. COmpanies tend to trick you with that in their marketing, it wasnt until i started working in marketing that i realized how much BS it entails haha 

It's a little bit of everything put together. Yes, the club companies have been jacking up the lofts for years. Today's 7 iron is yesterdays, oh, about a 5.5 iron. Shaft technology is improved, as is ball technology. The ball is hotter, and ball speed off the face, aided by 120+ mph clubhead speeds w/the driver, will translate into additional height.I saw DJ at the WGC Bridgestone hit his driver higher than I can hit a full wedge. Bubba is the same way. I saw him hit driver a mile over 80 foot tall oaks on the corner of a dog leg par 4.

And one more thing about clubs. If you think the clubs you play are the same as the pros, then you might as well believe that the car you drive is the same as the ones Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his buddies are blasting around a Nascar track.

[Blackjack Don]

14 hours ago, DaveP043 said:

along with substantially improved physical conditioning.

A huge difference. Two clubs, perhaps. These guys aren't smoking Camels on the tee box.

I'm guessing here, but I think club technology has helped the duffer far more than the pros. The sweet spot on those old clubs was the size of a pinhead.

12 hours ago, JxQx said:

tons of practice

Hard to overestimate this, too. To become a professional golfer takes an enormous amount of time. Practicing hours every day. Again, if handicaps improve, it's probably the technology, because very few have the time, much less the desire, to improve very much. Which is good for them. I'm not so sure my obsession is a good thing for anyone but me. 

But have handicaps improved as much as the technology? Could Nicklaus be as dominant with the current equipment? That's a pretty good argument to me, and both sides have good reasoning.

Interesting thread.

[mvmac]

16 hours ago, Bucki1968 said:

I was watching the Pebble Beach Pro Am on Sunday. I'm watching Dustin Johnson hit a 7 iron on #17. I played Pebble Beach about 10 years ago and hit a four iron on that hole (about 200 yards, virtually no wind). Now I'm not any where near Dustin Johnson's ability...but I'm a pretty good player (I would like to think). I hit it the ball further now than I did 10 years ago, but a 7 IRON? Are you kidding me?

The 17th isn't 200 yards, it's in the 175-ish range. 

[Buckeyebowman]

1 hour ago, Blackjack Don said:

 

I'm guessing here, but I think club technology has helped the duffer far more than the pros. The sweet spot on those old clubs was the size of a pinhead.

 

Guess what? It still is! The COG is the size of a pinhead and will always be so. It can't get larger or smaller. All this talk about "larger sweet spots" is marketing hype from the manufacturers, yet it is not entirely erroneous!

What they are really talking about is increased "Moment of Inertia", or MOI. This, I suppose, really got started with the Ping "Eye" series irons. With weight moved from the center of the club head out to the margins (toe, heel, sole, top line), this configuration would better resist twisting from an off center hit.

And this is not a criticism. What Ping did was completely sound physics and engineering! But the problem was how to sell it? Since most golfers don't really care to learn that much about physics, they sold it with the term COG, which most golfers could recognize.

Source: "The Search for the Perfect Golf Club" by Tom Wishon.

[Jakester23]

9 hours ago, Buckeyebowman said:

And one more thing about clubs. If you think the clubs you play are the same as the pros, then you might as well believe that the car you drive is the same as the ones Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his buddies are blasting around a Nascar track.

How are they that much different?

[Lihu]

15 minutes ago, Jakester23 said:

How are they that much different?

From what I've been told by a fitter friend, every single club is perfectly matched for their swings.

[NJpatbee]

Improvement in technology has helped everyone's distance and for today's pros their physical conditioning and training has allowed them to max out the limits.  But lets remember that Jack hit one 341 yards in 1963 at the PGA Long Drive Contest using a persimmon driver and wound ball, so the big boys always had some length. 

I believe that the biggest impact technology has had in distance is for the average amateur.  I started at age 40 with hand me down persimmons and blades and a drive that carried 200 was a good poke.  Today at age 65 a good drive for me will carry 210 - 215 yards.  My swing is slower yet a 460cc titanium driver combined with today's ball keeps me in the game.  Sure, pros get a bump from today's equipment, but IMO not as much as the typical golfer.

[Lihu]

Quote

I believe that the biggest impact technology has had in distance is for the average amateur.  I started at age 40 with hand me down persimmons and blades and a drive that carried 200 was a good poke.  Today at age 65 a good drive for me will carry 210 - 215 yards.  My swing is slower yet a 460cc titanium driver combined with today's ball keeps me in the game.  Sure, pros get a bump from today's equipment, but IMO not as much as the typical golfer.

That's a good poke for a persimmon driver.

One of my old club fitter friends said that when he was young he could average 280 yards total with his old persimmon clubs, but there was a lot more roll involved. He didn't actually know his average carry distance, but he guessed in the 220-ish range because he's made many thousands of forced carries? He was a really good player for that era, like a scratch or better? He still hits pretty far for a 70+ year old golfer, or anyone for that matter.

I carry my driver about 245 yards, and probably could barely carry a persimmon 1 wood 200. I know a 3 wood from that same era carried a bit less than 200-ish on one entire round (on my reasonable shots), even though it rolled another 50-60 yards for a "reasonable shot" average. Loved the fact that there was no sound from the strike. Totally quite, but I missed the sweet spot too often. That and my playing partner who played in that era, told me to "get that stupid thing out of my bag".

So, I'd guess that if you had a modern driver back then you'd also have gotten about 245 carries or possibly more? Which is like a 30-45 yard increase?

[Blackjack Don]

51 minutes ago, NJpatbee said:

Jack hit one 341 yards in 1963

Makes one wonder if the driver might be limited to the laws of physics, specifically gravity. lol

[mvmac]

8 hours ago, Lihu said:

From what I've been told by a fitter friend, every single club is perfectly matched for their swings.

I wouldn't go that far and even if they got a set off the rack they would still be able to shoot under par.

There really isn't that much difference between what the pros play and what you can buy, it's not like the material is any different. The biggest differences are in the customization. they have an unlimited budget so they can test a few combinations of shaft/head with their ball on Trackman and they can have 2 or 3 versions of the same club built and see which one works best (mostly for driver). There are fitters out there that will fit you as if you were a tour player, obviously costs more than your average fitting.

I'm getting a set of i200 irons and they are built the same as it would be for a tour player. The heads are coming from the same place, they match the swing weight to what I want, and digitally check the loft and lie. I check everything when I get it and I've never had a set of PING irons be off from what I ordered.

[billchao]

17 hours ago, Blackjack Don said:

I'm guessing here, but I think club technology has helped the duffer far more than the pros.

You would be correct. COR limits put a cap on how much designers can do with a club, but it's not like irons were getting to those numbers anyway.

What improvements in iron technology are mostly about is increasing ball speed on off-center hits so you lose less distance when you miss the sweetspot, something pros generally aren't worried about.

It's also why modern blades aren't much different than older blades. Not really much to do with them other than change the shape of the head, amount of bounce, rounding the leading edge, etc. 

15 hours ago, Buckeyebowman said:

Guess what? It still is! The COG is the size of a pinhead and will always be so. It can't get larger or smaller. All this talk about "larger sweet spots" is marketing hype from the manufacturers, yet it is not entirely erroneous!

What they are really talking about is increased "Moment of Inertia", or MOI. This, I suppose, really got started with the Ping "Eye" series irons. With weight moved from the center of the club head out to the margins (toe, heel, sole, top line), this configuration would better resist twisting from an off center hit.

And this is not a criticism. What Ping did was completely sound physics and engineering! But the problem was how to sell it? Since most golfers don't really care to learn that much about physics, they sold it with the term COG, which most golfers could recognize.

Source: "The Search for the Perfect Golf Club" by Tom Wishon.

Technically speaking, the COG of a club is smaller than a pinhead. It's a single point in three dimensional space and it's not even located on the club face.

What you're referring to is the sweetspot and yes, it can be made effectively larger by moving mass to the perimeter of the club head (among other things).