It Doesn't Make Sense (A good one for WBL and other engineers)

[Bubble Head]

I don't understand the problem I have with my driver. I have a decent quality driver. I was fitted on a launch monitor for the shaft. It is 44.5 in long. It feels good. And when I hit it well, it has a wonderful ball flight. The problem is, I only hit the fairway about 1 in 3. Most of the time it goes right. But sometimes left.

I don't have any of these problem with my 3 wood. I haven't missed a fairway with it in weeks. It goes 15 to 20 yds shorter than my driver. It has a much smaller head. It seems like it should be harder to hit consistently.

Does 4 degrees help that much?
Given that I shoot around 100,should I:

Shorten my driver?
Get a 13* 3 wood?
Quit whining and get more lessons?
Get rid of the driver and get another wedge?

 

[Sandpiper3]

The main reason the 3w stays straight is that it has more loft which = less sidespin.

Lesson is probly the best idea, even if you shorten your driver, that only makes it easier to hit the sweet spot, but that is irrelevant if your getting sidespin as it'll still happen if your hitting across the ball. Just have to make sure your clubpath is going through the ball, and NOT across it.

 

[Eracer]

I don't understand the problem I have with my driver. I have a decent quality driver. I was fitted on a launch monitor for the shaft. It is 44.5 in long. It feels good. And when I hit it well, it has a wonderful ball flight. The problem is, I only hit the fairway about 1 in 3. Most of the time it goes right. But sometimes left.

I don't have any of these problem with my 3 wood. I haven't missed a fairway with it in weeks. It goes 15 to 20 yds shorter than my driver. It has a much smaller head. It seems like it should be harder to hit consistently.

Does 4 degrees help that much?
Given that I shoot around 100,should I:

Shorten my driver?
Get a 13* 3 wood?
Quit whining and get more lessons?
Get rid of the driver and get another wedge?

I am equally baffled by the differences between a 3-wood and a driver.

My driver is 10.5 degrees. My 3-wood is 13 degrees. There is a HUGE difference in ball flight (consistency) from that 2.5 degree loft difference.

What if I compare a 9 degree and 10.5 degree driver? Not nearly as much difference. Does that 1 degree really make all that much difference?

And, like you mentioned, the 3-wood is smaller, with a smaller sweetspot, and less MOI, so should be way harder to hit consistently well. But it's the opposite. Very puzzling.

I may be going for option 4, since I have option 3, and hit it almost as far as a driver.

 

[ezra76]

My vote goes to another lesson and work it out. I go right when I when I try to "hit" the ball too much and hang on. I go left when I get too "handsy". When I use the proper grip, stay connected and swing through the ball, I crush it dead up the middle.

I do the same thing, pull a 3w and hit it up the middle, wonder why I even brought my driver. Then of course there are those holes where I pummel the driver, have a short iron or wedge in, stick it and make birdie. The fact is when I "reasonable" control of the driver I score best. I can play from the rough pretty well inside 150.

 

[SiberianDVM]

Rhythm & tempo is 90% of a good golf swing. Most of us swing at a different rhytym and tempo with the driver because of our subconscious desire to hit the ball as hard as we can.

Try gripping down on your driver to 3 wood length, and pretend it's your 3 wood when you swing it.

 

[chemboy2]

Rhythm & tempo is 90% of a good golf swing. Most of us swing at a different rhytym and tempo with the driver because of our subconscious desire to hit the ball as hard as we can.

I don't think it is even in the subconscious. How many of us pull the 3W out on tight holes and actually have one swing though, "nice 'n smooth and in the fairway." Now, how many of us actually think that same thing when we pull the driver out of the bag?

My last round I pulled the driver on hole one with the thought of just wanting to be in the fairway. Well, I found the fairway. I kept this up until holes 8 and 9 before I got cocky and tried to "step on it". The results were awful. I went back to just wanting to be in the fairway and I started hitting them again. I ended up hitting 10 of 14 fairways for the day and I used driver off of every tee. My early front 9 drives were only about 235 or so but by the end that smooth confident swing was putting it out there 260.

Bubblehead, you first need to identify why you're not hitting your driver straight. As Piper mentioned, shortening will just help you find the sweetspot. I play my driver at 44" and I'm consistently in, or very close to, the sweetspot on every shot. My problem is that I have a tendency to not swing through the ball and I hold off releasing the clubhead. This results in an open club face at impact and "fore, right!" I could take my driver down to 7 iron length and it wouldn't solve that problem...

 

[MGP]

I think I can offer a (somewhat) scientific explanation.

How consistently do you hit the center of the face (sweetspot) on the driver? Or alternatley how often do you hit on the same spot on the face of the driver?

Since you shoot around 100 and you are more or less spraying the ball, I'm guessing your impacts with the driver are "all over" the club face.

The reason I ask is there are a couple big differences between drivers and fairway woods that a lot of people don't take into account. Aside from length of the shaft -- which is harder to control in the driver because it's longer -- drivers add quite a bit of "Bulge" and "Roll" to the face.

Bulge is the horizontal (side to side) curvature of the face and Roll is the vertical (top to bottom) curvature of the face. Because you are hitting a club with essentially a curved face you must be more consistent with your ball strking to produce consistent shots. If you hit the top of the face you'll tend to sky the ball. If you hit the bottom of the face you tend to hit "worm burners". Hitting towards the toe will only make a push/slice worse. Hitting on the heel tends to result in pulls left.

Fairway wood faces have much less bulge and roll. Because of this, they tend not to add to a slighlty mis-struck ball as much -- you hit a ball slightly on the toe and it will still push to the right but not as much as with the driver since the clubface angle to the right is less, due to less roll.

One other factor is clubhead speed. Your driver clubhead speed is normally the highest of any club you swing. Any driver mishits resulting in pushes/slices or pulls/hooks will be made worse by more spin imparted by the higher clubhead speed. With a 3 wood, the clubhead speed is less so the shot will have less side spin on it.

The driver is the hardest club in the bag to hit consistently, even for the pros. But it sure is sweet when you tag one on the sweetspot, dead down the middle.

 

[warbirdlover]

I was fighting my driving until I QUIT OVERSWINGING trying to get that huge bomb. Swinging easier (and with tempo per Doc) is the way to get it straight and if it doesn't go as far as you think it should you'd have to increase your swingspeed somehow (without overswinging) and then you'd probably need a stiff flex shaft.

 

[ualtim]

Rhythm & tempo is 90% of a good golf swing. Most of us swing at a different rhytym and tempo with the driver because of our subconscious desire to hit the ball as hard as we can.

I don't think it is even in the subconscious. How many of us pull the 3W out on tight holes and actually have one swing though, "nice 'n smooth and in the fairway." Now, how many of us actually think that same thing when we pull the driver out of the bag?
...

That swing thought actually works. I have been using it with my driver lately as I am not getting out to the course or range very often and I am hitting more fairways and greens than ever before. My thought is a little different, but same concept, "back slow......" which results in a smoother swing and better distance and accuracy. My mistakes come when I really try to hit it because my partners are safe in the fairway and I am looking for more distance.

There is a lot to be said for the smooth and easy approach with most of the clubs in the bag.

 

[Bubble Head]

Are there any 460 drivers with minimal bulge and roll? Seems like that would be a good thing for a high handicapper.

 

[Bignose]

I think I can offer a (somewhat) scientific explanation.

...

Bulge is the horizontal (side to side) curvature of the face and Roll is the vertical (top to bottom) curvature of the face. Because you are hitting a club with essentially a curved face you must be more consistent with your ball strking to produce consistent shots. If you hit the top of the face you'll tend to sky the ball. If you hit the bottom of the face you tend to hit "worm burners". Hitting towards the toe will only make a push/slice worse. Hitting on the heel tends to result in pulls left.

This isn't quite right. The bulge has been put in there 100% completely on purpose to improve the flight of off-center hits. It is called "gear effect," so-named because it acts just like a set of enmeshed gears. A ball hit off the toe will cause the toe of the club to rotate back and away to the right (for a RH club), but because of the gear effect the right-spinning club puts left-spin on the ball. The gear effect gives a ball hit too far to the toe side of the club a chance to draw back towards the middle of the fairway. Bulge doesn't exacerbate a slice from a toe-hit, it weakens it. Bulge is a very, very good thing -- which is why no large headed clubs don't have it anymore. Too much bulge can increase the slice-results, but no bulge also has more sidespin than no bulge at all. It is possible that you can have too much bulge for your swing, but in general, bulge is very beneficial.

Bulge will not fix an open or shut clubface, though. So, you cannot blame that super-slice or duck hook solely on off-center hits. You swinging the club with an open or shut face has a much larger effect, simply because the gear effect help nullify the off-center effects on side-spin.

Well, when the benefits of bulge were discovered, the next logical step, of course, was that roll would help in exactly the same way, right? Well, not quite. Roll can be good and bad. It's main effect is that a driver doesn't have quite the same loft up and down its face. A 10 degree driver can have an effective loft of around 8 at the bottom and 12 at the top, for example. This alone may be helping the average golfer, since most probably need higher loft and hitting the ball off the top of the club will give them that more loft. But, it can lead to inconsistency.

Tom Wishon makes several drivers with very little roll at all. But, all of his drivers have bulge, again because bulge is a very good thing. You can read a lot more about bulge and roll in a few very excellent books: Cochran and Stobbs' Search for the Perfect Swing and Wishon's The Search for the Perfect Golf Club.

 

[Sandpiper3]

Are there any 460 drivers with minimal bulge and roll? Seems like that would be a good thing for a high handicapper.

No bulge would be terrible for a higher handicapper, because how often do they actually hit the sweet spot? The bulge helps them a lot, but as Bignose said, wont cure your swing, but will help on the off centre hits. Roll on the other hand isnt as beneficial depending on different circumstances.