Will a Shorter Driver Effect Loft

     If I shorten my driver from 45 1/2" to 44" will it have any affect on the loft? Would the ball go higher or lower because of the change in length?

    If you shorten a driver from 45 ½ to 44 it will not change the loft of the driver, nor will it affect the stiffness of the shaft.  It might change your attack angle thus the launch angle of the drive.

    This decrease in length will definitely affect the swing weight by about nine points making the club head feel lighter.  If you have a club head with weight ports, increase the weights to bring the swing weight back partially or if needed, all the way back to your comfort swing weight zone.  Lead tape may be added to the head to bring back the feel you require.  We would recommend that you have the driver re-shafted with a shaft of the correct weight for the shorter length.

    If you want to lower your scores and stay in the fairway more often, we highly recommend you shorten it.  What you will find with the shorter driver is that you will start building confidence in your tee shots, stay in the fairway more often and will most likely make a better swing and certainly hit the sweet spot more often. Hitting the sweet spot will increase the ball speed and you will get the same distance or more than you did with a 45 ½ inch driver, but will not be spending as much time looking for your ball in the rough.  Tiger, when he played so well in his early days used a 43 1/2 inch driver.  Ernie Els is swinging a 44 inch driver.  The average length of a driver on the PGA Tour is 44.5 inches.

Is the driver shaft more important now than it was 10 years ago?

    With the club manufacturers reaching the limits on drivers, how important does the shaft become, and how can a person determine the correct one?

   The question recognizes that there are some limitations that nature controls in golf, not the USGA. We are reaching those limits when it comes to drivers.
    Even if there were no limitations on clubs and balls in the Rules of Golf, I would estimate that equipment innovation could add only about 8 to 10 yards from where we are today, as long as golfers keep swinging clubs at the same speed. Faster head speed will always give you more distance, even if the gains are diminishing as head speeds increase. Golfers on average may simply be getting better -- although Jack Nicklaus 45 years ago had a clubhead speed comparable to that of Tiger Woods today. He could have driven the ball the same distance as Tiger if he had had today's equipment.
    The average driving distance on the PGA Tour (one of the best golf test laboratories in the world) has increased about 25 yards (from 265 yards in 1995 to 289 yards in 2006) over an 11-year span without any measurable increase in skill on the part of the players.  This has been the most significant increase in distance over such a short period of time in the history of the game. The reason for this is primarily the spring-like effect in clubs permitted by the USGA, and secondarily the performance of the multi-layered ball that has allowed golfers to launch drives at or close to their optimum conditions. This could not be achieved with a wound ball and persimmon head.  To answer your question, the shaft is not any more important now than it has been in the past.  This does not mean it isn’t important, just that its influence is no greater since the recent leveling off in performance of driver heads.
   Find a shaft that allows you to feel where the club head is (flex and weight), and that you are in control of it during your swing (length), and stick with it. By far the most important specifications in a shaft are its flex, weight and length; many golfers use shafts that are too stiff, too light, and too long, because they believe that’s what better players use. 

    You need to get fitted so the driver can be developed to your specific needs.

How to get More Distance

    How do I get more distance with my driver?

    This will be a long explanation.  When a golf ball is launched from a club, it follows a trajectory dictated by its speed, launch angle and spin rate. While this is true for all clubs, this discussion will center around the driver.  With most other clubs, we are concerned with distance control, but with the driver we usually want to get as much distance as we can.  The three-wood is also a distance club, but when the ball is on the ground we don't have the same options as when we can place it on a tee.  So the question every golfer wants answered is; ‘How can I get the maximum the distance I get off the tee…overall distance, not just carry?'

     First, consider the ball. In the 19th century, golfers noticed that their solid gutta-percha golf balls went further after they'd been used for a while and acquired some nicks and scrapes. This observation is the reason golf balls have dimples today. Those dimples create a roughened surface, which has significant effects on a ball in flight. Where a dimpled ball will travel 250 yards a smooth ball will only go about 125 yards.
     Dimples reduce the "drag" or resistance on the ball when it's traveling through the air. This is not intuitive because generally, smooth things travel through air and water better than rough things. This would be true even for a golf ball, if it were traveling at speeds less than about 50 mph. But in any normal trajectory off a driver, the ball is traveling considerably faster than 50 mph. before it hits the ground. The reason for this reduced drag is complex, but conceptually it is similar to going through a force barrier. The barrier is broken at a specific speed because the size of the turbulent air tail is reduced in size, and the resistance is cut almost in half.

     A ball with dimples, but without spin will only travel half as far as a ball with dimples and spin.  Every golf shot hit into the air has backspin.  No shot leaves with over spin.  Even a putt has backspin. The dimples create a turbulent layer around the ball so that when it spins, it drags the air over the ball, creating lower air pressure on the top of the ball than on the bottom producing a lift force greater than the weight of the ball. This allows the ball to glide, rather than to take on the trajectory of a bullet, in the same way that an aircraft wing provides a lift force to get and keep the plane airborne.

    So, dimples and spin are key factors in determining distance along with ball speed and launch angle.  The question becomes, How can we optimize these factors to get maximum distance?

You can't do anything about the dimples, as these come with the ball you selected, and the shape, number, and size for all balls are very similar.

     Next is ball speed. This is also something you have little control of if you are already swinging as efficiently as you can within your physical abilities. So there are only two things left for us to consider: spin and launch angle.

    Spin and launch angle are linked, because to get a higher launch angle you need more loft, which increases spin. Is this bad? Well, it could be if you are already getting too much spin but not a high enough launch angle. This increased spin will increase the height of the trajectory and also increase the drag on the ball, slowing it down. It will make you feel like you are hitting the ball into the wind. The goal, then, is to find the best compromise of lowest spin with highest launch angle. Unfortunately as one goes up, generally so does the other.

     The closer the combination of the loft and the angle of attack are to the desired launch angle the less spin placed on the ball.  The higher/lower the combination of the loft of the club and the angle of attack are to the optimal launch angle the more spin placed on the ball.

After 400 years of trial-and-error experimentation, along came computer analysis of trajectories using aerodynamic properties of spinning balls to help answer the question. It has now been shown that to get maximum distance out of all the club head speed that most of us can muster – around 90 mph without having to tighten our shoe laces – we need to launch the ball higher than we originally thought. The optimal launch angle for that swing speed is between 13 and 14 degrees. Our three wood will often do this better than the driver, and as a result we sometimes find that we actually hit the ball farther with our 3-wood than with the less-lofted driver, which doesn't make sense. Unfortunately, because the length of the three wood shaft is less than the driver and its loft is higher, that club does not project the ball with as much speed AND will cause a higher spin rate. How can we take advantage of the driver's additional length and lower loft to maximize our distance with what should be our longest club?
     Our goal with the driver should be to increase its loft to launch the ball at 13 to 14 degrees, while also lowering the spin rate to about 3,000 rpm. We can accomplish this with the aid of the latest generation of big titanium drivers. Most all of them are good clubs and have the trampoline effect which lowers the spin rate so the choice of brand name is almost entirely a matter of personal preference.
Since the driver is the one club in which we are actually swinging up at the ball at impact, we don't have to create all of that 13-to-14 degrees of launch angle with the club face. The loft of the club should be about 10.5 or 11 degrees, or possibly more as your swing speed goes down. To help create the optimal spin rate of about 3,000 rpm we should:

    Choose a ball that has low spin properties off the driver. Titleist NXT or DT Solo, Callaway HX Hot or Big Bertha, Maxfli Red Max or Noodle are some examples of low spin balls.

    Tee the ball a little higher to take advantage of the vertical gear effect by hitting the ball a little above the sweet spot. This gear effect, a vertical cousin of the horizontal effect that causes a draw if you hit the ball towards the toe, allows the club head to twist under the ball, decreasing the spin and also producing a higher launch angle. These improvements in the launch conditions make up for the slightly lower ball-speed that results from imperfect sweet-spot impact.

    In other words:  Hit it high and let it fly

Can a Driver Lose Its Pop

    Some think drivers lose their pop after a certain amount of time. They've come up with some possible causes, but aren't really sure (loss of trampoline effect due to metal fatigue, or the shaft loses flexibility).  Would it be expected that a driver would lose distance over the span of about a year (assuming the golfer’s swing doesn't change)?

     If we are talking about drivers that have been around for a few years, all of which are designed to the limit of COR (trampoline effect) at .830, and your swing speed is in the normal to high range (85 mph to 105 mph), then you should not be concerned about it losing its POP.

     I’m assuming that the club head and shaft are not production anomalies that should have been rejected on their way through the quality control department, and that the club is otherwise designed to specifications. If it is from a reputable manufacturer, then it should last for at least five years under reasonably heavy use. This means playing 30 to 40 rounds of golf a year and going to the driving range about once a week.

     The face will not lose its “pop” -- i.e., resilience or ability to spring back during impact. The shaft will not lose flexibility in any gradual manner. When a graphite shaft fails, it is a catastrophic failure that ends up with the grip still in your hands but the head somewhere in the bushes or down the fairway. The fatigue properties of shafts are very good. Even steel shafts made of high strength steel will not lose their rigidity.

     You can test to see if a driver face has started to collapse.  Place the straight edge of a credit or business card against the face. The face should have a noticeable bulge and roll…be convex. If the face is flat and a little concave, then you do have a potential problem. Nowadays this is very much the exception, though that was not the case in the very early days of titanium drivers.   We would be happy to measure the bulge and roll of your driver head

Persimmon vs Titanium

    What are the actual differences between a persimmon driver head and a titanium driver head?

    With everything the same identical on both clubs i.e. weight, head speed, loft, and shaft flex etc.  the results of collision will be different.

     The reason for this is that today’s titanium driver has a higher Coefficient of Restitution (COR) than a persimmon driver and the face acts like a trampoline which gives it a spring-like effect. The face of a persimmon driver does deform a little at impact but not very much and the resulting ball velocity of persimmon is dependent on the resilience of the ball – head mass and head speed being the same – and not the spring in the face.

The ball will stay in contact with titanium driver face for longer – by approximately 0.000035 of a second – than it will with a persimmon driver face and will be launched, not only faster because of the spring like effect – high COR – but a little lower and with less spin.

    These differences, of lower spin and increased ball speed will, by themselves, result in at least 10 -11 yards increase in distance. Because of these differences one can use a higher lofted titanium driver and launch the ball higher with less spin than its persimmon counterpart giving one another 5-8 yards.

Add to this, a ball which spins less off the driver, than it did in the persimmon days, with a little higher speed, one can add another 8 -10 yards. This assumes you have been able to reach or closely approach the optimum launch conditions by proper fitting for your particular ball speed. This is exactly what the increase in average distance has been on the PGA Tour since the introduction of titanium and has nothing to do with improved skill or head speed of the golfers on tour.

    So, there are a number of things at play when you switch from persimmon to titanium, and we have not even discussed the forgiveness factor (MOI) when you miss the sweet spot.

The sad thing for those of us who believe that technology will continue to advance – as measured by increased distance – is that we are going to be disappointed.  We have reached the limits in distance improvement, despite what the advertising implies, as long as you hit the sweet spot of your driver and launch the ball optimally.   

There is, however, still a little room left for our belief in magic. If we believe that we will get an extra 20 yards with a new driver, we will probably make our best swing and actually get somewhere close. Unfortunately, this increase in distance will soon fade – five or six rounds if we are lucky – as soon as our habitually forced swing kicks back into its rightful place.

Optimal Driver Loft

      I am 70 years old and a high handicapper, about 18. I have read several articles that stated that high handicappers would be better off leaving the driver in the bag and use a three wood off the tee. Shorter club, higher loft, straighter drive. My driver length is 43.5 and I chose a 13º loft. I've never had trouble with slicing or hooking so that doesn't enter the equation. What I would like to know is how do I determine what is too much loft?

      Advances in driver technology are slowing down and this is simply because we have reached the effective limits promulgated by the USGA and more importantly designed by Mother Nature regarding MOI (forgiveness) and COR (trampoline effect).  

     For this reason the only way you will be able to get those few extra – 20 by most claims -- very precious yards, is to launch the ball more efficiently if you don't do this now or of course increase your strength and range of motion through an exercise and stretching regimen. This will increase your clubhead speed and give you those yards you are looking for.

      If the driver you are now using is more than four or five years old it is time to think about getting a new driver.

      Let me assume that your driver swing speed is about 80 mph or less. For this speed you need to launch the ball at about 16 degrees with a spin rate in the 3,000-rpm range. To achieve these launch conditions, the club you have i.e. 13 degrees loft may be a good choice, but it also may not have enough loft.  We have drivers with 15 degrees of loft. The fact that you are hitting it well now is a good indication that you have a club that is close to your need.

      It is good to hear you have a 43.5 inches long driver -- the same length Tiger used to win his first several majors -- which has proven to enhance your accuracy. You obviously feel comfortable with this club and have developed the all-important confidence you need to enjoy your game and lower your score.

      The key is to go through a fitting and find out exactly what your need is.  When the club is fitted and set up perfectly for your swing you will maximize your yardages.

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