Club gurus have been screaming for a long time that amateur players don’t play enough loft in their drivers. If you’ve ever read Tom Wishon’s books, you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve ever been fitted for clubs by a skilled club fitter, then you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve ever had a launch analysis done with fancy technology then you know what I’m talking about.
Yet people still play low-lofted drivers, at the expense of distance.
Maybe that will change, now that Tiger Woods has switched to a more lofted driver, going from 9.5 to 10.0 degrees. He charged from behind to win the Memorial last week, hitting over 87% of the fairways for the week, including all 14 on Sunday.
His stellar driving was not completely equipment related, though. As Michael Breed showed on The Golf Fix this week, his swing mechanics are improved as well, probably because of his repaired left knee and the natural evolution of his work with Hank Haney.
We’ve discussed before how achieving the proper launch angle is critical for distance, and driver loft is one of the important factors in that bit of physics.
Some people feel like a low ball flight that bores through the air is how they get more distance. Unfortunately, this is the opposite of what launch monitor research shows. Not only do most amateurs (and a lot of pros!) need to increase angle of attack at the ball when hitting a driver to optimize distance, they also need drivers with higher loft to help achieve that optimal launch angle.
According to Tom Wishon’s book, The Search for the Perfect Golf Club, if you’re not swinging a driver faster than 105-110 mph with a level or slightly ascending angle of attack, then you may need a loft of 11-12 degrees to optimize distance. Try finding one of those on the racks at your local golf outlet.
The point to all this is, if Tiger Woods is playing a 10-degree loft at his swing speed and angle of attack, then there are an awful lot of us in the world that might want to think twice about playing lower-lofted drivers without having had a proper fitting.
I play a 9.5 degree driver and don’t have a problem getting the ball up in the air. I’d like to get some measurements done on a launch monitor to see if I might need to consider more loft. Right now, though, I hit the ball fairly high and long with the driver, so it’s not my biggest concern.
Hopefully, people will begin to realize that if Tiger Woods needs a more lofted driver, then trying to seem “manly” by playing an 8-degree driver is probably not a recipe for success.
Loading ...
If i recall right in a previous post you mentioned that Tiger hits the golf ball with a slight descending blow at impact. Wondering if this may be a means of countering that action?
I agree with the point of view of adding more loft. I urged my father to change for years. When he finally change he noticed a difference in distance because the loft allowed the ball to carry further.
That’s right, TP. I believe that was from a study Golf Magazine printed early this year. I wonder, though, when it was done. If it was in the February issue, it was probably on sale before he came back from his injury, so who knows when the measurements were taken. He may have worked on that with Hank Haney since last season and maybe the driver loft is all part of that progression.