In today’s space-age, technological, computer driven society, it only makes sense that we can apply our significant brain power towards improving our golf games. Manufacturers have invested heavily in the “arms race” to see who can out-tech the other.

Any slight edge in driver design can increase power, speed, and accuracy resulting in drives 20-30 yards (18.3-27.4 meters) longer, and subsequently send sales for that club through the roof. All of the manufacturers claim some type of unique break-through that allows them to destroy their competition under the crushing blows of their powerful new drivers. We’ve sorted through all of these claims and here are the top 10 amazing technologies that will let you drive the ball further and straighter than ever before.
 

10. Exotic Metals

Titanium in its raw form.

We’re not talking about liquid metal that the T-1000 cyborg was made from as seen in the Terminator movies, but there are still some pretty cool materials being used in today’s drivers. Since people first starting beating a ball with a stick in early 12th century Scotland, golf has evolved from a game with equipment made primarily of wooden elements to sophisticatedly engineered products made from unique combinations of materials.

Early driver heads were made of persimmon, which is wood from a type of fruit tree. Steel metal headed woods came to prominence in the early 1980′s, after Gary Adams, founder of Taylor Made, introduced the first of these at the PGA Merchandise Show in 1979. Recently titanium driver heads are showing significant technological improvements over previous materials.

Pure titanium (Ti) is 1.5 times lighter than steel, however it is soft, like iron, and not strong enough on its own for golf club applications. So titanium is combined with aluminum and vanadium to create a soft and springy material which is superb for the ball to shoot off of.

Similar materials are also used in the shafts of clubs. Although having a chemistry degree helps to understand these material combinations, just rest assured that new materials mean lighter, stronger and more responsive club shafts and heads.

Ben Hogan had a powerful golf swing, ideal for a stiff shaft.

9. Flexible shafts

Early golf clubs shafts were made of hickory wood, and they would often snap and splinter if players swung too hard. In the 1920′s steel shafts came into play and offered strength over wood and uniformity in manufacturing, which meant a golfer could get a club without knots in the wood or weird curves.

In the early 1970′s graphite shafts were developed and quickly gained popularity because of their lighter weight and strength. Today’s clubs will typically use a combination of graphite and steel in the shaft and many have moved to titanium. With the advent of new materials came an important development, variety in shaft flexibility or flex. Flex is a measurement of the degree to which golf club’s shaft bends during the golf swing. All shafts, no matter how stiff, exhibit flex under the forces of the golf swing. A player with a very fast swing will require a shaft with less flex, while a player with a slower swing will need a shaft with greater flex that provides more spring. The less bend in a shaft, the more control a powerful swinger will have, whereas beginners and those with less powerful swings generally use a shaft with greater flexibility.

The average swing speed with a driver is from 65 miles per hour (104.6 km/hr) for the beginner up to over 100 miles per hour (160.9 km/hr) for powerful swingers. Tiger Woods swings the club about 120 mph (193.1 km/hr). Because of the technology now used in driver shafts, manufacturers can offer shafts customized based on level of play. Generally these categories are Extra Stiff (XS), Stiff(S), Firm(F), Regular(R), Senior(S), Amateur(A) and Ladies(L). By having so many choices, everyone can find a club suitable to their particular game. If you want to find out how fast you swing, there are some pretty cool devicesto test it.  See if you can get up over 100 mph (160.9 km/hr)!  

8. Shock Absorbing Grips

Golf grip technology at work.

Over the years, the grip has been one of the areas of the club that has received the least amount of attention in terms of technological brainpower. However, as the only part of the club that actually touches the human body, the grip is extremely important to the overall golf game.

In a recent survey by ProGrip, a high tech grip manufacturer, 87 percent of golfers who reported golf-related injuries suffer from maladies of the hand, wrist, or elbow. Many of these injuries are caused by the harmful shock and vibrations generated when the club impacts the ball, and may be prevented with the appropriate equipment.

According to the rules of golf, the grip has to be round, without obvious bumps, lumps or hollows. Standard grips on the market are made of rubber or leather and have an assortment of small holes, grooves or ridges carved into them. Recently new grips have been designed to reduce shock and impact vibrations, using patented technology found in premium hammers. The hammer design was originally created to help reduce repetitive stress injuries.

Many of these newer grips are also still able to keep the feel of the club at impact while reducing impact stress. Reducing vibrations reduces injuries and fatigue, and that means more time out on the course playing the game we love.

9 concentric circles enlarge the sweet spot.

7. Ever Expanding Sweet Spots

The sweet spot is the point on the club face where you want to make contact with the ball. A larger sweet spot is more forgiving of miss-hits and is especially beneficial to the average player who doesn’t hit the ball in the exact same way, like a machine, every time. As club heads have expanded, so too have sweet spots. However, the legal limit as established by the USGA for a driver head, in volume, is 460cc (cubic centimeters).

Also restricted is the moment of inertia (MOI) which is the term applied to a club head’s resistance to twisting when the ball is struck. If your swing is a little off and you hit the ball outside of the sweet spot, a club head with a higher MOI will twist less as a result of the miss-hit, creating a better chance that the ball will still go straight with less loss of distance. The USGA feels that further increases to MOI could reduce the challenge of the game by reducing the skill required to hit the ball straight, hence the restriction to 5,900 g-cm2 (32.259 oz-in2) with a tolerance of + or – 100 g-cm2.

So, given these restrictions, what can manufacturers do to still help you hit the ball straighter? Well, they have had to get creative on ways to increase the sweet spot on the club within the limitations on the size of the club head and the MOI. Recently product engineers at Cobra Golf have created an innovative solution. They have developed a club face with 9 sweet spots, spread out in concentric circles – 3 by 3. This effectively expands the sweet spot so that it is much wider than the single sweet spot on traditional club faces. We can’t all hit the ball in the center of the club face each time, but with this new technology we can surely hit at least one of the 9 sweet spots. 

6. Expanding the Coefficient of Restitution (COR)

An expanded COR gives you more spring on miss-hits.

While many technological advances are designed to increase club speed, an important aspect of golf clubs is what happens when the club strikes the ball. As with the size of the club head and the MOI, the USGA limits the degree of spring that the ball can have off of the club head at impact. This spring effect is called the Coefficient of Restitution (COR), and the USGA limits this to 0.83.

The COR of an object is a fractional value that represents the ratio of velocities before and after an impact. An object with a COR of 1 collides elastically. An object with a COR of 0 will collide in-elastically, and effectively stop at the surface with which it collides, not bouncing at all. Imagine your driver hitting the ball and the ball sticking to it.

So, what can design engineers do to improve COR without exceeding the legal limit? Simple, they expand and equalize the COR across the face of the driver head through the use of hyperbolic face technology. It used to be that an average golfer would only be able to reach the 0.83 COR at impact with a perfectly hit ball right in the middle of the sweet spot. However, with recent advances, golfers can miss-hit the ball and still get the full COR. So this means very little loss in distance for miss-hit shots. Of course you don’t want a miss-hit to go really far, if that miss-hit is into the woods. However, if you can combine the new hyperbolic face technology with an expanded sweet spot, those miss-hits are more likely to be in the fairway. The Callaway Big Bertha Diablo Driver features hyperbolic face technology which utilizes a higher COR area.

Moving the CG affects torque and hence the angle of the club.

5. Adjustable Centers of Gravity

One of the most significant recent advances in golf driver technology has been the ability of the golfer to individually change the design of the club head him or herself out on the course. Increasingly we’ve seen more and more individualized customization throughout our society, so it’s only fitting that we see the same effect in our golf game.

Adjustable weights are one of the most innovative types of these new technologies. Typically these drivers allow the player to move weighted tungsten cartridges to different spots in the club head, using a wrench type device. By moving the weight distribution of a club head a player can control the center of gravity (CG) and adjust it as needed based on their swing. A lower CG typically means faster club head speeds and a longer drive. Positioning more weight in the heel and less in the toe will speed club head rotation during the forward swing. This promotes a draw and/or reduces a slice.

With some experimentation, the average golfer can easily find the weight distribution for their unique golf swing which will result in the straightest drive. The TaylorMade r7 Limited Driverfeatures movable weight technology.

4. Adjustable Club Faces

This blade diagram shows where the loft on a club is located

Continuing along with the technological drive for ultimate customization comes adjustable club face technology. Building upon the advancements found from adjustable centers of gravity tech, club engineers have now been able to develop drivers that let the player easily adjust the club’s loft, lie, and face angle.

Typically this design utilizes a metallic sleeve positioned over the tip of the shaft. The sleeve can be rotated into different positions by loosening the bolt that secures the sleeve and shaft into the club head, thereby changing the characteristics of the head. The result is a new and unique way for individual golfers to control their own game.

For example, if a golfer is pushing, fading or slicing the ball too much and they wish to draw the ball or hit more to the left for a particular shot, they can change the position of their clubface to a more closed position. If a golfer is hooking, pulling or drawing the ball more than they wish, they can manually change the clubface to a more open position.

It’s very difficult to change your swing, on the fly, in the middle of a round, but by using the adjustable face technology in these drivers, you can adjust your game as needed, immediately. The Nike SQ Dymo2 STR8-FIT Driver features adjustable club face technology.

The Iron Byron hard at work.

3. The Iron Byron and Robotic Testing

Although machine testing has been around for many years, recent advances in pneumatics and robotic design have allowed golf manufacturers to adjust these machines to mimic various types of golf swings and adjust their club design accordingly. In other words, since the average golfer doesn’t swing like a machine with a perfect motion each time, clubs need to be created to account for slices and hooks and help straighten these out. Adjustable testing allows for this.

Here is a brief history of the most famous of these machine testers, the Iron Byron. The original Iron Byron was created in 1965 by a 28-year-old mechanical engineer named George Manning. The goal was to replicate the human swing and have the machine use an actual club. Manning’s first step was to figure out the perfect swing. The engineering team spent months analyzing high speed footage of the swings of the top professional golfers of the day and measuring the stress they placed on clubs to help determine which ones made the most efficient use of swing energy.

They eventually determined that the machine should be designed to mimic the swing of golfing legend Byron Nelson - hence the name Iron Byron. Even though Byron was in his 50s by this time and had been retired from competition since 1947, he still hit shots with machine-like consistency. Manning could stand in the middle of the test range, 220 yards (201.2 meters) from the tee, while Byron hit his 2-iron, and catch every single ball on the first bounce.

In the years that followed, the design continued to evolve, but the basic hitting mechanism remained surprisingly similar to the first prototype. Today almost all of the major manufacturers use a version of the Iron Byron in their testing facilities.

2. Wind Tunnel Technology

Wind tunnels help designers achieve maximum velocity for their products.

If you didn’t believe that there was truly rocket science involved in creating golf clubs, then you better take another look. Manufacturers have recently started using the same technical analysis used on race cars, launch vehicles, tactical missiles, aircraft, and submarines to design driver heads.

The goal is to reduce the drag on the club as you swing it, resulting in increased swing velocity and more force on the ball at impact. Test results show a 3-4 mph (4.8-6.4 km/h) average increase in swing speed will translate to 3-9 yards (2.7-8.2 m) more in distance.

Hey – I’ll take 3-9 yards more on my drives any day!

If you’ve recently watched the Tour de France, skiing, or any type of speed race where helmets are allowed, you will see this technology in effect with the helmets that the riders are wearing. Their helmets elongate in the rear, almost to a point. They are designed to reduce wind drag, maximize aerodynamic flow, and give the riders more speed with less effort, the same goal for your golf swing.

When testing club design in wind tunnels, scientists will analyze how smoke moves around the club head using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Basically CFD mathematically analyzes how fluid flows around an object. Data from the tests is streamed into a computer software program that uses a computational grid with tens of millions of points representing flow around the club. Each point can be analyzed and reformulated in ways to make the club more streamlined.

It’s pretty amazing. And I for one want my golf driver to be as aerodynamic and as powerful as a tactical missile.

CAGD is used in a variety of industries.

1. Computer Aided Geometric Design

Of all of the advances in golf design technology over the last few years, none has had greater impact than the use of reliable, cheap, and efficient software to design products. Today, designers have at their fingertips design capabilities unthought-of even by advanced fighter plane engineers of the 1960′s.

Using computer aided geometric design (CAGD) significantly lowers product development costs and greatly shortens the design cycle. That’s why you consistently see new, innovative golf club designs year after year. CAGD, coupled with 3D graphic design software, of the type that you see in Pixar animated movies, allows designers to see the product on the computer screen prior to creating a working physical model. They can then make adjustments and analyze mathematically how design changes can affect certain parameters of the club.

By keeping costs low early in the design process and speeding up the design life cycle, manufacturers can churn out thousands of highly sophisticated clubs every year, which means more hi-tech clubs available for golfers everywhere.

Through computer-aided design programs and mathematical models of club and ball dynamics, designers have learned to utilize new materials, redistribute weight, enhance ball impact, and alter the aerodynamic shape of the club head. All in an attempt to help both professional golfers and weekend warriors improve their games and make the game more accessible and enjoyable for players around the world.
 

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