Tom Wishon on Offset

[macs]

I am convinced about what Lag is saying about offset. I keep coming back to Lag’s drawing about offset (Cant upload the picture says too big).
But personally I want to experiment with clubs which have no offset but a rounder leading edge (I get envious when I hear the dull turf hit sound from my playing partners and no distance loss). So hoping Tom Wishon can help in this regard, I sent him an e-mail. he was generous enough to send a comprehensive reply but seeing his reply I did not even ask him the question. He is OK with posting his reply in here.

I’m always happy to comment on anything related to my 40 yrs of experience with golf equipment research and based on my 27 yrs of being a clubhead designer. Few people have that much experience and from that lack of real experience, it is possible for them to come to conclusions about golf equipment that are simply not correct.

It simply is not true that just because of offset that the clubs from 20 to 40 yrs ago are better than clubs of today and the past 10 yrs. Yes for sure, I will agree that IRON HEAD offset is a feature in some clubheads that if eliminated completely, would not cause any problems for golfers. It is a factor in design that really does not contribute very much to improving the ability to strike a quality shot. On the other hand, offset in DRIVERS and WOODHEADS can very much be a benefit to golfers who happen to fight a slice and simply are not able to learn through lessons how to eliminate their outside in swing path. There is TONS of proof that many golfers who slice the ball can see a reduction in the amount they slice the ball when changing from a normal face progression driver or fwy woods to ones that are offset. But again, in irons, if the industry did away with iron head offset, nothing good or bad would happen. It would be a non issue from a technical standpoint.

I will say that there are several advances in clubhead design in the past 10-20 yrs which most definitely has made it a fact that today’s golf clubs are better than golf clubs of 20-40 yrs ago.

1. High COR face design most definitely has increased shot distance for all golfers. While this is something that high clubhead speed players could get along well without, for average golfers with average to slower clubhead speed, being able to hit the ball a little longer with these higher COR face designs does make the game more enjoyable for them to play. And now that a high COR face can be designed on fairway woods, hybrids and even irons, this most definitely is a good step forward in club performance for most golfers.

2. Off center hit performance in clubheads, especially in drivers, has improved tremendously over the past 10-15 yrs. This comes from two areas in design. 1) knowing more about how to position more weight farther from the center areas of the clubhead has greatly increased the moment of inertia and with that comes less of loss in ball speed from off center hits. 2) the advent of variable thickness faces on drivers and even some iron models without question allows an off center hit to leave the face with more ball speed than if the face is made with a uniform face thickness. There is NO QUESTION this is true. And no clubhead was ever made with a variable thickness face until the late 1990s.

3. The above 2 things are enough to say that no clubhead made 20-40 yrs ago is as good as most clubheads designed in the past 10 yrs. But there is one more element related to modern club design that dwarfs both of these above two points when it comes to offering more improvement to a wide range of golfers through equipment over the past 10 yrs than previously. I am talking about PROFESSIONAL FULL SPECIFICATIONS CUSTOM CLUBFITTING TECHNOLOGY. What I mean is fitting that determines every one of the key fitting specs for each one of the clubs in the bag. Not fitting as the retail stores try to offer where you get a very limited offering in only 2 or 3 of the key fitting specs and only for a couple of the clubs in the bag. I am talking full specs/full bag fitting where every specification is determined for each club for each individual golfer.

Prior to 10 yrs ago, we were just beginning to scratch the surface for how to match each one of the specifications for golf clubs to each individual golfer’s combination of size, strength, athletic ability and swing characteristics. But over the past 10 yrs we really, and I mean REALLY have come to understand far more in terms of how to choose the right length, loft, lie angle, face angle, shaft weight, shaft flex, shaft bend profile, total weight, swingweight and grip size for each club in the bag to allow each different golfer to play to the best of their ability and to gain more from lessons to improve their swing characteristics.

Such fitting is the domain only of the independent custom Clubmakers who have studied and trained and gained the experience to know how to analyze the golfers’ swing characteristics and do testing with the golfers to choose the right length, loft, lie angle, face angle, shaft weight, shaft flex, shaft bend profile, total weight, swingweight and grip size for each club in the bag to allow each different golfer to play to the best of their ability.

Unfortunately not all who say they can custom fit know how to do it right. But for those who do, without question especially for golfers who shoot between 85-100, overnight tangible game improvement is there to be had through a good full specs custom fitting analysis.

Hope this helps,

TOM WISHON

[macs]

Here is the drawing.
Nope.
I wish this board could auto resize pictures to fit. Does any one knows the fix.

[lagpressure]

for average golfers with average to slower clubhead speed, being able to hit the ball a little longer with these higher COR face designs does make the game more enjoyable for them to play.

This is true as long as you are the only one gaining from the advantage. The problem with this is when you pick up 20 yards, the longer hitter is picking up 25 or even 30 yards… so you end up even farther behind the longer hitter than before.
If one finds that more enjoyable, then I don’t have much of an argument.

the advent of variable thickness faces on drivers and even some iron models without question allows an off center hit to leave the face with more ball speed

This is true, but you can’t improve your golf swing if you can’t feel where the miss hit was. When I hit a persimmon or a blade iron off center, I feel exactly where I contacted the ball on the face. Then my brain makes the critical adjustment for the next shot. You can’t maximize your improvement without proper quality feedback. Modern drivers, as forgiving as they are, leave the brain guessing what went wrong on the last drive that flew 40 yards off line. Ask Tiger Woods why he is still spraying his driver… if he really knew, he would surely correct it. Fact is, he can’t feel it enough to make the proper correction. So yes I agree, modern drivers help add distance in the short term, but hurt in the longer term. The modern solution is to play courses more forgiving off the tee so it’s not a significant factor… unless you’re playing Merion, then you’ll see the worlds best players fail to break par on a 6900 yard course.

Prior to 10 yrs ago, we were just beginning to scratch the surface for how to match each one of the specifications for golf clubs to each individual golfer’s combination of size, strength, athletic ability and swing characteristics. But over the past 10 yrs we really, and I mean REALLY have come to understand far more in terms of how to choose the right length, loft, lie angle, face angle, shaft weight, shaft flex, shaft bend profile, total weight, swingweight and grip size for each club in the bag to allow each different golfer to play to the best of their ability and to gain more from lessons to improve their swing characteristics.

Wishon is correct for 99% of the golfers. Most golfers are not going to change their golf swings significantly through practice and proper instruction. Custom club fitting to band aid a players flaws can improve them in the short term… no doubt about this. Most golfers are happy to play a bit better than they do now. Problem comes when they hit their performance wall. What is not being considered is that the laws of physics are not customizable. More weight and more acceleration are not preferences… they will compress the ball better when applied correctly, and a deeper compression into the golf ball will put more feedback and feel into the players hands. Feel and feedback are the lifeblood playing the game of golf. It’s also fact that muscles do get stronger when they are worked out with heavier gear over time. Assuming one plays and practices with heavier gear, the body WILL adjust to it, and get stronger. If you go to the gym and bench press 50 pounds every day for a month… you WILL get stronger. It’s fact, it’s how the body works. To negate this from the equation is not taking into consideration a very real element of learning a skill particularly golf.

Now if you are a casual weekend golfer who doesn’t work on their game, then Wishon is absolutely correct. Fit gear to your current swing to best increase the chances for better shots based on what you have. Nothing wrong with this for most golfers.

However, if you are really interested in mastering the art of striking a golf ball, at some point, you will have to address technique, and at the higher levels of technical proficiency, the gear used needs to be working along the lines of more advanced protocols. And these protocols are right there for us to view when watching the great strikers of the past who could play more advanced layouts masterfully. The gear used was near optimum in length, lie angle, weight and shaft flex… lack of offset etc. This stuff was figured out a long time ago.

[macs]

Here is the picture I mentioned in my post. I believe this drawing deserves a lot more attention than it has.
My question to Lag is if you can achieve this in a modern blade design with a rounder leading edge; what are the pros and cons. I will start with the first pro; you get to play with shinier clubs.

[lagpressure]

First,

The better your swing… the less you would benefit from a rounded leading edge. A good striker is going to be hitting the ball consistently first, not the ground. For a player not as consistent with their strikes, a more rounded leading edge won’t dig as much as a sharp edge if the ground is hit first. But for the better striker, the sharper edge will slice through longer grass that might be getting in the way through impact… so it would be beneficial.

As far as the offset, the more loft the higher up the face the ball will be making contact. This is why I like a bit of forward face progression in my short irons so that I can keep contact in the relative same position in relation to the shaft. In other words, if your contact is on the 3rd groove with your long irons… it might be on the 5th groove with your short irons which moves contact not just up the club, but farther to the right because of the loft. So this is why I believe a properly set up iron set should have progressive face progression… just as we have progressive weighting, shaft flexes, lengths and lofts.

Not so shockingly, there were a lot of sets put together this way back in the golden era of ball strikers. A time when players were designing clubs… not scientists.

The good news is… some modern blades can be bent to be set up this way. I just did a set of Mizuno’s for a pro last week that turned out really nice. It’s not impossible to do, but I haven’t seen any modern blades set up this way stock.

As far as shiny gear, I don’t think the ball cares. If the grooves are clean and the club has the right mass and physics… you are in good shape. When I was on tour, players were doing a lot more personal work on their gear. Lead tape all over the place, clubs often looked a bit beat up. If I saw a bag like that, I got the feeling the player knew what he was doing and spent a lot of time fine tuning his set for his own swing. If I was in a team game, I would pick the guy with the worked up set rather than the guy with a shiny set.

[RangeRat]

Good stuff Macs and Lag, thanks for the back and forth.

Remember the time when to ‘age’ a new pair of Levi’s, which back in the day were really stiff and heavy, one might trample them into the ground out back, or bury them…just plain beat them up. Then they looked used and ready to rock. Old and beat up is good…speaks to refinement

[macs]

what kind of Mizunos specifically ?

[lagpressure]

I sent them out already, and don’t remember which model… MP 14 maybe?