[tww]

GolfSpy Matt, on 22 October 2011 - 06:56 PM, said:

The question is, as you saw in the title, "Is 'feel' overrated in golf clubs (or balls, etc)"?

That's not to say that we shouldn't play equipment that feels good, but does feel ever keep you from playing the best equipment? Would you play equipment that worked really well but felt bad? What about equipment that worked just ok, but felt great? What's the tipping point for you?

Matt:

In our fitting research work, we've spent a good deal of time digging into the various aspects of feel related to golf clubs. We've stayed away from the separate element of ball feel, but I do believe that we have learned quite a bit about the various aspects of club feel and their importance to fitting and club performance.

Of course this could go on ad nauseum so I'll try to hit the high points of what we know from our work.

We see that there can be as many as 5 separate areas of feel related to golf clubs which can be extremely important to some golfers. Those are, 1) overall weight feel (total weight); 2) headweight feel (swingweight); 2A) both 1 and 2 together (MOI of the assembled club); 3) Butt to Center area of the shaft bending feel; 4) Shaft Tip section Bending Feel; 5) Impact feel.

Not all golfers have the ability to perceive differences in all of these areas of club feel. Most golfers who play somewhat frequently, regardless of handicap, can perceive differences between clubs in their headweight feel and impact feel. Most cannot really distinguish between the total weight feel and headweight feel. Not all that many can perceive differences in the shaft bending feel (3 & 4), but quite a few can detect when a shaft is much too stiff because that tends to demonstrate itself in the form of an unsolid feeling of impact when the golfer hits the ball in the center of the face.

of course it is also true that IN GENERAL (but not all the time), the lower the handicap and the more the golfer hits balls and plays, the more they will have a definite perception for like/dislike for one or more of these feel areas.

There is no question if the golfer has a reasonably high level of perception for any of these areas of club feel, that becomes extremely important in the golfer's like/dislike for the club(s) and very much can be the difference between success and failure in hitting the club(s) well.

One of the biggest problems for a clubfitter to be able to deliver clubs to a golfer that always meet the golfer's feel preferences is being able to get the golfer to express what they like and don't like in each area of club feel in terms that can be identified in a more quantitative manner. All of us who have a certain feel preference in a club(s) tend to express our likes/dislikes in very subjective, qualitative terms. I.E."it feels too heavy", "it feels too head light (head heavy)", "it feels too stiff (too flexible)", "it just doesn't feel solid", and so on.

The clubmaker has the difficult task of trying to turn such comments into real numbers, to be able to figure out "how much too heavy", "How much too head light or head heavy", "how much too stiff/too flexible and where on the shaft is it too stiff or too flexible", and so on.

In our research work in club feel we are getting better at being able to teach clubmakers how to do this. Obviously, total weight, swingweight and club MOI can be measured on various specialty scales and equipment. So if we can get measurements of these parameters related to the various weight feel areas from clubs the golfer likes or dislikes, we then have a basis from which to make future recommendations. it may take a little trial and error to nail it down, but at least we can narrow the range to make the final search for the right weighting feel a little less tedious.

Shaft feel wise, we also have cracked into this by being able to create graphs of a form of stiffness measurements of shafts OVER THEIR FULL LENGTH. These are what we call BEND PROFILE GRAPHS for shafts. In using such graphs of shafts it then is very possible to look at the graphs of any or all shafts the golfer says he likes, has liked or has not liked, and from that we then can know more about what shafts to recommend that would satisfy the golfer's shaft bending feel requirements.

In the end, this is one huge difference between a good clubfitter and a great clubfitter because for many golfers, one or all of these different areas of feel very much can be the difference between clubs that don't perform that well and clubs that allow the golfer to play to the very best of his/her ability.

TOM