Analyzing A Tour Player's Ball Impact Wear Spots

Tour players hit the ball better than any of us. It’s their job and they work at it almost every day hitting a lot of golf balls. They have special athletic abilities when it comes to golf or they would not be on the tour. One aspect of tour players’ clubs that has always amazed me is the wear spots tour players generate on the faces of their clubs. Regarding irons, the wear spot is a slight oval and not much bigger than the compression size of the golf ball at impact. It is important to discuss this further and to completely understand the dynamics of the wear spot location on a specific iron design. The wear spot location helps to explain the playability of that design and furthers the understanding of the mass and dimensional properties that apply to the Maltby Playability Factor.

Rumors can distort advice intended to improve your golf game.

One aspect of golf that is interesting is its ability to generate myth. I don’t know how many times I have heard over the years that better players strike the ball toward the heel and not in the center of the face. Magazines are still writing this stuff. Some club designers are still touting it. They pick it up from the other guy who wrote about it last year and this guy picked it up somewhere else. It goes on and on and hence the myth is perpetuated. I can tell you how this myth started, because it was somewhat from my era.

It seems that in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, golf experts noticed that the wear spots on most tour players iron faces were in the heel, so they concluded quite logically that all good players strike the ball in the heel for best results. Well, it seems that most (not all) manufacturers of this era simply designed irons without regard to center of gravity location and it usually ended up in the heel area. This occurred because manufacturers were designing clubs the traditional way with longer hosels, shorter blade lengths, and relatively narrow soles and of course many irons of this era were muscle back forgings. Most of these clubs measure into the lowest two Maltby Playability Factor (MPF) categories.

The truth of the matter is that tour players strike the ball where the impact feels the most solid. This applies the maximum force to the golf ball resulting in best distance, best trajectory and maximum backspin (assuming a square clubhead face angle and clubhead path at impact). Two basic conditions must first occur for the impact to feel most solid. First, the ball must be struck in-line with the horizontal center of gravity location (“C” Dimension). Secondly, the ball must be impacted with the clubheads actual vertical center of gravity (AVCOG) being driven (force path vector) equal to and preferably lower than the golf balls center of gravity.

Click here to get Ralph’s Insider Emails