Re: Club loft?

The design of a 9 iron is such that it has the correct loft, lie and shaft angles when played centre of stance, anywhere else is playing tricks with it. The exact goes for a 6 or any other iron, the design characteristics will only be true when the club is addressed the way it was designed. If you want to hit a ball longer use a less lofted club, if you want to hit it high use a lofted club.

OK, some times there is a need to add or remove loft for speciality shots but I see no reason to do this for standard ones, playing around with these things can create many problems if you do not make all the required compensations in your swing.

Re: Club loft?

Thanks for the quick response Brian, thats what I was thought.

Re: Club loft?

FWIW, I don't think you'll actually be able to sustain the required delofting to turn a 9 into a 6, per se - this would be around 12 degrees difference of shaft lean on top of that already done by better ball strikers. Perhaps another 4 degrees could be manipulated turning a 9 into an 8, but then you'd be out of position again, and probably lose the benefit of the extreme delofting due to a lack of speed.

Re: Club loft?

I'm not 100% sure what your question is or whether it's just a general discussion point, but:

Modern clubs (post 1980's) are designed to be hit keeping the hands in a consistent position, forward of the golf ball in the stance and in placed in front of your body between your navel and left hip. Your left arm, wrist and club should form a straight line.

Now, each forward lean of the shaft, sole and loft are designed from this position. All you have to do to determine the engineered position is to take each club and place it in your stance using a straight left arm, wrist and club ...

But: this is where the "but" comes in, that is only the engineered position, how your swing is engineered is completely different and your swing and impact alignment may need the club and ball to be positioned differently. Like each swing is unique to each golfer, so too is the best ball position and therefore where the club needs to be placed in the stance.

Using that to go back to your question/comment: if you move the club & ball forward in your swing, you'll generally add loft to your swing and therefore more height and therefore (generally) less distance.

Every now and then you get some alarming results by discovering by accident an optimal impact alignment, club position, club speed and spin rate and with adding loft and launch angle (this is especially true with cavity back irons) you can hit them further on the fly than placed further back.

I always suggest every golfer experiments with ball position and club position and where necessary get a club fitter to adjust the lie and forward lean of the club to place the ball and club correctly in the swing without having to "bastardise" the loft and ball flight characteristics.

Here is an example: Eduardo Romero places every shot in the middle of his stance, that's how his swing "works", so he has loft added to his clubs and some of the forward lie removed ... and stiffer tipped shafts to help him get the best results from his irons using what for most golfers is a "back in the stance" and "delofted" position.

I hope this explains firstly how modern clubs are designed and engineered and secondly how the swing, setup and clubs work within those pre-sent parameters.

One final point: if the clubs doesn't suit your setup - get the clubs adpated, don't adapt your swing to suit the clubs.

Re: Club loft?

The responses are exactly what I was looking for .
Thanks

Keep up the good work.