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Created on: January 24, 2009 Last Updated: August 05, 2010
Yes! Square golf drivers really work!
The golf industry evolves quicker than time itself. Every year companies come out with the new next best thing and market it to the ninth degree.
Irons started out as blades. Small heads with a lot of weight directly behind the ball at the center of gravity, to help encourage greater impact resulting in greater momentum thus hitting the ball further. However any shot that was hit a little off center, outside the center of gravity, was penalized greater due to the natural effect of the club head rotating with this centered weight as its fulcrum point. Blades were hard to hit accurately unless your swing was perfect which is rare in golf.
To combat this necessity to hit the iron shot perfectly the golf industry coined the new phrase; perimeter weighting. Perimeter weighting took some of the weight that was directly behind the ball at the center of gravity and moved it to the outside edges (the perimeter) of the club. The result? A golf club that had less weight in the middle, more on the outside and a higher momentum (or inertia ) rate that limited the amount of rotating on shots hit off center. This break through resulted in a more accurate iron and perhaps led to the death of the blade style iron.
Great! But what does this have to do with square drivers?
Well, everything really!
A square driver has done the exact same thing. The designers of the clubs have taken weight from the center of gravity and moved it to the outside of the club face resulting in a driver that has less tendency to rotated when struck in any place other than the center of the club.
Picture this. Your task is to stand an egg straight up on the edge of a ruler and have it balance there. Impossible? Maybe! This egg demonstrates how important it is to find the center of gravity and how drastic the results are when the point of impact is not in the direct middle of the object. now take a deck of playing cards and balance them on the ruler. Impossible? Not really. Why? Well the weight is more centered around the deck of cards and the weight on the one side balances the weight on the other. Resulting in an object that is less likely to rotate.
I have a square driver. I can not say I hit it further. When I hit it straight, it goes straight. The difference is evident when I hit it off center. If I heel it or toe it, the ball doesn't react the same compared to a traditional driver. The ball does not move left or right near as much resulting in a much more favourable result. A lot of times a slightly missed shot will still land on the fairway, helping you score lower.
Square drivers are not a marketing gimmick! They are scientifically engineered to be more forgiving.
And yes they do work.
Learn more about this author, Steven Dontigny.
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