Help me out here...??

[MadGolfer76]

Visited a Callaway Performance Center in Hudson, NH a week ago (which is amazing, btw). Left the place confused with what I was seeing.

 

Apparently my spin with my Mp-54/s300/Chrome Soft 7 iron is around 4800 rpms. Was low almost across the board with everything else I tried - TM, PXG, Titleist...didn't matter what. Played 18 holes an hour afterward, and approach shots stayed within a club length either way from the landing spot on greens, as they have now for decades. Didn't adjust anything.

 

What could be the explanation here? Hitting off artificial turf vs. real grass? Seems unlikely this could be the only culprit.

[MakersMarsh3]

What kind of golf ball?

[MadGolfer76]

What kind of golf ball?

 

Chrome Soft

[MakersMarsh3]

Totally missed that 1st time around

And that’s your gamer ball?

 

What was Swing speed??

 

Spin rate isn’t the only thing to consider. as long as angle of descent and apex are solid

[MadGolfer76]

Totally missed that 1st time around

And that's your gamer ball?

 

What was Swing speed??

 

Spin rate isn't the only thing to consider. as long as angle of descent and apex are solid

 

No worries. My gamer ball varies by the hour, but Chrome Soft is one I am well familiar with, and have used effectively for parts of whole seasons. I didn't ask to change it out. When I played that 18, I started the first half with a ProV1x and the second half with a B330 RXS, just to see what would happen. Basically, same results. Ball either checked up, spun back a little, or bled out 3-5 feet or so with both, provided I struck them well, which I did most of the time (driver was another matter that day).

 

Fitter didn't seem to be as focused on swing speed, and was more interested in ballspeed, which was 110 with my own 7i, and got up to 117 with some others. Not sure of descent angle. I remember launch angle was 18-19 degrees, I think.

[PureDivots]

Not sure how firm the greens are but most times when I’m hitting iron shots that seem to have the right spin they stay within a foot or two on firmer courses or just a couple of inches on softer. So if you’re spinning things that low either I wouldn’t worry about it if you like your distances and stopping or go to a shaft with a tad more spin.

 

Careful with what they are giving you and getting trapped in the speed and distance. Most likely what they gave you had a stronger modern loft which gave you speed and distance when looking at “7 ironsâ€. MP-54 are in no way built for distance.

[MadGolfer76]

Not sure how firm the greens are but most times when I’m hitting iron shots that seem to have the right spin they stay within a foot or two on firmer courses or just a couple of inches on softer. So if you’re spinning things that low either I wouldn’t worry about it if you like your distances and stopping or go to a shaft with a tad more spin.

 

Careful with what they are giving you and getting trapped in the speed and distance. Most likely what they gave you had a stronger modern loft which gave you speed and distance when looking at “7 ironsâ€. MP-54 are in no way built for distance.

 

Yeah, I much prefer feel and accuracy these days. I am vaguely aware of the specs of the clubs they handed me. I hit a lot of different irons - i500, i200, Ap2, Rogue Pro, PXG something...

 

The guy was professional. He said he wasn't going to just sell me something for the sake of doing so, and I appreciated his honesty.

[Valtiel]

Artificial turf will definitely lower spin numbers, Howard Jones had the science behind that posted somewhere.

[MadGolfer76]

Artificial turf will definitely lower spin numbers, Howard Jones had the science behind that posted somewhere.

 

I felt like I was fairly shallow that day, and was hitting draws in the booth. Probably added up to some odd numbers?

[Kenny Lee Puckett]

a draw will always be quite low in spin. no different than hitting a draw with the driver.

[Fubuman]

I am a natural divot taker & have stoped hitting off artificial grass for this reason.

When I’m off grass, I take at least a two inch divot, now off a mat the club makes a hard bouncy bang into the mat just after impact & yes I thought: it’s after impact, surely it can’t make any difference but the ball flight is definitely different with irons of course.

If I was a picker however, I do not think that it would make much of a difference.

[Howard_Jones]

Visited a Callaway Performance Center in Hudson, NH a week ago (which is amazing, btw). Left the place confused with what I was seeing.

 

Apparently my spin with my Mp-54/s300/Chrome Soft 7 iron is around 4800 rpms. Was low almost across the board with everything else I tried - TM, PXG, Titleist...didn't matter what. Played 18 holes an hour afterward, and approach shots stayed within a club length either way from the landing spot on greens, as they have now for decades. Didn't adjust anything.

 

What could be the explanation here? Hitting off artificial turf vs. real grass? Seems unlikely this could be the only culprit.

 

When we use mats for fitting (instead of real grass), the surface has less friction, so we cant really compress the ball like we do from turf, and that causes a launch angle higher than from turf, but with less spin. How much depend on the mat itself (they can vary a lot), and the players AOA.

 

Some players change their AOA when hitting off mats if they are to hard .We try to prevent the shock wave trough our wrist from impact with that math so we dont go as steep on mats as we would do from turf, so combined, a more shallow AOA and less friction to trap the ball gives us a way higher launch but less spin.

 

The mat i was using was one of the better out there, but i had to use a correction factor from the return numbers to judge them, and 1000 rpm drop in spin is not unusual, sometime up to 2000 like Trackman has found in their studies (see the link below). If a player was able to get 1000 rpm x iron number (7000 on a #7 iron) from the mat, i knew for sure his spin was too high out on the course, the ball would be found in its mark where it landed or spin back a few yards depending on what surface that area has.

 

https://blog.trackma...ats-difference/

 

If you dont have any issues on the courses you play, and the amount of roll out is good for that club, dont worry about how your numbers looked like from the matt, its not the tee place you will play from, so those numbers is a no issue.

 

To balance out spin and stopping power, i used this chart for "better players"

 

PW = 0 roll

#9 = 2 meters

#8 = 4 meters

#7 = 6 meters

#6 = 8 meters

#5 = 10 meters

#4 = 12 meters

#3 = 14 meters

 

More roll out than this makes it very hard to approach a fast rolling green, and shorter roll out means spin values might cause problems in windy conditions, so "plus minus" this numbers is good as target to make sure spin is within reason of what it should be, and now we talk numbers for real life play, NOT from fitting matts. We also have to look on descent angle, since a steep descent need less spin to stop the ball, and a flat descent need more spin to stop the ball, but by looking on roll out, we get the picture of how descent and spin works together.

[Howard_Jones]

Artificial turf will definitely lower spin numbers, Howard Jones had the science behind that posted somewhere.

 

This one is for you...

 

i have noticed that you have a large knowledge in club making and fitting in general, so im writhing this to push you a bit further....

Go to the link above where Trackman is testing grass vs mats and pay attention to a few numbers, its "good to know" how to read them.

 

Trackman has invented a term called SPIN LOFT, and say that the higher spin loft is, the higher will spin be.

You already know thats wrong when we talk drivers (vertical gear effect overrule spin loft big time), but is it true for irons?

 

Look on those numbers....

Spin loft from turf is 25.7 and spin value is 5685

Spin loft from grass is 24.7 and spin value is 7613

 

ups, they did it again, but try to cover it up in the text where they write....

"Dynamic Loft and Attack Angle which comprises Spin Loft (Dynamic Loft minus Attack Angle) showed a 1* lower Spin Loft from mat to grass, concluding that these two parameters are within an acceptable variance."

 

...but they dont mention that spin loft would be the indicator of what makes the most spin, and we can all see that it does not mach up, even if they try to prevent us to see that by talking how many degrees the difference is, and leave spin rpms out of it.

 

Since the formula is like it is, we cant change spin by changing AOA, we know that, and its correct when we use a robot for testing, but as soon as we put that club in a players hand, the surface he plays from makes the term spin loft to be a complete joke, only useful for robot testing, so we can simply forget "spin loft" during fitting, its for LAB use only (development of heads, shafts and balls), since we hardly ever can see a connection between highest spin loft and highest spin value, they often go the oposit way when the club is in a humans hand.

[Howard_Jones]

I am a natural divot taker & have stoped hitting off artificial grass for this reason.

When I'm off grass, I take at least a two inch divot, now off a mat the club makes a hard bouncy bang into the mat just after impact & yes I thought: it's after impact, surely it can't make any difference but the ball flight is definitely different with irons of course.

If I was a picker however, I do not think that it would make much of a difference.

 

Thats correct, a player with a very shallow AOA dont really take advantage of the friction the turf has (to trap and compress the ball), so for him, numbers from turf or mats will be way closer than it is for a player with a natural negative AOA of -3 or more, and thats why the club fitter has to judge both return values and AOA to get the right picture of how much this numbers will change when the player get out to play real life.

[Stuart_G]

Well, while it's clear that the surface does make a difference, I'm skeptical that the real underlying reason is understood very well. The dynamics are a bit too complex to jump to any conclusions about that - and I (at least) haven't seen any evidence based study to validate (or disprove) any of the theories. It definitely is an interesting question though worthy of some more detailed investigations.

 

 

Visited a Callaway Performance Center in Hudson, NH a week ago (which is amazing, btw).

 

Agree. Went down for a putter fitting early in the summer and had a very good experience with them.

[MadGolfer76]

Visited a Callaway Performance Center in Hudson, NH a week ago (which is amazing, btw). Left the place confused with what I was seeing. Apparently my spin with my Mp-54/s300/Chrome Soft 7 iron is around 4800 rpms. Was low almost across the board with everything else I tried - TM, PXG, Titleist...didn't matter what. Played 18 holes an hour afterward, and approach shots stayed within a club length either way from the landing spot on greens, as they have now for decades. Didn't adjust anything. What could be the explanation here? Hitting off artificial turf vs. real grass? Seems unlikely this could be the only culprit.

When we use mats for fitting (instead of real grass), the surface has less friction, so we cant really compress the ball like we do from turf, and that causes a launch angle higher than from turf, but with less spin. How much depend on the mat itself (they can vary a lot), and the players AOA. Some players change their AOA when hitting off mats if they are to hard .We try to prevent the shock wave trough our wrist from impact with that math so we dont go as steep on mats as we would do from turf, so combined, a more shallow AOA and less friction to trap the ball gives us a way higher launch but less spin. The mat i was using was one of the better out there, but i had to use a correction factor from the return numbers to judge them, and 1000 rpm drop in spin is not unusual, sometime up to 2000 like Trackman has found in their studies (see the link below). If a player was able to get 1000 rpm x iron number (7000 on a #7 iron) from the mat, i knew for sure his spin was too high out on the course, the ball would be found in its mark where it landed or spin back a few yards depending on what surface that area has. https://blog.trackma...ats-difference/ If you dont have any issues on the courses you play, and the amount of roll out is good for that club, dont worry about how your numbers looked like from the matt, its not the tee place you will play from, so those numbers is a no issue. To balance out spin and stopping power, i used this chart for "better players" PW = 0 roll #9 = 2 meters #8 = 4 meters #7 = 6 meters #6 = 8 meters #5 = 10 meters #4 = 12 meters #3 = 14 meters More roll out than this makes it very hard to approach a fast rolling green, and shorter roll out means spin values might cause problems in windy conditions, so "plus minus" this numbers is good as target to make sure spin is within reason of what it should be, and now we talk numbers for real life play, NOT from fitting matts. We also have to look on descent angle, since a steep descent need less spin to stop the ball, and a flat descent need more spin to stop the ball, but by looking on roll out, we get the picture of how descent and spin works together.

 

Thank you, Howard. I had no idea that hitting off artificial turf could have such a drastic effect, although in my case it could be a combination of factors. I knew it could affect data, but not that much. It's funny, but it almost seems like getting fit for irons and wedges cannot even be reliably done inside?

 

Also, according to the rollout you mention, it seems that I might actually have a little too much spin, which is almost the exact opposite of what the computer was telling me. In any case, I think I am happy with where I am, as my launch is fairly mid, and the ball stays pretty much where it comes down on mid and short irons.