When Is Light Right?

One of the big rages at the PGA show this year was lighter clubs and grips. A couple of the major companies are marketing grips a lot lighter than standard, and you probably are also seeing some companies saying they now have the lightest driver available - and suggesting you will get great improvements in distance with those clubs.


Is lighter ever really better? I would say that if someone suggests that making a club lighter AND longer is going to really help that you should be wary. However, there can in fact be conditions where lighter is worth looking at.


I built a slightly different driver for myself this past week that seems to help me reduce some of my major "misses." My usual poor miss with the driver is to the right. Most times when I do this I have been able to "feel" that I have not closed the clubhead. I have always thought this was largely a swing fault...............and most likely there is some element of that. But the driver I just built for myself is an SMT Nemesis....................a smaller head (around 400 cc) and easier to "close" than typical 460 cc heads. And I also built this club about 40 MOI points less than my previous driver - roughly 4 grams less head weight than I had been using.


Results? This past Sunday I drove the ball MUCH better than I had been. A few misses to the right but a lot more draws and straight shots. And also a greater feel for the clubhead and feel for the ability to close it when I hit the ball. Now if it would ONLY stop being so cold when I play.....(37 degrees.....).


So maybe it is possible that a lot of your typical misses are not fully the result of your swing...........or at the very least you can find a combination of clubhead size and club MOI/swingweight that can make your driver FEEL easier to swing.


Tony