Golf Technology is a wonderful thing. It has out heroes form yesterday like Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson to stay competitive longer than they would have been able to otherwise. However, the good news is that the new golf technology has just not helped the professional players. It has also allowed amateurs many benefits to their game as well. What are some of the golf technology factors that currently affect the amateur’s game today? Here are a few suggestions:

Golf Technology – Through the research of many golf club manufacturing companies, including Titleist, the science of tracking a golf ball with a launch monitor was made available to more PGA Professionals and their club members. The launch monitor could follow the golf ball from impact, to the launch angle to the flight apex and finally to when and where it hits the ground including the ball’s roll out has greatly improved. Doppler Radar is now used to track all of the characteristics of ball flight. This now allows a player receiving a club fitting to swing multiple drivers to find the correct combination of length and loft just for them. Through using this technology, it has been discovered that most players hit longer shots with more loft on their drivers. Currently, some tour professionals are using drivers with 10.5 degrees of loft. Just a few short years ago, you would have been laughed at for having this much loft on your driver. It was thought that the less loft you needed on your driver the better player (or bigger ego) you had. As these players used the new technology and discovered they could hit it farther with more loft on their driver, again, their ego took over and the switch to more loft was on! At the beginning of this revolution, it go to the point where some golf club companies would even place the “preferred lower loft” on the bottom of the head when the head actually had more loft on it. They did this so sales would not slump as they would have if the “real loft” was placed on the driver.

Golf Technology – If you polled most amateurs on what their “bad shot” is on the golf course with their driver, what type of answer do you think you would get? After giving literally thousands of golf lessons, I can promise you that the mass majority of golfers fade or in most cases slice the golf ball. The manufactures know this and have introduced the golf technology of closing the face of the majority of the drivers to be sold to the mass public by one or two degrees. This tweaking of the clubhead design of the driver is considered by the manufactures a design technology. Obviously, the closing of the face would allow you to hit straighter drives but in theory they should be longer as well. As the clubface is not as open as it was with “your driver”, the closed driver head would have less loft on it as impact is made and would provide a longer drive. Hmmmm thought the manufacturers. If golfers will hit it straighter and farther, we just might sell a few of these