Ball hit with a driver .6 inches from the Sweet Spot

To get serious yardage without swinging out of your shoes, swing hard, but make sure you hit the ball on your driver’s sweet spot. Solid contact directly on the sweet spot is extremely important for a huge drive.

Where IS the sweet spot, anyway?
In most modern drivers, the sweet spot is close to the center from heel to toe, but vertically, it has moved to a position just slightly above the center of the face. This has happened as club designers have been able to move the center of gravity lower and further back, which moves the sweet spot higher on the face.

The Trampoline Effect
The closer to the edge of the club face you hit the ball, the less the club face will flex.  It’s the same as bouncing on a trampoline in the center vs. near the outer edge. You need the face to flex as much as possible at impact to absorb some of the ball compression to achieve maximum ball speed. If you don’t take advantage of your club face’s flex, you can actually “over compress” the ball and lose energy transfer, sacrificing ball speed and distance.  When the face absorbs some of the energy, more ball speed is a result as there is more efficient energy transfer.

Is the sweet spot a big area?
The true sweet spot on a driver, giving you maximum ball speed, is the size of a pin point.  Missing this spot by the tiniest amount costs you ball speed and distance. Testing shows that you lose about six yards for every two-tenths of an inch you stray off the sweet spot in any direction.  So… if you’re interested in increasing your driving distance, focus on hitting the sweet spot every time.

Stay sweet.
-Monique

Tags: golf, golf instruction, golf simulator, indoor golf, sweet spot, sweet spot deviation, technology, virtual golf

This entry was posted on Monday, November 22nd, 2010 at 11:13 am and is filed under Latest News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.