Secret In The Dirt - Golf's Greatest Social Network

Given the fact that Ben Hogan was 5' 7" it is understandable that his clubs would not be too long however 37" for a five iron was standard length in those days when the loft was say 32*.....the new Taylor Made Burner 7 iron is 31* loft and 37" long ......and look how far it goes they say!!!!!! ......El Toro Excreta!

So as far as lie angle goes well that is dependent on length of course and seeing most people slice then what better way to solve that problem than make the clubs longer and more upright ......don't worry about the swing, just keep cutting it and with your new long and upright clubs the ball will start a bit further left and may even finish on target....more El Toro Excreta!

Conclusion: Get the length that fits your posture and do a dynamic lie angle test to ensure you have square and on centre contact at impact.....there are no magic numbers unfortunately.



Thanks to www.leaderboard.com where I saw this diagram some time ago.

Lee....Really enjoyed "listening" to a guy attempt to convince you about something that you already know while you were making a very important point!

P.S. Not you, ACG...was talking about "let it be man" man.

@ ACG
Love the diagram and the Spanish.





Thanks to www.leaderboard.com where I saw this diagram some time ago.[/quote]

hey mcduff, I was simply pointing out that the information being fed to guys like you and which you swallow and trust blindly without even thinking or trying for yourself is incorrect. you can take it or leave it. you can go for a real fitting session with professional like Gary here, hit real golf shots with various lofts and lengths and weights, get the real data and see for yourself. or you can go buy off the shelf 10.5, and it won't be real loft anyway, at 43 that you were told to buy. whatever you do is up to you. sure hope at least some folks reading this are not zealots and make informed decisions after reading this otherwise it's kinda sad and pointless.

Burk McDuff wrote:

anton wrote:
[/quote]

Dear let-it-be-man....I bow to your(and ilovegolf24's) superior and anonymous knowledge and as well as your immunity from your own rules!

well, that's the sad part man, you bow.

Burk McDuff wrote:


Dear let-it-be-man....I bow to your(and ilovegolf24's) superior and anonymous knowledge and as well as your immunity from your own rules![/quote]

Aussie Custom Golf wrote:


my magic number is 139 Degrees everybody has one Parks is 145 degrees whtas your magic number.

lee

I just want to add to this thread what I have found. I struggled with long irons and two hybrids that I bought hoping to cure the long irons. Adams golf said their hybrids could be bent no more than two degrees up or down. I bent mine five flat to match my irons and it was exactly opposite of what the current golf elite iliumini tell us. Golfers have to get a lie angle that allows them to hold their posture through impact and that will involve their trailing arm dominating the motion.

my magic number is 139 Degrees everybody has one Parks is 145 degrees whtas your magic number.

lee[/quote]

154 My old one before I changed my swing was 145.

Garry mentioned something above which is the most important point and is most often overlooked.

Quote "Conclusion: Get the length that fits your posture"

My addition to this would be, get your posture fixed First and then get the clubs that Fit.

Clubs can be fitted to any type of swing and can improve that players performance, but if you have your spine in a poor position at setup and throughout the swing. You are missing out on a lot of extra consistancy and effortless power.

The keyword to look at is "Neutral Spine" position

Parks

Parks wrote:


154 My old one before I changed my swing was 145.

Garry mentioned something above which is the most important point and is most often overlooked.

Quote "Conclusion: Get the length that fits your posture"

My addition to this would be, get your posture fixed First and then get the clubs that Fit.

Clubs can be fitted to any type of swing and can improve that players performance, but if you have your spine in a poor position at setup and throughout the swing. You are missing out on a lot of extra consistancy and effortless power.

The keyword to look at is "Neutral Spine" position

Parks[/quote]

Well boys, you've got me stumped here... I don't know what these magic numbers mean...are they in relation to lie angle, spine angle or angle of the dangle?

Well boys, you've got me stumped here... I don't know what these magic numbers mean...are they in relation to lie angle, spine angle or angle of the dangle? [/quote]

Gary, I ain't smart enough to figure out the numbers either but I'm lmao at what you just said!

I think we're talking degrees Fahrenheit. I tend to play best at around 138 degrees. Of course, my skin melts, but 'tis just a flesh wound. Small price to pay for 340-yard carry. With a 6-iron.

I think Lee and Parks ought to get their a$$ out of bed and tell us!

Jim Pruitt wrote:

I Love IT when you talk Dirty Jim
OOPS, Didn't mean to be cryptic.

It's just the angle of your spine when it is in the "Neutral Position". I was searching a while ago to find out how it can be measured or an easy way to know when you are set at Neutral.

I came across the work of Dr David Wright, he has a sports related website at beta.gripsize.com/main/page/baseballPowerAngle

His website is undergoing some changes but there used to be a lot of golf information on there, most of his videos can be found at his Youtube chanel www.youtube.com/user/Wrightbalance

The Power Angle is his way of measuring a person to find out what there personal angle is, he shows 15 places where this angle is repeated in the body during the golf swing. It was interesting to see this as at the time I was helping my wife research the correct angle of the pelvis for her Yoga studies.

www.youtube.com/user/Wrightbalance#p/u/70/hapfsaGWtyg

I've measured a few people and have found so far that it links up, 1 strong peice of evidence was when I had some footage showing someone who lift's there head and upper body imeadiately in the backswing. When I measured the angle thier spine naturally goes to it showed that they where bent to far over at setup.

If you combine this with becoming familiar with a good looking Spinal S shape then I don't think you can go far wrong.

Here is my old and new posture as my swing as evolved, I new nothing of this angle as my posture changed along with my swing. It was confirmation for me when I tested it on myself.

Parks

my angle....

Burk McDuff wrote:


Dear let-it-be-man....I bow to your(and ilovegolf24's) superior and anonymous knowledge and as well as your immunity from your own rules![/quote]

Good morning Mr. McDuff, If you don't mind, I prefer,"1lovegolf24"and being today is Memorial Day, I have some respects to pay, so we'll talk more later.

Respectfully,

Semper Fi

Mark, 1lovegolf24

Suprisingly a Star fish butt is on top and not the bottom as thought by many! In a personal understanding of research that relates to club lengths and lie, I feel the club actually plays less cause and more effect. The cause it what happens at the ball and this is effected by what the hands do. The body comes in to many forms, this is why there can't be one posture and I will take Hogan as an example "long legs, short top and long arms. What does this mean in Hogan's case? He had a higher flexion area that was conteracted by the longer arms and his shorter stature. Good players can take any lie / length club and make it work, I have seen Lee, along with myself do this. To be the most effective in what you need is to understand were your flexion point is and if you have longer or shorter arms. Once you understand this then you can free up the body and adjust length / lie to impact of a flat divot.

what is the best way to find out what length club fits you. Ive played everything from a 38" 3 iron to a 39" 3 iron d5 swingwieght and have no problem with consistency but am curious if there are some other key things I should look for in the equation.

Tyler, Gary aka Aussie Custom Golf would be the most qualified person here to answer this for you. what i found is that if you get access to Trackman you can experiment with it and basically settle on length that works best for you. my idea of it is to go longer until your clubhead speed, smash factor and dispersion averages start to decrease at which point you back off to the best averages length. another thing i found is that some shafts can play longer than others safely so that certainly complicates things and various head/shaft combos complicate it further. maybe there is a better way that this trial and error approach.

Tyler wrote:

Tyler wrote:


Thanks for the introduction Anton

Tyler,

In general it is said about 80% of people are standard length.....only problem is that with every standard comes a different standard

General acceptance these days is a 38" 5 iron is standard, brought about by surveying lots of golfers with different heights, shapes and sizes and concluding that the length of the arms is proportional to the height and therefore the difference between persons' measurement from the wrist to the ground does not vary that much. This measurement on average was also found to be close to where the wrist was at impact and therefore used as a starting point when determining club length. Two good examples of this are Elk and Ernie Els who are tall but use pretty well "standard" length.

Using simple trigonometry .....if your wrist to ground measurement is 34* and the lie angle is 60* this would give a club length of 39.25" .....not a bad starting point from the top I suppose.

I really think you need to look at your posture AND swing plane when considering all of this ...if your hand position at impact raises considerably then a slightly longer club may work better than adjusting the lie angle up....then you may run into swingweight/MOI, shaft weight, toe droop issues bla bla bla and so on..

Sorry for the long winded answer but this is why to get your clubs ideal for you there are no set rules...a clubfitter can assess impact but only you can feel it .

didnt mean to put you on the spot there Gary

regarding standards this page has some interesting data http://www.clubmaker.net/golf_club_length_specs.htm

personally i wont bother fiddling with iron length or lofts unless there are significant distance gaps on either end or they feel/look plain wrong but thats just me.

He's some funny info for you. When all the companies started coming out with these fitting carts in the Mid to late 90's they contained only 5 irons. The professional I worked for had been a Cobra staff member for years and was not involved with the R&D of the carts for cobra and Titliest. He was on the advisory board and was asked about the carts in one of there meetings. This is what he said, " based on research the average golfer hits a five iron 2 times a round, he hits the green with a five iron on average less than one time a round. So why are building carts with 30 five irons." As you can imagine the room was silent.

Sometimes the industry has no idea what they are doing. They just want to sell more clubs.

the real problem happens when they actually do figure out who their target audience is and what it responds to and start to milk that. then its just bs that goes around and no brand has any other choice but to play along to stay in the game.

That's right!! Callaway created FIRM shafts WHY?? Because men have egos and they didn't want regular shafts. We needed Strong, Stiff or Firm. Regular just wouldn't work. Now they have numbers 70s or 80s or 90s. We wouldn't like 4's or 5's like hogan created. We needed bigger numbers.

Are we still talking about Golf here or not?????

exactly! another example is loft. 10.5 was advised in this thread earlier. guess what, if your club is off the shelf major manufacturer model and says 9.5 on it its very likely already at 10.5 or maybe 11 or something and its not just crappy manufacturing tolerances and quality control caused by mass production its the same ego trick as firm or strong. guess why Ben Hogan company is no longer in business. if you are making golf clubs and wanna grow your business better players is not your market because its a small niche market. why is Titleist who, among major manufacturers, offers probably best custom options and real aftermarket shaft upgrades not OEM watered down versions is second in use on tour vs TaylorMade for drivers and is their main competitor there, according to TaylorMade staff, and nowhere near in sight as competitor on consumer market. yeah i guess its more of a rant now and no longer golf related really but since this here is Golf's Greatest Social Network and also because this thread already degraded to raves earlier on a little rant wont hurt.