AndrewG
New member
This is just a bit of basic trig that I've always wanted to work out, but never taken the time.
When I was a kid, my dad (who never played), got me interested in golf by telling me, while watching grainy Open footage back in the 70s, that golf is one of the most skillful games there is, because a millimetre of difference when you hit the ball, can be 20 yards difference when the ball arrives on the green. This always amazed me, and I've loved the sport ever since (though I've only really taken it up for the last few years).
For some reason, I've never had the inclination to actually work out how accurate the club has to be positioned to hit the perfect shot. Now my maths isn't the best, and I'm assuming the conditions of no wind, and no sidespin at all to shape the shot, but here goes:
For a 150yd shot, hit 5yds left or right of the target, the ball is set off at around 2 degrees from the target line. This seemed quite generous to me, but of course, thats a triangle with a 150 yard 'adjacent' side.
At the club face though, given a 2" sweetspot on the face, the outer left or right edge of that sweetspot is only - 0.03" from perfect !!!
So when you hit that shot into the middle of a green from 150 yards, congratulate yourself - you have just steered a piece of metal at approaching 100mph to a position where the edge of the hitting area is within 0.75mm of where you want it to be.
When I was a kid, my dad (who never played), got me interested in golf by telling me, while watching grainy Open footage back in the 70s, that golf is one of the most skillful games there is, because a millimetre of difference when you hit the ball, can be 20 yards difference when the ball arrives on the green. This always amazed me, and I've loved the sport ever since (though I've only really taken it up for the last few years).
For some reason, I've never had the inclination to actually work out how accurate the club has to be positioned to hit the perfect shot. Now my maths isn't the best, and I'm assuming the conditions of no wind, and no sidespin at all to shape the shot, but here goes:
For a 150yd shot, hit 5yds left or right of the target, the ball is set off at around 2 degrees from the target line. This seemed quite generous to me, but of course, thats a triangle with a 150 yard 'adjacent' side.
At the club face though, given a 2" sweetspot on the face, the outer left or right edge of that sweetspot is only - 0.03" from perfect !!!
So when you hit that shot into the middle of a green from 150 yards, congratulate yourself - you have just steered a piece of metal at approaching 100mph to a position where the edge of the hitting area is within 0.75mm of where you want it to be.