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"Feel"... Can it be Rated?

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thedue

thedue

Another Day in Paradise
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Ok, please understand that my mind wanders a bit when I'm on the road a lot, lol. This question popped into my head while recalling something JB posted about feel.

"The term feel is so overused on internet golf forums because as was stated by so many "experts", most do not really know what they are feeling and more is caused from the ball and the shaft than the club head. Feel can mean soft, it can mean, feedback, and it can mean other things. Most display "feel" because they think they are supposed to."

As a "Hacker" I'd say that's a pretty good statement for me. I don't completely know what I'm feeling and "feel" could easily cover a lot of boundaries. The one I'd like to dwell on is "Feedback". This may be a bit vague, but does this feedback come hand in hand with vibration? And if so, would it be possible for hi tech companies like Taylormade and others to rate the amount of feedback reaching the hands?

Vibration is a quantitative thing. There are, at least, hundreds of pieces of equipment to test for levels of vibration in almost any form, including resonate, balance and others. I would think that one of the major club manufacturers would have jumped on this as a marketing ploy to sell clubs. For some reason I picture a rating for the amount of vibrations to the hands divided between center ball strikes verses off center strikes. Then grip development that reduces that vibration.

Would it be possible? Would you eliminate clubs or shafts from your short list based on a rating like this?

Thanks,
Due
 
Speaking only for myself, I don't think anyone can explain feel to some one else. The only person who can put a rating on feel is the end user. The end user would know what felt good for them regardless of what someone else might say. If a club company were to rate a certain piece of equipment with a low feel rating, but the same piece of equipment felt good to me, who's correct?

The best feeling I get when hitting golf balls is when I properly swing/stroke through the ball, and don't feel much of anything. :D
 
Due,
You are dead right in most of what you post here. THe question I have, is would a company rate vibration. The reason being is some like it and some do not.

However I think feedback is more than just vibration. It is a feel of where the ball was struck. For instance one of the reasons I really like the feedback of the R9s has nothing to do with vibration. It has to do with just how the face gives off feedback to my hands. I can tell if I hit a ball just a groove thin or a groove thick. I can tell with these if I miss the center by fractions of an inch and it is all done for the most part with very little vibration.

But feel is so many things, and like has been quoted by just about every teacher we have spoken to, most have no idea what they are describing when talking about feel. They say "soft or hard, harsh or smooth, feedback or lack there of".

My favorite is Leadbetter that said "I spoke to a group of fifteen 10 handicap golfers and asked them all to describe feel. I got either soft or hard or marketing right off a website. Only time and experience will give you feel." I just love that quote everytime I read it.

Great topic.
 
Feel to me is how the ball responds by the strike. The burners give me the same feedback as JB gets from the R9's and I think the grip you play has as much to do with that as anything. I use Winn V17 grips and they are medium firmness but they are great grips for my swing. I tend to grip the club too tight when I'm playing bad and the only way I can realize that is by the feel I get when I strike the ball, if that makes sense. Feel can't be described by words other than being able to correct your problems by the club giving you the feedback to make the necessary change in your swing to get your desired results. So in essence feel is the combination of the grip and club letting me know what I need to do for my desired results.
 
Thanks for the responses guy's. It just dawned on me that most of my posts are about subjective things that can't always be answered exactly. I will apologize now if this turns into a brouhaha, hehe.

It just seems to me that some company out there would have utilized this as a marketing ploy. Right/wrong, good or bad ... as a "Hacker" I would believe the hype. The feedback or vibration from my old irons is incredible, not always in a good way. This time of year it can flat out hurt, lol.

My guess is that the companies have surely studied the effects of vibration up through the hands at some point or another. I'd love to hear what they had to say.
 
I think a lot of companies have gone to dampen it. Taylormade has done so with the R9 line. cleveland has done so with the CG7 line. Mizuno has done so with the MX-1000 line.
 
Almost every set of irons I hit this year have less vibration. I can honestly say while playing my Burners I have never hit a shot that hurt and I can not say that about previous irons I have owned. I think the r9's would be even better since they are made to dampen vibration. The rating system on how much vibration a particular club has would probably help people who aren't the best ball strikers and give them added confidence that they won't hit a terrible shot. Confidence is everything in this game.
 
JB said:
I think a lot of companies have gone to dampen it. Taylormade has done so with the R9 line. cleveland has done so with the CG7 line. Mizuno has done so with the MX-1000 line.
Click to expand...

"I can tell if I hit a ball just a groove thin or a groove thick. I can tell with these if I miss the center by fractions of an inch and it is all done for the most part with very little vibration."

That's what I'm talkin about. Right there is the difference between "playing at golf" and "playing golf." I'd love to be able to feel that much with my swing.
 
So if companies are going the route of dampening vibration, which I am assuming is some what caused by mis hits, then the golfer is going to have to rely more on ball flight, than on feel off the club face. Does that sound right? Or can a (healthy) golfer still hit the ball on the sweet ball, and still feel vibration......on some clubs?

Obviously I am talking about full swing shots. which brings up another situation. How many types of feel might the golfer experience during a round of golf? Is it safe to say that there are differences in feel between a golfer's long game, short game, and putting game?

Interesting info on this thread. I have never given "feel" much of a thought, other than feeling good about good shots, and feeling not so good about the poor ones.
 
Great questions Prov. I'm not qualified to answer, but someone surely will soon. I feel everything with this old set of mine, even center hits don't have that "nothingness" feel. I think it kind of distorts a lot of my high/low adjustments.
 
A good ball striking golfer can still get feedback with vibration dampening in irons and wedges. It will be less, but the feedback is still there.
 
To me, feel is a very personal thing.

If fifty people attend a concert and all of them loved the music, I'll bet that you'd hear fifty different reasons as to why each person enjoyed the show and each one of those reasons would be valid.

Feel is the reason why I can try out ten different putters in a golf shop - all of which are very similar in style and construction, and only choose one that I liked more than all the others and then have someone else come along and try the same ten putters and walk away with a different one than I chose.

I suppose that a vibration could in some way be quantified in the same way that a sound frequency can be measured. But I doubt that any two people will feel that vibration or hear that frequency in the exact same way - if at all. So to try to definitively write that this club or that club demonstrates more feel than the other is a fool's errand at best because even if such things can be defined, I doubt that they would be perceived in the same way from one person to another.

Not everything can be codified or classified.

When I stand in a hardware store sampling 20 oz. hammers, why is it that out of the three or four hammers I handle - all the same make and model and from the same rack - I choose one over another? It's the way it feels TO ME. Yes they're all the same weight and the same brand and the same style, but one feels better than all of the others.

Feel is just a personal thing and maybe it can be described and it can certainly be debated, but it really can't be measured or standardized and I think to try to do so would be a waste of time and could never produce an objective result.

Some things you just have to take on faith.


-JP
 
JP, I agree and disagree respectfully. It's possible that Feel should not be involved except on the back side of this. I do know for a fact that the amount of vibration reaching the grip can be measured. I've dealt some what in frequency readings before and find it very interesting stuff.

However, I'm sure your right about the amount of satisfaction or dislike is so wide from person to person that it would be hard to reach a maxium. I just find it pretty entertaining to pose idea's like this. Guess I'm a bit too inquisitive.
 
thedue said:
JP, I agree and disagree respectfully. It's possible that Feel should not be involved except on the back side of this. I do know for a fact that the amount of vibration reaching the grip can be measured. I've dealt some what in frequency readings before and find it very interesting stuff.

However, I'm sure your right about the amount of satisfaction or dislike is so wide from person to person that it would be hard to reach a maxium. I just find it pretty entertaining to pose idea's like this. Guess I'm a bit too inquisitive.
Click to expand...


Well that's conundrum.

I'm sure that a device could be invented (if one doesn't already exist) to accurately measure vibration, but once you have a figure for that, what then?

I'll bet I could hit my favorite irons and rave about their feel and then hand them to someone else and have them hit some balls with them and then tell me that they have no idea what I'm talking about.

What I don't like about discussions like this is that most people tend to want to see things as either "black or white" but the truth is that most things in life exist as infinite shades of gray and because of that, no "definitive" answer can be forthcoming and that drives most people nuts.

As far as being inquisitive is concerned, I think that the day I stop asking questions will be the day the pull the dirt up over me, so there's nothing wrong with asking "Why?".

In fact, if I were to be asked to give just one piece of advice to a person, that advice would be: "Question authority". It's the best way to live and it keeps the game honest.


-JP
 
thedue said:
Ok, please understand that my mind wanders a bit when I'm on the road a lot, lol. This question popped into my head while recalling something JB posted about feel.

"The term feel is so overused on internet golf forums because as was stated by so many "experts", most do not really know what they are feeling and more is caused from the ball and the shaft than the club head. Feel can mean soft, it can mean, feedback, and it can mean other things. Most display "feel" because they think they are supposed to."

As a "Hacker" I'd say that's a pretty good statement for me. I don't completely know what I'm feeling and "feel" could easily cover a lot of boundaries. The one I'd like to dwell on is "Feedback". This may be a bit vague, but does this feedback come hand in hand with vibration? And if so, would it be possible for hi tech companies like Taylormade and others to rate the amount of feedback reaching the hands?

Vibration is a quantitative thing. There are, at least, hundreds of pieces of equipment to test for levels of vibration in almost any form, including resonate, balance and others. I would think that one of the major club manufacturers would have jumped on this as a marketing ploy to sell clubs. For some reason I picture a rating for the amount of vibrations to the hands divided between center ball strikes verses off center strikes. Then grip development that reduces that vibration.

Would it be possible? Would you eliminate clubs or shafts from your short list based on a rating like this?

Thanks,
Due
Click to expand...
A while back Mizuno released a video that measured vibration in their irons vs some of their competitors to show that Mizuno irons have more feel. It was an interesting piece of marketing, but you could easily question just how unbiased of a test it was.
IMO, feel isnt something that you can really measure because feel means different things to different people and because various clubhead, shaft and ball combinations can vastly alter feel.
 
Now were talkin, That wasn't a conundrum, LMAO. I have a feeling that grip pressure has a lot of say in this, but so far no ones brought that subject up. I guess that might be a reach though, "shades of grey", guess I better stay with technology!
 
thedue said:
Now were talkin, That wasn't a conundrum, LMAO. I have a feeling that grip pressure has a lot of say in this, but so far no ones brought that subject up. I guess that might be a reach though, "shades of grey", guess I better stay with technology!
Click to expand...
You could also make the arguement that some people can detect the vibrations that come up through the shaft better than others, so they are more sensative to "feel" than others.
Thats why when you talk to other golfers about feel, its difficult to tell if what they talk about is actually what they are feeling or is a conditioned response that is all in their head.
 
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