How vital is trajectory in defining a good golf shot?
If you are a regular viewer of the PGA Tour, you’ll see players like Rory McIlroy easily generate driver trajectories that are in excess of 120 feet (the tour average is 103.4 feet).
It’s not just the driver, though; tour players have an almost remarkable ability to generate spin with their irons and particularly their wedge play that sees the golf ball dancing around the hole.
Watching the best players in the world regularly, it’s easy to think that what they are doing to get the ball flying so high is to generate a lot of spin and get the ball launching high.
The truth is different. And we’ll explain how and why the secret to generating maximum distance and spin comes from optimising these numbers in precisely the same fashion the tour pros do.
To do this, we’ll guide you through the following areas:
- Understanding Spin Rates
- Understanding Launch Angles
- What Are Optimal Spin And Launch Rates?
- How Being Custom Fitted For Your Clubs Improves Spin And Launch Figures
Understanding Spin Rates
Spin rate is the amount of spin on the golf ball immediately after impact. Simple.
However, spin rate has a significant impact on how far and how high your shots will go.
The best way to demonstrate this is with the driver.
Have you ever experienced a situation where you’ve hit a drive, which you’re convinced you caught pretty well, but then watched as the ball climbed into the air and then seemed to stall in mid-flight before falling out of the air like a stone?
Having too much spin is bad enough when the conditions are calm; however, if you face a tee shot into the wind, you’ll lose even more distance as the wind will force the golf ball to fly higher and stall quicker.
At the other end of the spectrum, if you create too little spin with your driver, you’ll witness the classic “nose-diving” trajectory.
Where too little spin is created, there isn’t enough lift to get the ball airborne and keep it in the air.
You might think this type of nose-dive trajectory is not a problem if you play a lot of exposed links-style courses where keeping the ball out of the wind is beneficial; however, you’re going to have a hard time carrying the ball over hazards or forced carries to reach the fairway if you don’t generate enough spin.
Moving further down the bag, we’ll see similar problems. Iron shots are not hitting the intended target because of excessive or insufficient spin.
When we get down to the wedges, excessive spin can cause a golf ball that landed close to the pin to rip back and leave you with a very long putt or worse still, roll off the green entirely.
We all love to see backspin on our wedges, but it’s not effective if we end up dropping a shot because the ball ended up so far from the flag.
Too little spin will cause the ball to run out and make it harder to judge ideal landing spots. Again, we can’t take much solace from landing the ball close to the hole and then watching it run out a long way past the hole or even fall off the back of the green.
Understanding Launch Angles
Launch angle refers to the angle at which the ball takes off relative to the horizon (the ground).
The correlation between launch angle and spin rates is nearly identical in terms of the impact on our golf shots.
Too high a launch angle will contribute to a stalled trajectory; too low a launch angle will see the ball spend more time on the ground than in the air.
Either option leaves us second-guessing what will happen to our shots, which is not conducive to shooting consistently good scores.
What Are Optimal Spin And Launch Rates?
Now we’ve established the typical shot types associated with poor and excessive launch and spin rates, how do we establish what the perfect numbers are for us?
The answer is made up of different factors related to how you swing the golf club.
If you don’t generate a lot of clubhead speed, you’ll struggle to produce sufficient launch and spin rates to keep the ball in the air.
Better players have the opposite problem; they generally worry about excessive spin because they generate higher club head speeds.
Your angle of attack can also play a role in how the ball’s launch and spin rates are. The relationship between angle of attack, launch, and spin rates can be a complicated one, but we can broadly define it in such a way.
If you come into the ball with a steep angle of attack, you’re likely to generate excessive spin (think of those wedge shots spinning off the green), shallower angles of attack will produce less spin overall, potentially not great for iron play, however, a shallower angle of attack with the driver is more desireable for helping launch the ball a higher but with less spin.
Is there an ideal spin number for your driver?
It depends on your club head speed and club head delivery, but as a rough rule of thumb, generating between 2200 and 2600 rpm is suitable for maximising carry distance.
The optimal spin figures for each iron are the number of the iron times by a thousand; so a reasonable spin rate for a seven iron is 7000 rpm.
If the spin rate on your seven iron is only 5000 rpm, you’re going to struggle to control the ball on the green.
The critical thing to note is that we all have our own swing speeds, and we all have our own delivery of the club head to the ball. How we maximise your potential comes down to custom fitting.
How Being Custom Fitted For Your Clubs Improves Spin And Launch Figures
Why custom fitting works so effectively is that through the use of a launch monitor, we can accurately record your club head speed and angle of attack, which then provides us with accurate data of your launch and spin numbers.
In this section, we’ll take a closer look at:
- What To Expect From A Custom Fitting Session
- Going Through The Bag - Driver to Wedge
- The Secret To The Perfect Combo Iron Set
- Wedge Control
- It’s Not Just Heads, Shafts Can Help To
- If I Get My Clubs Fitted, Is That The Final Piece Of The Puzzle?
What To Expect From A Custom Fitting Session
Even though many club fitters are PGA-qualified professionals, a fitting session doesn’t provide the opportunity to deliver a golf lesson on how to improve your speed or club head delivery.
The fitter is assessing how to build the ideal golf club or golf clubs to help maximise your potential.
The fitting session starts with a series of shots with your own clubs to generate some base numbers. Once a good data set has been captured, the fitter can pinpoint where improvements can be made to maximise your launch and spin numbers.
Going Through The Bag - Driver to Wedge
There are several ways the fitter can build clubs to help improve your figures.
Going through the bag, if you generate lower club head speeds, the fitter can look at higher-MOI driver heads to help get the ball airborne with the correct launch and spin.
Higher MOI drivers, such as TaylorMade’s Qi35 Max, position the weight as far away from the face and as deep in the head as possible to improve launch conditions.
Lofted fairway woods or hybrids can be suitable replacements for difficult-to-hit long irons.
The bigger mass and lower-positioned weight of lofted fairway woods and hybrids get the ball airborne, making it easier to hold greens and help improve accuracy.
Callaway’s Elyte HL irons do a similar job of getting the ball on the right trajectory. They are packed full of technology to provide enhanced distance from less-than-perfect strikes.
If you have a lot of club head speed, the danger is getting a ball flight that carries too much spin, which can rob you of carry and total distance. With the help of drivers like Ping’s G440 LST, mass is positioned closer to the face to bring spin down, helping to promote the correct trajectory.
You can also find lower-spinning fairway woods like Titleist’s GT3. If you want a long iron replacement, you can opt for tour-inspired designs like Srixon’s ZXi hybrid.
When it comes to irons, because as a better player you naturally have speed and probably are a pretty consistent ball striker, the more tour-inspired designs will help you generate the shot shape and trajectory that can help you attack the tighest pins.
The Secret To The Perfect Combo Iron Set
The simple way to think of building a combo iron set is having something big and chunky in the long irons to help get the ball in the air, and precision short irons for control.
The reality isn’t that straightforward, and that’s why custom fitting is essential to building your ultimate combo iron set.
Knowing where to change from one head shape to another comes down to creating consistent spin and launch figures through each iron.
The fitter will look to make the change from one model to another when the spin rates look right.
Wedge Control
It can be misleading watching tour pros hit wedges on television because we can fall into the trap of thinking they are launching the ball miles into the air; however, the reality is again different.
The truth is that pros don’t hit their wedges much higher than their drivers. Remember, they are looking for ultimate control, and the danger of hoisting a wedge shot far into the air is that the ball becomes harder to control.
Your wedge game shouldn’t be any different.
A fitting process will determine the correct loft and distance gapping through consistent launch and spin numbers, which are optimised by the launch monitor data.
It’s Not Just Heads, Shafts Can Help To
It’s easy to think that getting the right head will have you hitting your peak launch and spin numbers, but getting the right head is only part of the solution.
Marrying the correct shaft is equally important to controlling ball flight and maximising your numbers.
Let’s take Fujikura’s ever-popular Ventus range as an example.
If you are blessed with a lot of club head speed and attack the ball aggressively in your swing, the Ventus Black could be your answer. The Ventus Black is built specifically to deliver low launch and low spin for players with high club head speeds.
If you need help in getting the ball into the air, Fujikura’s answer is the Ventus Red, which provides a medium to high launch and spin profile.
If I Get My Clubs Fitted, Is That The Final Piece Of The Puzzle?
The last piece of the puzzle to optimise your launch and spin comes down to the golf ball you use.
In their development stages, golf balls spend a lot of time in the wind tunnel as engineers perfect the dimple pattern and depth of dimple to create specific flight characteristics.
If we use the legendary Titleist Pro V series as an example, the Pro V1 is designed to deliver a lower ball flight compared to its Pro V1X cousin.
During your fitting session, the fitter will also look to see if you are using the correct golf ball for your game.
Understanding launch and spin numbers is becoming increasingly important in the game.
Professionals know their ideal numbers, and they, along with tour fitters, will talk about ideal trajectory windows they want to see the golf ball go through.
Perfecting your launch and spin figures isn’t just about optimising distance; it’s about optimising control and consistency.
If this sounds good to you and you're in the market to make serious changes to your golf bag, book yourself in for a tailored custom fitting session at Nine By Nine Golf and unlock the launch and spin numbers that bring you more distance, control, and confidence every time you play.