Driver club speed

TTried out a few new drivers today, not really in the market for a new one just popped in to buy a new glove and thought why not.

Just wondered what everybody elses club speed is?? (if you know)

Would there be a general average speed for someone around my handicap?

Mine was 105mph

Don't know, don't care.

Cheers James

All I do know, is that it is not fast enough.

Dont think it needs to be fast though, as long as its straight. Just interested thats all.

Depends what you're looking for. Swing speed and clubhead speed can be many miles an hour different.  The only one that matters is the clubhead speed at impact, and if the device that's measuring the speed is not in the right place then it will not read right.  Very high clubhead speeds can be generated from a relatively slow swing speed if the shaft flex and wrist break are timed correctly.

Ivan.  I can see I'm going to have to sit you down with a pen and a piece of paper to do some mechanics...

As stated, swing speed and handicap have no relation. Many amateurs of all handicaps swing faster than some of the top pro's - swing speed has very little to do with scoring ability. Any shop assitant who says you should use a regular shaft because your handicap is above 15 etc is not worth listening to imo.

fwiw Matt - I swing the driver at approx 120mph, and no this does not equal 300 yards average for a number of factors already mentioned.

For a bit of interest, just watched this on Youtube - long drive world champs 2010. These guys are crazy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8D5pA4U_bQ&feature=related

Ivan

I'll ignore the obvious wind-up about mechanics, I'm an engineer (a proper one - not a make believe one that fixes heating systems or cars) wiv letters before and behind my name and everything.

You're actually wrong about a couple of things, the golf swing is simply about Newtons second law F=ma - the force applied to an object is equal the mass times the acceleration.  OK, there's a little bit of material science in it when it comes to the (imaginary) CoR (no self-respecting engineer would use such a crude term).  However, computing it in 3 dimensions and 7 or 8 degrees of freedom makes it a bit more complex, but really it just boils down to F = ma....

Yep, told you so Ivan.  That still just boils down to F = ma.  The tricky bit is working out the 'a' bit and that's what that paper is about (on a quick scan admitedly).  Most of the paper is used to calculate the biomechanical work rate that is put into the swing, thus enabling the acceleration to be calculated.

Colin

it depends how comfortable you are with Newtonian physics!

Very simply if you derive F =ma in terms of initial velocities and assume that the driver head and ball are inelastic then the ball speed is given by (apologies for the lack of proper formating)

v1 =(m1-m2/m1+m2)u2+(2m2/m1+m2)v2 and v2=2u1-u2

where m1 = mass of head, m2 = mass of ball, v1 = velocity of head and v2 = velocity of ball

So for a 100mph swing the club head will slow to about 68mph and the ball will travel at 126mph.

However, this doesn't take into account the CoR of the club face and the ball (say 0.83 for the club and 0.78 for the ball) and this could push the ball speed instantaneaously to around 160mph. 

What, you mean this?

I kept it as simple as possible Colin!

"all other things being equal" is kind of key to F=MA, Very little is equal in golf unless you are an Iron Byron. If the golf swing was ever perfected and repeated then yes f=MA stacks up more, but like Colin says, surely there are so many variables in golf that F=MA only puts you "in the ball park"?

For example - lets say MA is the same on two swings with two different heads. The launch angle is similar, but due to head weight positioning and slightly different collision direction the spin rates are vastly different. The amount of force applied to the ball is the same "all other things being equal", but the results will be vastly different. Nobody is disputing that F does indeed equal MA, but it is of far less relevance to golf than say shooting a theoretically perfect projectile in a straight line with no outside influence and guarunteed launch conditions. 

Well, F=ma is an immutable law - the problem obviously is to get the best drive you have to maximise F as for a given club the mass is constant, therefore the only variable is the acceleration.  And there's the rub, get that right and the ball goes miles because it has the correct flight and spin characteristics.  Get the Centres of Gravity of the club and ball misaligned, or have the club face going in the wrong plane, or decellerating and, well we all know what happens (me more than most!).

The problem I have is that I'm sort of cursed because I can see all this in my head, the majority of people (some figures put it as high as 85%) can only see this sort of thing in 2 dimensions.

"get that right and the ball goes miles because it has the correct flight and spin characteristics"

As we cannot achieve perfection in a completely imperfect environment and with imperfect technique and tools, F can only be a result of what happened. Force applied to a golf ball has an effect on distance naturally, but once reaching the upper boundaries of what we are capable of exerting the flight/spin/contact/launch variables have a far greater impact on increasing golf ball distance than applying more force. 

Naturally nothing you say is wrong Tim (swinging faster increases force. fact, agreed), but swing speed probably has less of an impact on distance than you think, especially once in to the 105 - 130 mph swing speeds where far more distance can be gained by optimizing flight & spin etc than by adding a few more mph.

The vast majority of driver strikes are misses by varying margins of error so optimum strikes are rarely achieved. The focus at all levels should be technique over speed. The question is, do you match your technique to the equipment setup, or matche the equipment to your technique. Csutom fitting is the often quoted answer, but if you are always tinkering with technique, then custom fitting becomes a tricky (and expensive) business.  Working on increasing swing speed brings it's own set of issues. For each mph you gain, the ball flight characteristics will change. Often launching with more spin. So in theory different technique and/or equipment is needed at every level of your own swing speed. You see it all the time, people swing faster than they normally do, still make good contact, the ball launches higher and travels a shorter distance. Increasing force is a small part of a big puzzle.