The Mad Science of Golf
On moving past golf industry hype and learning to play better golf
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
For a golf club or golf ball to be deemed legal or conforming, it must conform to the guidelines set forth by the two ruling bodies of golf, The United States Golf Association (U.S.G.A.) and The Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, Scotland (R&A). These two governing bodies are justifiably concerned with protecting the integrity of golf. For example, they don’t get too excited about a new golf ball that your 13 year-old daughter can hit 400 yards. We should all support their efforts. The U.S.G.A. handicapping system is based on the player using only conforming golf clubs. Serious amateur golfers would never think of using an illegal golf club because they would be unable to establish a legitimate handicap. A professional golfer using an illegal club in tournament play would be disqualified. As a result, the market for non-conforming golf clubs is going to be quite limited. If a manufacturer plans on staying in business, it has to keep its designs within the legal guidelines. This presents a problem. While minor design changes seldom offer a meaningful improvement in performance, major design changes often result in a non-conforming golf club. The question is, if manufacturers continue to produce only legal golf clubs, what can they really do with their designs that hasn’t already been done? That’s a really good question, and the answer is… not much. Manufacturers will always be stuck in a give and take mode. A never-ending juggling act. Significant design changes will always result in a club that offers improved performance in one area and decreased performance in another. For example, when manufacturers introduced over-sized titanium fairway metals, they hyped the benefits of the expanded sweetspot. The larger heads were indeed more forgiving and they worked great off the tee. Unfortunately, these heads had a significantly higher center of mass and when used off the fairway most golfers couldn’t get the ball properly elevated. Furthermore, the large clubheads were almost useless from poor fairway lies. The negatives actually out-weighed the positives. Manufactures responded with a wave of low profile, sole weighted, low center of gravity designs. The hype over expanded sweetspot was replaced with hype about the benefits of a low center of gravity. These new fairway metals were much easier to hit off the fairway, but they were not as effective off the tee, or when the ball was sitting up in high rough. Their shallow face left little margin for error and produced a higher percentage of pop-ups. The new design was an improvement but, as always, with the positives come the negatives.
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Book Details
About the Book
The Mad Science of Golf is a one-of-a-kind book that explains how golfers have been permanently sidetracked by the high-tech hype of the golf industry.
Through a series of questions and answers the book will literally reprogram your thinking and give you an entirely new perspective on golf, the golf industry, and the process of improvement. The book clearly answers the questions that golfers should have been asking a long time ago.
On Golf Clubs:
Can anything else (that really matters) be done to a golf club?
Are golf clubs REALLY getting better every year?
What kind of golf clubs do you REALLY need?
On The Golf Swing:
If swing mechanics are so important, why do the best players in the world all swing differently?
Why does your golf swing keep changing?
How come no matter how many lessons you take, you always need more?
On Playing Better Golf:
What’s the secret to scoring lower?
How come some aspects of your game seem to never improve?
What’s the ONLY why to achieve day-to-day consistency?
The Mad Science of Golf is certainly not your typical how-to golf book. It will forever change your perception of golf equipment, the golf swing, and how to play better golf. It should be in every golfer’s library.
About the Author
Philip Moore has been an avid golfer for over 40 years. He’s a certified member of the Professional Clubmakers Society and a professional member of the Golf Clubmakers Association. He owns and operates Phil’s Custom Clubmaking in Riverside California.