Understanding Gear Effect in Golf

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What is gear effect in #golf? Well, it's something you need to know about. Not understanding it can cause some problems for you Luckily, this 🧵thread🧵 will explain what you need to know Follow me @adamyounggolf for more informative golf threads. Bookmark 4 later Let's go 👇

If we strike off-center, the clubhead twists. You feel this as vibration. Better players are able to sense whether they hit the toe or the heel by the feel of this twisting. 🔴Toe hits twist open 🔴heel hits twist closed

With an iron, this face opening does very little to the direction of the shot. The point of contact on the face (POC) will move almost straight back, with the face acting like a saloon door. As the POC is pretty level with the club center of mass (COM) Arrow shows POC travel

However, with a driver/big headed club, it's a different story Due to the club COM being farther behind the POC on the face, the POC will be going moving more to the right (blue) during impact as the face twists open It's this blue part of the POC movement that creates gearing

This rightward (or upwards on our screen) movement of the POC effectively rubs the face across the ball creating spin The clockwise twist of the clubhead (in a toe shot) creates a counter clockwise twist of the ball (or tilts the ball spin axis to the left) This video shows 👇

The effect is that (all else being equal), a shot struck from the 🟢Toe would hook 🟢Heel would slice This is pretty counter intuitive, as a face opening up from a toe shot causes hook spin. An "OPENING face during impact" is very different to "PRESENTING an OPEN face"

To counter gear effect, manufacturers have, for many years, added bulge (curvature) to the face of their clubs. This counters the gear effect as 🟢The toe side of the club points more right (green), and 🔵Heel side of the club points more left (blue)

Imagine you presented a square face and square path. ✳️A CENTER strike will start straight and stay straight ✳️A TOE strike will start right and curve back left ✳️A HEEL strike will start more left and curve back right This is important info when deciphering ball flight

Without knowing why your ball is curving, you may try to fix the wrong thing. Imagine the fader of the ball who is hitting the heel. They might try to swing more in to out with more of a closed face (logical) when their path and face was, in fact, fine.

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