with Bryan Angus

Thanks for joining me today. I look forward to your comments . They are always welcome here on FairwaysPlus. Bryan Angus bryanangus4@gmail.com



Monday, May 2, 2011

On this day in history....Evolution of the "metal"wood..

On this day, May 3, 1985.... Ron Streck wins the rain-shortened Michelob-Houston Open and earns the distinction of being the first player to win a PGA TOUR event using a metal wood.

I remember the sort of stifled outrage that pervaded in the early 80's when we all got our first metal headed driver. I was using a persimmon Jack Nicklaus driver and 3 wood, regular steel shaft, reddish brown head, the biggest one I could find at the time and I could really hit it when I caught it flush, but anything off centre, like an "Oral Roberts"..off the heel or a "healer' went no where.

By the way I was still using the small British ball 1.62, but my suppliers in Scotland were running out as the big ball had become accepted by thr R&A. The big ball 1.68, looked like a balloon at first after all the years with those 1.62 Slazenger bullets..

Our Dad was working as a club maker at that time for Northwestern, who made a ton of clubs for the low end market, Canadian Tire, Woolco, Zeller's etc sold their range.

He brought us home our first metal woods. They had black graphite regular shafts and a dark grey aluminum head that is small by today's standards, still it was huge to us.

When we rushed out to try them out, there was a different sound all along the range, ..ping.ping.ping,ping.. the sound of metal hitting balls.. a new sound..

We marvelled a how light they were, we said 'how can you miss with a club head this size". Suddenly the sweet spot was 3 times the size, you didn't even feel the ball when you hit it...We all first heard the name Big Bertha..

We felt like we were cheating.. but we were hooked, and as we  know know this was just the beginning of the evolution of the metal wood.


If you didn't already know the history of the clubs you are hitting today, I read a ton of background on the subject, and decided to leave you this copy from Wikipedia which is quite interesting..

Gary Adams, founder of TaylorMade Golf, is considered the father of the modern metal wood. Adams began to market his club in the late 1970s, but it was nearly a decade until metal woods became more popular with most golfers.

Wooden heads predominated until the late 1980s. They had evolved to include a metal sole and a metal or plastic faceplate. These wooden headed clubs were dense and heavy, and were generally much smaller than today's club heads. Their smaller surface area also made consistent contact more difficult, as the sweet spot of these clubs was considerably smaller than today's models.

Callaway Golf is also largely responsible for the current design of metal woods; the original Big Bertha driver introduced players to the "oversize" driver with a larger and deeper club head (at the time it was 190cc in volume), giving maximum club face and a deeper center of gravity

Modern club heads are usually hollow steel, titanium or composite materials, and are sometimes called "metalwoods" or more recently "fairway metals"

. Pinseeker Golf Corp. innovated the first stainless steel metalwood called the Bombshell in 1976. The design was somewhat nontraditional and did not have the promotional success needed for profitable long term marketing - it was discontinued 3 years later.

 In 1979 Taylor Made produced a traditionally shaped stainless steel wood head called "Pittsburgh Persimmon" which achieved market acceptance by the mid-1980s.
 3rd one was a hit !!

 Over sized heads made from aluminum appeared in the mid 1980's but were slow to catch on since their introduction was via independent component manufacturers and not the larger endorsement based club manufacturers. Very large size drivers (300-500cc) arrived with titanium metallurgy which meant reasonable 'headweights' could be achieved with very large thin shelled but strong structures. ,

By the mid 2000's, titanium heads could be made to 1000 cc (Golfsmith Inc made 1000 cc in the mid 2000's). Around this time the USGA decided to limit the size of driver heads to around 460 cc since the rule requiring heads to be of a traditional shape was being unduly stretched. However, during this period the club making business needed some financial help so a number of new nontraditional, but USGA qualifying, head shapes appeared - torpedo and square/rectangular to attract the buying public to potentially game improving designs particularly regarding better mishit outcomes

The oldest shafts for all golf clubs were made of Hickory wood. The shaft was whippy and light, but inconsistent in flex from club to club and quite fragile.

Beginning in the 1920s, steel shafts started making an appearance, though the USGA and R&A did not allow their use in sanctioned tournaments until 1929. These shafts traded the lightness and flex of the wood shaft for vastly increased durability and consistency, and were the only type of shaft in general use on any club until the early 1990s.

 The modern "graphite" shaft (technically a carbon-fiber composite material) currently in use today is the best of both worlds; it is lighter and more flexible than either steel or Hickory, while having similar durability as steel, at the cost of slightly reduced shot consistency due to increased torque (though this has vastly improved on recent generations of shafts)

Graphite shafts gained widespread popularity in the mid-1990s; although the carbon-fiber composite technology had been available since the early 1970s, it was very expensive to produce and nearly impossible to mass-market[1]. Advances in producing, forming and curing composite materials have made carbon fiber much cheaper, and now virtually all new woods, regardless of price, have graphite shafts.

Shaft flex has a very pronounced effect on the power and accuracy of a wood. Every wood is somewhere in between the two extremes of flex, from the extra whippy, to the extra stiff. Whippy shafts are used by those who have low swing speeds and stiff by those who have faster swing speeds.

 The flex of a shaft allows it to store energy from a player's downswing, and release it as the head makes contact for increased club speed at impact.

A shaft that is too stiff cannot be flexed by the golfer during their downswing, which reduces club speed at impact. A shaft that is too whippy will retain some of its stored flex at contact, wasting energy.

Shaft torque is also a concern. Flex and torque are generally related; the more a club can flex, the more it can also twist around its axis (though this is not always the case). A shaft that can torque easily is less forgiving of off-center shots as it will allow the head to twist, causing pulls and pushes.

Today, many metal wood clubfaces (and most driver clubfaces) are constructed out of titanium. Titanium has a higher strength to weight ratio than steel and has better corrosion resistance, so it is an ideal metal for golf club construction. Manufacturers can also make clubheads with greater volume, which increases the hitting area, and thinner faces, which reduces the weight

Bryan Angus also on twiter@mummmbles( edit Wikipedia)

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