There are differences in golf club MOI and Swingweight matching that golfers deserve to know!

by CORE-Materials under CC BY  with WPSEOPix

 

 

We have talked in the past about the differences between Moment of Inertia (MOI) golf club matching and Swingweight golf club matching.  MOI matching is an actual dynamic way to match a set of golf clubs, while Swingweight club matching is a static method to match a set of clubs.  The theory behind both is that if you can find – say for a set of irons – the right MOI or right Swingweight from a test iron in a fitting, and build the set to that MOI or Swingweight, then all of the clubs will feel and play the same.

This weekend I did some specs on a set of clubs, and thought it might be interesting to show you these specs to illustrate differences between MOI and Swingweight matching.  This data is an iron set – 4 iron to 9 iron:

         IRON          SWINGWEIGHT         MOI

        4 iron               D 2                   2673

        5 iron               D 2                   2664

         6 iron               D 2                   2648

        7 iron               D 2                   2639

         8 iron               D 2                   2619

         9 iron               D 2                   2615

Note that this set is perfectly Swingweight matched – all D2 swingweights.  The MOI values for the golf clubs decreases by 58 MOI units from the 4 iron to the 9 iron.  Here is what some of this data, from the perspective of MOI Matching, would mean for a golfer:

1.  From a Swingweight matching perspective, all of these clubs are the same.  From a MOI matching perspective, the longer irons would feel heavier and swing heavier than the shorter irons.

2.  That 58 unit difference in MOI  from 4 iron to 9 iron translates to about a difference of 6 grams of head weight.  This means that if you added about 6 grams of headweight to the 9 iron, that club would then have approximately the same MOI as the 4 iron.

2.  If this golfer was custom fit by MOI matching, and found out his best 6 iron MOI is 2639, this would mean a club builder would have to: a) take some weight out of the 4 and 5 irons to make them MOI match to the 6 iron, and b) add some weight to the 7, 8, and 9 irons to have them MOI match the test 6 iron that performed the best.

Many golfers who play with MOI-matched clubs find that they feel more consistent throughout the set, and perform better, than Swingweight matched clubs.  I hope this post gave you a little insight into the differences between MOI and Swingweight matching!

 

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The Fit Is IT!!

Tony