Time for OEMs to start publishing MOI and CoG with driver releases

[getitdaily]

@Callaway Golf Official@TaylorMade Golf
TM and Callaway...time to start doing this when you release drivers...the buying public shouldn't have to wait for independent reviews, months after club release, to get this data. You guys know MOI, you know where CoG is. Let us have it so we can make more informed buying decisions. The data shouldn't be secret anymore since an independent group publishes the info every summer.

[Jc0]

Why would they ever do that? The last thing they want is for a potential customer to eliminate their driver from consideration based on a number without even hitting it.

[RogerinNewZealand]

Marketing,Sales.

Just look at the

WITB simsimsim

everywhere....are they better longer

than ""old tired""" M2 M3 M4 etc.

When last years WAS Great...hard

to improve!!!!

[getitdaily]

They would do it if we all demanded it. Don't lose the forest for the trees.

[Bad9]

They can't agree on how to measure club length, doubt they can agree on those.

[storm319]

1) The big OEMs have little financial incentive to make comparisons with a competing product or their own previously discontinued products easier. Ultimately the big OEMs are focused on running a business and this suggestion would cost the big OEMs revenue.

2) Most consumers don't care about quantitative comparison let alone even understand how these metrics correlate to performance. The representation of consumers that do care about something like this are in the extreme minority of the entire consumer base.

3) Variance in how each OEM measures will make cross company comparison impossible. The only way to accomplish this is for an independent 3rd party to measure all OEM offerings under the same consistent method/environment (like MyGolf$py does annually with their CG/MOI driver test).

[getitdaily]

Who said anything about comparison data? I want callaway to publish that the mav sz has a draw biased CoG. I want TM to publish that sim has a fade biased CoG. I don't want either to measure the other's.

They would have incentive if we demanded it.

How would it cost them $? They already measure this stuff. They're still going to sell drivers.

[Hawkeye77]

@Callaway Golf Official @TaylorMade Golf
Not demanding! Not necessary!

[storm319]

But your intent is for the consumer to have data available to compare cross company. The problem is that Callaway and Taylormade may not measure MOI or CoG in the same way so it may not be possible to perform an apples to apples comparison. The entire equipment industry would have to coordinate a standard for each measurable metric and that will never happen (they can't even agree on a standard way to measure club length!). We have seen this for years with the shaft OEMs and if anything we have gotten further away from some kind of industry flex standard in recent years.

 

[DFS PFD]

No, actually we don't need that. Thanks though.

[cgasucks]

Ain't gonna happen. If a major OEM releases a driver and they know that it doesn't have the highest MOI in the market, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they published it. Their driver sales would tumble.

[magnus7319]

You can't get 3 people to agree on anything together... the chances you can get golfers in mass to what? not buy clubs until they do this, is pretty impossible. Also, I'll trust the 3rd party measurments over the OEM, as the 3rd party has nothing to gain by not being truthful. As mentioned, you think a manufacturer is going to publish they are the least forgiving? Then there is the whole 'standards' thing... are they measuring the same, etc...

The data is out there, you just have to wait a bit for it.

[PT1911]

And take the fun out of buying multiple drivers a year to try out!?!? No thanks......

[1Mordrid1]

Or we could just go hit a club before we buy it, and base our purchases on the performance of the club, rather than taking some numbers out of context to make our decisions..........

[getitdaily]

You all will not defeat me. I will persist, and prevail!

[mahonie]

Are they not the same for every driver on the market anyway? In my hands they are...

[Davidv]

Longer, Faster and more Forgiving, that is what they will and have always told you, and that is all they are going to tell you.

[jll62]

No, they wouldn't. The vast majority of the golfing public has no idea what the numbers mean, let alone how to apply them to their game.

[Nessism]

Google search "driver cg location" and you will have all the data anyone could ever need. There is no need for the manufacturers to publish it. And if they did they would be obligated to provide an explanation as to why they do what they do and many regular players would have no clue what they are talking about thus defeating the purpose.

[getitdaily]

I know all about the cg reports from the other site. That data is 6 months past most releases. I want CoG data upon release. I couldn't really care less about MOI data but it's easy to get so they should just release it too.

CoG data is what's important.

[Valtiel]

Absolutely not, but I agree with the general sentiment of the replies. OEM's can't be trusted to establish a meaningful standard, most people wouldn't understand the data anyway, and more cynically, it would reveal how little difference there sometimes can be from model to model, which the OEM's certainly don't want. An example of this in a slightly different area was the marketing story that the 2017 M-series "saved more weight that they moved to the adjustable weights by using a bigger carbon crown". The actual amount of weight? 2 grams. Not enough to impact anything.

The third party independent testing is more than fine, and I would trust it far more than whatever data worked its way through a big OEM marketing department. I do however wish more people understood the data, because that would mean am ore knowledgable consumer base that would hopefully lead less smoke and mirrors marketing and greater innovation.

[getitdaily]

I agree that if more people understood the data then it would be more useful. But isn't the other site helping with that? They can continue their data collection and publication as a check on what the OEMs publish. But getting more and more data could lead to more people gaining an understanding of it. I'm always a fan of helping consumers be better buyers.

For instance, the last 5 pages of the SIM driver thread, and at least one other thread, is all about both SIMs being fade biased. Having CoG data on those drivers would help a ton for the folks who wanted them early.

For now, I'll just stay a fan of adjustable weight tech so I can move CoG on my own.

[Valtiel]

I don't disagree necessarily, but with regards to the SIM and whatever bias it has, that is something that can be worked out in testing. Because at the end of the day, if the ball does what you want/need it to do then its all good, and if your (royal "your") swing isn't consistent enough to determine this through testing, then it isn't consistent enough to benefit from the slight differences in CG bias.

I agree that more data is better, and I would always choose knowing over not knowing when it comes to things like CG data, but in the absence of it I am either good enough to figure out through trial or not good enough for it to make a difference. And if the latter is the case, then that is where I need to be spending my energy.

[Stanks]

Nope. Wrong. Nothing to gain from it.

[getitdaily]

Agree

[MattM97]

Why not just test the clubs out and see what works best? Too many people read into the numbers and specs of each club to crack some apparent code. I've done it myself and when I finally get that "perfect club" in my hands it could be meh or the worst thing I've ever hit.

Listen to how many pros you know the guys who are better than any of us here say they hardly look into club specs. They test and what works best goes into the bag which is how it should be for everyone.

[getitdaily]

You don't get it...and that's ok. For the folks who do get it, I hope to one day have the data available upon release.

[Howard_Jones]

You cant use us, the freaks on WRX and think we are representative for the average Golfer and their "need" for information, we are as far from that as can be, and if we want that info, we know where to find it.

Just look at something way simpler, TRUE LOFT on drivers. The "best" companies has a average tolerance of plus minus 1.0* and then we talk HIGH QUALITY, but even in this scenario, a 10.5 head might be 0.5* lower on loft than a 9.0* head, or the difference we expect to be 1.5* could be 3.5*, and thats is a real issue, but we will never have them to measure and deliver us specs for "true loft"...

I can see that FLEX has been mentioned in this tread too, and the only issue i see is that so many misunderstand what this labels represent, and there CANT be made a common standard here either and for good reasons. If they tried, they will and up with a chart who for the playing public is just as useless as the chart i made who became a pinned topic, so i dont see any need for a "standard" for flex.

[Stuart_G]

 

Sorry but there really is no any one single universal"it" that anyone needs to get other than the fact that the only thing that really matters is the ball flight you get when you hit the club.

Hey, if you think the data will help you in your search, go right ahead and use it but the reality is that for most it's not going to be helpful.

There is a lot more to shot shape bias than just the c.g. of the head. Face angle is a big one that I'd want to see from the OEM's a lot more than any c.g. or MOI data and that's just a start. But depending on the player it can also include: playing length, shaft weight, head weight/MOI of the club, shaft stiffness, MOI about the shaft axis, grip size, lie angle. All those factors can combine to influence the players ability to control the delivery of the club into impact. Path, Face to path, dynamic loft and face impact location are all going to be factors in the final shot shape.

Even if you want to isolate everything else and only look at the effect of horizontal gear effect on the shot shape, that's still a function of face impact location, vert axis MOI, both the heel-toe c.g. location and the front-to-back c.g. and total spin. And that's assuming that the weighting or face angle isn't also effecting the face control (which is a bad assumption).

So for the vast majority of players who have to buy their own clubs, that data will tell them very little about what to expect at best, and be very misleading at worst.

[getitdaily]

Well, since the whole kit and kaboodle is unlikely how about we start with 2 very simple CoG measures...

Heel/toe and front/back

That way we can know that a driver is fade/draw biased and how much that gear effect will have.

Those 2 measures should become very understandable to a lot of the golfing public.