Does SwingWeight Matter?

[1221]

Not really bothered how my club weighs when it comes to swingweight so are there are other benefits of getting the right swingweight?

[jvincent]

It matters but only in the context of a club that is the right total weight.

 

Remember, swingweight is a measure of the balance around a 14" fulcrum.

 

So, you can have a club that weighs a total of 325g and swingweights at D2 and a club that weights 800g and also swingweights at D2.

[cgasucks]

Good question.

 

It is a personal thing.  Some people don't care about it like me, and others are totally obsessed with it.  They want the same feel on all clubs in their bag (except putter).

[jvincent]

1 minute ago, jvincent said:

It matters but only in the context of a club that is the right total weight.

 

Remember, swingweight is a measure of the balance around a 14" fulcrum.

 

So, you can have a club that weighs a total of 325g and swingweights at D2 and a club that weights 800g and also swingweights at D2.

 

Quoting myself. Also worth noting that some people are more sensitive to total weight than swingweight.

[phizzy30]

Def matters to me.  For example, I recently switched from D3 to D5 in my driver.  Went from a 194 gram head to 200.  I'm hitting it straighter and my ss hasn't slowed down one bit.  Ball speeds are the same but dispersion is noticeably tighter.  I feel like anything less than D3 feels like a chopstick in my hands and just feels to loose on the down swing. 

Edited February 26, 2021 by phizzy30

[Red4282]

Use it to get clubs with similar build to feel the same. Like your 5 iron to feel similar balance wise as your 9 iron considering they both have the same shaft and grips. When you start comparing clubs with different shaft weight or grip weight, or even comparing woods to irons, swingweight should be taken with a grain of salt. 

[North Butte]

How heavy a club is matters a lot to almost every golfer. And the proper balance is important to most of us because it helps us feel the clubhead during the swing. 

 

But "swingweight" is a terribly flawed measure of how a club feels to the golfer. So the number on the swingweight scale is not important at all unless you happen to be talking about irons or wedges that are approximately normal length and which have roughly 50-55g grips. In that case the swingweight number is a fairly reliable gauge of feel. But get out of the usual length range or start putting heavy or light grips and the swingweight scale is useless. 

[Pepperturbo]

If swing weight doesn't matter to someone, fine.  I would venture a guess, most people I play golf with are oblivious to swing weight, that includes some good golfers that play a hodgepodge of clubs.   

 

However, it matters to me, an actual feel player.  I first want my irons to feel somewhat the same throughout the set, and like knowing where the club head is throughout my swing.  When I see a shot that is not a stock club length, or need to adjust in some fashion in the swing, knowing where the club head is helps to match my execution with what my eyes told me.   In other words, I don't use the clock-method. 

 

Setting swing weight of my current 90g-108g graphite shafted irons to D1/D2 has likewise contributed to an easier transition from PX to graphite.

[Old Tom Morris]

To me, it’s very important to have my irons similar and then the wedges a little higher.  I have done achieved this by making small adjustments and hitting various irons and using a swingwieght scale.  For me, I seem to swing my irons best at D3 and wedges at D5.  Woods and hybrids have different shaft weights and lengths so they stray from the modeling that is used on my irons.

[Feelingofgreatness]

It matters a lot to me.

[sshadow2]

You'll notice it more the further you are away from what you are used to. It may not matter to some going from D0-D7, but let your driver be C0 or E9... I think it will matter a lot.

[RichieHunt]

Swingweight?  

No, not really.

It's a faulty measurement.  

Using total club MOI Matching and fitting is a better measurement and plays a greater role.  Getting fitted and matched for MOI compared to swingweight can help greatly with impact dispersion and launch/spin.  

 

For instance, I recently purchased a Ping G425 Max driver.  I just took my Ventus shaft from my 410+ and installed it on the 425 Max.

 

When I first hit it I was hitting it too low and the impact dispersion wasn't quite as good.  I then measured the club on my MOI Auditor and it came out to 2,775 kg-cm^2.  My fitted MOI with the driver is 2,825.

 

I then added 4.5 grams of lead tape to the head to get to 2,825 and the impact dispersion improved and the ball was launching a little higher whcih was to my liking.

 

 

 

 

 

RH

[iNeedMoreGolf]

Im sure as long as its not wayyy off it dont matter too much. Ive choped some drivers and it seemed to have no effect. Im sure on tour it matters a touch more.

[wobgon]

55 minutes ago, RichieHunt said:

Swingweight?  

No, not really.

It's a faulty measurement.  

Using total club MOI Matching and fitting is a better measurement and plays a greater role.  Getting fitted and matched for MOI compared to swingweight can help greatly with impact dispersion and launch/spin.  

 

For instance, I recently purchased a Ping G425 Max driver.  I just took my Ventus shaft from my 410+ and installed it on the 425 Max.

 

When I first hit it I was hitting it too low and the impact dispersion wasn't quite as good.  I then measured the club on my MOI Auditor and it came out to 2,775 kg-cm^2.  My fitted MOI with the driver is 2,825.

 

I then added 4.5 grams of lead tape to the head to get to 2,825 and the impact dispersion improved and the ball was launching a little higher whcih was to my liking.

 

 

 

 

 

RH

I will get my MOI Auditor out of the closet and after some experiments  will get back to you.

[ChipNRun]

3 hours ago, cgasucks said:

It is a personal thing.  Some people don't care about it like me, and others are totally obsessed with it.  They want the same feel on all clubs in their bag (except putter).

A lot of it has to do with personal feel. In 2014 I had my Calla X20 Tours reshafted from Project X to NS Pro 8950 (about 17 grams lighter). Total weight and swingweight both went down, SwWt from D2 to D0.

 

At first I was wondering about adding more weight, but it turned out I could still feel when clubhead reached top, and the clubs felt a bit faster from the top.

 

Some recent irons with really light steel and certain graphite shafts come in about C8, and that's just too light for me.

 

An interesting shaft option is the steel AWT 2.0 and graphite Alta CB AWT from Ping, and the AMT options from True Temper. For these iron shafts, the longer shafts are lighter than the short iron shafts. This is similar to an MOI approach (but not the same).

3 hours ago, jvincent said:

So, you can have a club that weighs a total of 325g and swingweights at D2 and a club that weights 800g and also swingweights at D2.

 

Nothing this serious, but I did attend the GolfWorks Academy a few years ago. I built a driver using a Maltby head and a then new XCaliber 48-gram superlight shaft. I wanted a shorter shaft for control, and trimmed it down to 44.5", so cutting an already light shaft sent the SwWt to about C6 in rough weigh-in.

 

I wanted a SwWt of at least D3, so started with the highest Maltby driver head weight. Not enough, so I started adding hot melt to the head and got it up to D3.

 

Back home it flew straight as an arrow, but barely carried 200 yards - less than my 3W. of the time. The driver stood in the corner for a few years, and recently I asked for advice on what might have happened. Stuart_G suggested I had probably messed up the club and shaft balance with the off-the-charts adjustments for higher SwWt.

[Jack Pearsall]

had caballed a set of ap2s together with widely different stiff shafts. kbs tour v, project x 5.5, s300, project pxi 6.0 and a modus3 120. played a couple rounds for sh*ts & giggles, and there was a pronounced difference but nothing that was a deal breaker. the pxi was the most pronounced as it felt whippy and he was surprised at how taut, not really stout, were the kbs tour v. kbs tour fly sky high for JP and the tour v felt much more substantial and has terrific dispersion, more mid flight, but not a pleasure to hit. felt...unloaded.

 

he put rifle fcm 5.5 in them, no idea what the swing weight might be. feel great, love rifle shafts, nothing really like them. golf is about feel, has little to do with numbers in the end....

[grm24]

5 hours ago, phizzy30 said:

For example, I recently switched from D3 to D5 in my driver.  Went from a 194 gram head to 200.  I'm hitting it straighter and my ss hasn't slowed down one bit. 

Adding 6 grams of weight to your driver shouldn't slow your SS down. 6 grams is 2/10 of an ounce. 

Edited February 27, 2021 by grm24

[North Butte]

Swing a 43” 360g driver with a 58g grip and a swingweight of D3. 
 

Now swing a 47” driver 280g driver with a 40g grip and a swingweight of D3. 
 

Then ask yourself what, exactly, that D3 number tells you about those two drivers. 

[cristphoto]

My take is the actual swingweight  (D0, D1, D2, etc) is not as critical as the swingweight of the set being consistent club to club.  Combined with a total club weight and flex fitting the golfer makes for a set that should play well for that golfer.  

[Eldrick Tont]

After about 3 swing weight points is where I start to feel a difference. I like my driver at D0, irons D2, wedges D4.

 

Also tested my driver without the 11 total grams of weights in the head and I could definitely feel a difference in swing speed, mainly on the range after multiple swings in a row. You’ll start feeling the higher weights after like 20 driver swings in a row lol 

Edited February 27, 2021 by Eldrick Tont

[Socrates]

My SW is and has been fairly varied.  A lot of it depends on the heft of the club.  Irons are somewhere in the D1 ballpark, but have been several points higher or lower.  My driver right now is C9.  Wedges are D4-D5.  Flex and feel come first and wherever the SW lands is where it lands.  SW is important, but not the be all and end all of the equation. 

[Buzzkill]

I’m sensitive to both total weight and swing weight, definitely matters to me.

[Valtiel]

This is a two dimensional question aimed at a pretty three dimensional topic. There is no right or wrong swingweight without a bunch of other data to support it. Like @North Butte said above:

1 hour ago, North Butte said:

Swing a 43” 360g driver with a 58g grip and a swingweight of D3. 
 

Now swing a 47” driver 280g driver with a 40g grip and a swingweight of D3. 
 

Then ask yourself what, exactly, that D3 number tells you about those two drivers. 

Those will obviously be wildly different feeling clubs despite the same SW reading, so that alone opens the can of worms that is swingweight as a measurement and how useful it really is. Swingweight is and always has been a fairly basic compromise which becomes problematic when people begin to believe it is some sort of gold standard. In a vacuum, swingweight is a useless measurement as it only gives you one data point based on a 14" fixed fulcrum and does not tell you anything about the total heft of the club. At minimum, swingweight requires you to know total club weight and grip weight for that data point to be useful, and this is ESPECIALLY true in a time where things like shaft weight and grip weight can vary significantly more than what they did back with the swingweight concept was invented. 

tl;dr - Swingweight is useful only as one piece of data used in conjunction with several others. It alone tells you very little and should never be used on its own in a fitting context. 

[Stuart_G]

Swing weight value doesn't matter.   And believe it or not, the balance of the club doesn't matter.

 

But the head weight feel of the club does matter although different individuals will have different sensitivity to it.  It can potentially have a big influence on many aspects of the swing:  plane, path, rhythm, tempo, release timing, sequencing, face control, etc..   

 

Now the swing weight scale can be used to manage that head weight feel but it can also be misused if not understood properly.