Why do PGA players have a negative angle of attack for driver?

[nkurz]

It's almost universally agreed that the way to maximize distance off the tee with a driver is to hit up on the ball.   Doing so allows for a high trajectory with low spin, which maximizes both carry and rollout.  But on average, PGA tour players hit down on the ball with their driver.  Their average Angle of Attack is about -1.3.   Why is this?  And what should amateur players learn from this?  

 

One theory is that the PGA pros don't want to complicate things by having a different swing for driver than the do for other clubs.  Maybe?  But they seem fine with having different swings for putting, pitching, and chipping.  And even more suspiciously, the women of the LPGA don't seem to confuse themselves with their +3 degree AOA. 

 

So what is the answer?  My bet is that it's some combination of tradition and pragmatism.  The men on the tour now learned to play from people who used small headed drivers and teed the ball low.  While they could hit it farther by switching to higher angle of attack, they are already close the limit of their accuracy for hitting the fairway.  And changing their swing would take practice time away from somewhere else that they find more important to scoring.   Unlike many/most amateurs, male pros are generally not distance limited, thus don't have as much to gain from a few more yards with the driver.  

 

And what does this mean amateurs should do?  If our distances are closer to the LPGA players, should we be trying to do the same thing they are?  Maybe.  I think it would probably improve distance for most golfers, and many (especially) older golfers would benefit from more distance.  But unlike most amateurs, the LPGA players are able to dedicate enough practice time to perfect a different upward swing with a driver.    I'm not sure it would help most golfers to score any better than they currently do.

 

Personally, I'm in team "tee it high and watch it fly".  While I'm not sure it helps my scoring, it definitely helps my ego as a 50+ year-old golfer to still be able to put the ball out there farther than I can see.  Although as the joke goes, maybe that says more about my failing eyes than my golf swing.    Still, I do enjoy hitting the ball far while I still can, and I think a positive angle of attack makes this easier.

 

What do others think, either about what the pros do or what the amateurs should?

 

[elwhippy]

Not sure where you read this. Having watched stacks of events in the flesh the modern Pro almost lifts the ball off the tee. Cameron Champ is an exception, but notice how few players knock the tee out of the ground. 

[JungleJimbo]

7 hours ago, nkurz said:

It's almost universally agreed that the way to maximize distance off the tee with a driver is to hit up on the ball.   Doing so allows for a high trajectory with low spin, which maximizes both carry and rollout.  But on average, PGA tour players hit down on the ball with their driver.  Their average Angle of Attack is about -1.3.   Why is this?  And what should amateur players learn from this?  

 

One theory is that the PGA pros don't want to complicate things by having a different swing for driver than the do for other clubs.  Maybe?  But they seem fine with having different swings for putting, pitching, and chipping.  And even more suspiciously, the women of the LPGA don't seem to confuse themselves with their +3 degree AOA. 

 

So what is the answer?  My bet is that it's some combination of tradition and pragmatism.  The men on the tour now learned to play from people who used small headed drivers and teed the ball low.  While they could hit it farther by switching to higher angle of attack, they are already close the limit of their accuracy for hitting the fairway.  And changing their swing would take practice time away from somewhere else that they find more important to scoring.   Unlike many/most amateurs, male pros are generally not distance limited, thus don't have as much to gain from a few more yards with the driver.  

 

And what does this mean amateurs should do?  If our distances are closer to the LPGA players, should we be trying to do the same thing they are?  Maybe.  I think it would probably improve distance for most golfers, and many (especially) older golfers would benefit from more distance.  But unlike most amateurs, the LPGA players are able to dedicate enough practice time to perfect a different upward swing with a driver.    I'm not sure it would help most golfers to score any better than they currently do.

 

Personally, I'm in team "tee it high and watch it fly".  While I'm not sure it helps my scoring, it definitely helps my ego as a 50+ year-old golfer to still be able to put the ball out there farther than I can see.  Although as the joke goes, maybe that says more about my failing eyes than my golf swing.    Still, I do enjoy hitting the ball far while I still can, and I think a positive angle of attack makes this easier.

 

What do others think, either about what the pros do or what the amateurs should?

 

 

1 hour ago, elwhippy said:

Not sure where you read this. Having watched stacks of events in the flesh the modern Pro almost lifts the ball off the tee. Cameron Champ is an exception, but notice how few players knock the tee out of the ground. 

@elwhippy
I think OP @nkurz's numbers are from this 2017 golfwrx article? https://www.golfwrx.com/447576/fact-check-a-downward-attack-angle-with-your-driver-is-more-accurate/ 

...but same numbers appear elsewhere on this forum (example below from @Howard_Jones)
 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 28, 2023 by JungleJimbo

[sittingbull]

In my opinion it's because they want to be more accurate they already swing way faster than most of us  anyways and they have the ability to square up majority of the time.

[Denny100]

I would say its a combination of things:

 

1) When trying to be accurate, most peoples instinct is to flight the ball lower. So hitting down on the ball slightly helps to do that.

 

2) Their swing mechanics are pretty similar for the downward angle of attack as they are for their other clubs. So its not a case of managing two different swing paths and just generally having a consistent D Plane and face control model across all their clubs

 

3) They dont NEED to optimise their distance, theyve got plenty of power in the tank that they can call upon when its needed. Amateur golfers are mostly in the category of needing to maximise their strike and efficiency to squeeze every drop of distance out of their drives as possible

 

4) They need something thats repeatable day in, day out, over and over that works in all conditions on all types of course. Its not about bombing one for giggles on an open hole but then carting one off into the trees on the next hole and not really caring like in amateur golf. These guys are trying to put up the best scores they can every single day, regardless of their trackman numbers.

[JungleJimbo]

1 hour ago, Denny100 said:

I would say its a combination of things:

 

1) When trying to be accurate, most peoples instinct is to flight the ball lower. So hitting down on the ball slightly helps to do that.

 

2) Their swing mechanics are pretty similar for the downward angle of attack as they are for their other clubs. So its not a case of managing two different swing paths and just generally having a consistent D Plane and face control model across all their clubs

 

3) They dont NEED to optimise their distance, theyve got plenty of power in the tank that they can call upon when its needed. Amateur golfers are mostly in the category of needing to maximise their strike and efficiency to squeeze every drop of distance out of their drives as possible

 

4) They need something thats repeatable day in, day out, over and over that works in all conditions on all types of course. Its not about bombing one for giggles on an open hole but then carting one off into the trees on the next hole and not really caring like in amateur golf. These guys are trying to put up the best scores they can every single day, regardless of their trackman numbers.

"+1" on this "for more control/repeatability" viewpoint.

 

 

[PostandGhost]

This is completely anecdotal and probably isn't true for all PGA Tour Players with a negative angle of attack.  I have a college teammate of mine who earned his PGA Tour card through Q school the year after he finished college.  The first time I played with him after college I noticed he had gotten shorter off the tee.  I asked him about it and he said he had leveled out his driver swing and he wasn't trying to hit up on it.  He went from hitting it straight or a draw off the tee to a fade exclusively off the tee.  It gave him a neutral to slightly negative AoA.

 

Curious as to why, I asked him and he said that the PGA Tour fairways are much narrower than what we played in college, the fairways are much much firmer and faster, some of the tour stops have crowned fairways where a shallow decent angle for the ball would kick it in the rough, and he had plenty of distance to spare.  Looking back on it now, he was performing a strokes gain benefit analysis on his driving even before strokes gained became a thing.  He said his only other option was to hit shorter clubs off the tee, which would leave him with longer distances into greens.  Ultimately the change in AoA allowed him to be more aggressive off the tee and hit more drivers.  

[Fuscinator]

Addressing this very topic, Rocco Mediate said "spin equals control."

[ANimz]

I would think most of the longest drivers on tour have a positive angle of attack.  I know Koepka had a negative AOA.  When they tee it lower for fairway finders they would most likely have the negative angle of attack.  

[nkurz]

1 hour ago, ANimz said:

I would think most of the longest drivers on tour have a positive angle of attack. 

 

This would be interesting to see.  Averages can definitely be misleading.   The sources I linked are already several years old, and it's possible things have already changed.  One very plausible argument would be that the longest drivers should have the highest AOA, since for a given swing speed high AOA enables longer drives.  I think this is probably true.  

 

But another argument would be that the shortest drivers (those with swing speeds more similar to the LPGA players) should have higher AOA, because they are the ones who would benefit more.  But since changing AOA will change distance, everything is probably confounded:  once they change to a higher AOA, they will no longer be the shortest.  Maybe it makes more sense to look at swing speed vs AOA?

 

1 hour ago, Fuscinator said:

Addressing this very topic, Rocco Mediate said "spin equals control."

 

What do you think this actually means, and how does it relate to AOA?  For a given head, spin shouldn't change with AOA.   From what I can tell, by PGA standards he's a slow swinger, but probably still a bit faster than the LPGA players.   Do you know his launch numbers?  Does he actually have a negative AOA?  Is there a reason that the women would want the extra distance but he would prefer precision?   

 

Edit:  

Here's Rocco talking about Spin: 

 

Edited February 28, 2023 by nkurz

[nitram]

To add on to what Denny said; Most guys at the tour level don't want a different swing for driver vs. all of the rest, because invariably it will bleed over and negatively effect them all. 

[ANimz]

1 hour ago, nkurz said:

 

This would be interesting to see.  Averages can definitely be misleading.   The sources I linked are already several years old, and it's possible things have already changed.  One very plausible argument would be that the longest drivers should have the highest AOA, since for a given swing speed high AOA enables longer drives.  I think this is probably true.  

 

But another argument would be that the shortest drivers (those with swing speeds more similar to the LPGA players) should have higher AOA, because they are the ones who would benefit more.  But since changing AOA will change distance, everything is probably confounded:  once they change to a higher AOA, they will no longer be the shortest.  Maybe it makes more sense to look at swing speed vs AOA?

 

 

What do you think this actually means, and how does it relate to AOA?  For a given head, spin shouldn't change with AOA.   From what I can tell, by PGA standards he's a slow swinger, but probably still a bit faster than the LPGA players.   Do you know his launch numbers?  Does he actually have a negative AOA?  Is there a reason that the women would want the extra distance but he would prefer precision?   

 

Edit:  

Here's Rocco talking about Spin: 

 

I was wondering the same as to where they get their numbers, and what the sample size is.  How many swings were they analyzing? Was it full rounds or just instances picked out?  I am sure a lot of players go for negative AOA for accuracy.  Especially lower tier players on tour that need the fairways and don't have the elite balls speeds.  

[nkurz]

54 minutes ago, nitram said:

To add on to what Denny said; Most guys at the tour level don't want a different swing for driver vs. all of the rest, because invariably it will bleed over and negatively effect them all. 

 

Does this mean that the LPGA players would score better if they concentrated on working on a single swing?  Do you think the professional women have problems with their high AOA driver swing bleeding over into their irons?  If not, why are they different than the PGA players?  

 

I feel like hitting a ball off a tee is already so different than hitting anything else that worries about bleed over seem unfounded.  These are incredible players who can make a ball do amazing things.   I have trouble believing that they wouldn't be able to keep their driver swing separate if they wanted to.   

 

But maybe at their level it actually become more difficult to have multiple swings?  

[nitram]

19 minutes ago, nkurz said:

 

Does this mean that the LPGA players would score better if they concentrated on working on a single swing?  Do you think the professional women have problems with their high AOA driver swing bleeding over into their irons?  If not, why are they different than the PGA players?  

 

I feel like hitting a ball off a tee is already so different than hitting anything else that worries about bleed over seem unfounded.  These are incredible players who can make a ball do amazing things.   I have trouble believing that they wouldn't be able to keep their driver swing separate if they wanted to.   

 

But maybe at their level it actually become more difficult to have multiple swings?  

 

 

Just passing on what I've personally heard from tour players' (former and present) mouths. It doesn't mean they are all of the same mindset.

 

As far as the LPGA, the 3 I know well enough to ask are all either zero or negative at impact. Again, this doesn't mean they're all doing it, just my anecdotal sample size. I can't answer why they're different except that most of them don't have as much extra distance available as their counterparts, and are trying for every yard they can generate.

 

Once someone has obtained their professional tour card (irrespective of which tour or sex) it's very difficult to get them to change, ANYTHING, unless they are struggling/deficient in that particular category. Call it superstition, or maybe observing what's happened to former players who've made it, want to marginally improve, lose what they had, and never return, or at least never as good as they were before they began "tinkering".

 

 

 

[nkurz]

3 minutes ago, nitram said:

As far as the LPGA, the 3 I know well enough to ask are all either zero or negative at impact. 

 

Wow, I guess I had been presuming (without evidence) that almost everyone on the LPGA had a positive AOA.  I've never seen individual numbers, and was wrongly assuming that they'd be clustered close to the +3 average.  

 

But instead, maybe it means there for every pro female golfer swinging less than 0, there is another swinging more than +6!   

 

Seeing a breakdown by individuals for both the PGA and LPGA would be more informative than the averages.  It would be interesting to see what if any correlation there is between AOA, distance, swing speed, and accuracy.  

[Rosco1216]

PGA tour guys look for the best combination of distance and controlled flight with stable spin. High launch and low spin gets progressively more difficult to control as speed is added.  That threshold will be preference and different for everyone. The slower guys who need to get the most distance out of their speed to be competitive and not lose as many strokes off the tee might be willing to creep up in launch and down in spin. Longer guys probably the opposite. 

[Chunkitgood]

Why do they have a negative angle of attack with their irons?
 

Same exact reason.

 

Optimal use of the energy generated by the muscles of a human body.

[Fuscinator]

23 hours ago, nkurz said:

 

This would be interesting to see.  Averages can definitely be misleading.   The sources I linked are already several years old, and it's possible things have already changed.  One very plausible argument would be that the longest drivers should have the highest AOA, since for a given swing speed high AOA enables longer drives.  I think this is probably true.  

 

But another argument would be that the shortest drivers (those with swing speeds more similar to the LPGA players) should have higher AOA, because they are the ones who would benefit more.  But since changing AOA will change distance, everything is probably confounded:  once they change to a higher AOA, they will no longer be the shortest.  Maybe it makes more sense to look at swing speed vs AOA?

 

 

What do you think this actually means, and how does it relate to AOA?  For a given head, spin shouldn't change with AOA.   From what I can tell, by PGA standards he's a slow swinger, but probably still a bit faster than the LPGA players.   Do you know his launch numbers?  Does he actually have a negative AOA?  Is there a reason that the women would want the extra distance but he would prefer precision?   

 

Edit:  

Here's Rocco talking about Spin: 

 

Well, I think the quote posted probably more closely answers the question "why don't you hit way more up on the ball if you're such a short hitter?"

I don't know what his aoa is, and this a vague screencap, but it looks pretty close to level, to me.

[ingster1]

I wonder whether the tour average AOA has creeped up over the past few years as more guys seem to be chasing distance.  Similar to average driver shaft length which I believe is now over 45” after being below that mark for many years.

[MonteScheinblum]

On 2/28/2023 at 9:39 AM, Rosco1216 said:

PGA tour guys look for the best combination of distance and controlled flight with stable spin. High launch and low spin gets progressively more difficult to control as speed is added.  That threshold will be preference and different for everyone. The slower guys who need to get the most distance out of their speed to be competitive and not lose as many strokes off the tee might be willing to creep up in launch and down in spin. Longer guys probably the opposite. 

This is correct.  I bet it’s probably trended to around level from minus 1.

 

The hit up dynamic is a disaster.  Yea, up 1 or 2 is fine and looks exactly the same as level to the naked eye.

 

Pros are not sacrificing distance for accuracy.  The more you hit up, the more difficult it is to manage face/path/sweet spot/target.  So it because very difficult to hit it solid.  
 

They are looking for max of both.
 

Lower spin is not always better.
 

Lastly, you can get the same launch conditions at around level as up 5 with a proper club fitting.

 

Ams trying to hit up is universally a disaster, as it leads to earl and excessive right tilt, which leads to early extension.

 

Unless you’re swinging over 140 mph and trying to compete in LD, make a good swing, hit the ball solid and your aoa will be what it should be.

 

Trying to chase one number is a good way to lose distance and accuracy.

 

Optimum is between -1 and +2….which again, look exactly the same.

[Golf_Goof]

Wouldn't face angle also play into this? I.e., when the club is ascending after low point, it should be closed/closing, unless making some other compensation. 

 

Likewise, face would open but closing approaching low point - favoring a fade.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Golf_Goof

[MonteScheinblum]

7 minutes ago, Golf_Goof said:

Wouldn't face angle also play into this? I.e., when the club is ascending after low point, it should be closed/closing, unless making some other compensation. 

 

Likewise, face would open but closing approaching low point - favoring a fade.

Technically it’s the path and not the face

[mikpga]

They simply average swinging less down on the ball….

[Cwebb]

A level AOA or close to it, makes it easier to have an impact pattern that is consistently above center on the driver face.  This is where the "hot-spot" is on nearly all drivers, because it takes advantage of vertical gear effect for launch and lower spin, without sacrificing ball speed.

 

 An upward AOA or a face that is rising into the ball, tends to produce a lower impact pattern on the face even with higher tee heights.  Tour players value and demand consistency a lot more than long drive competitors do.

 

It's easier for most players to produce a pattern that is above center with an AOA that is slightly down vs one that is very upward.  It's hard to go wrong with a level AOA

[Valtiel]

On 2/28/2023 at 3:20 AM, Denny100 said:

I would say its a combination of things:

 

1) When trying to be accurate, most peoples instinct is to flight the ball lower. So hitting down on the ball slightly helps to do that.

 

2) Their swing mechanics are pretty similar for the downward angle of attack as they are for their other clubs. So its not a case of managing two different swing paths and just generally having a consistent D Plane and face control model across all their clubs

 

3) They dont NEED to optimise their distance, theyve got plenty of power in the tank that they can call upon when its needed. Amateur golfers are mostly in the category of needing to maximise their strike and efficiency to squeeze every drop of distance out of their drives as possible

 

4) They need something thats repeatable day in, day out, over and over that works in all conditions on all types of course. Its not about bombing one for giggles on an open hole but then carting one off into the trees on the next hole and not really caring like in amateur golf. These guys are trying to put up the best scores they can every single day, regardless of their trackman numbers.

 

On 2/28/2023 at 5:00 AM, PostandGhost said:

This is completely anecdotal and probably isn't true for all PGA Tour Players with a negative angle of attack.  I have a college teammate of mine who earned his PGA Tour card through Q school the year after he finished college.  The first time I played with him after college I noticed he had gotten shorter off the tee.  I asked him about it and he said he had leveled out his driver swing and he wasn't trying to hit up on it.  He went from hitting it straight or a draw off the tee to a fade exclusively off the tee.  It gave him a neutral to slightly negative AoA.

 

Curious as to why, I asked him and he said that the PGA Tour fairways are much narrower than what we played in college, the fairways are much much firmer and faster, some of the tour stops have crowned fairways where a shallow decent angle for the ball would kick it in the rough, and he had plenty of distance to spare.  Looking back on it now, he was performing a strokes gain benefit analysis on his driving even before strokes gained became a thing.  He said his only other option was to hit shorter clubs off the tee, which would leave him with longer distances into greens.  Ultimately the change in AoA allowed him to be more aggressive off the tee and hit more drivers.  

On 2/28/2023 at 9:39 AM, Rosco1216 said:

PGA tour guys look for the best combination of distance and controlled flight with stable spin. High launch and low spin gets progressively more difficult to control as speed is added.  That threshold will be preference and different for everyone. The slower guys who need to get the most distance out of their speed to be competitive and not lose as many strokes off the tee might be willing to creep up in launch and down in spin. Longer guys probably the opposite. 

3 hours ago, MonteScheinblum said:

This is correct.  I bet it’s probably trended to around level from minus 1.

 

The hit up dynamic is a disaster.  Yea, up 1 or 2 is fine and looks exactly the same as level to the naked eye.

 

Pros are not sacrificing distance for accuracy.  The more you hit up, the more difficult it is to manage face/path/sweet spot/target.  So it because very difficult to hit it solid.  
 

They are looking for max of both.
 

Lower spin is not always better.
 

Lastly, you can get the same launch conditions at around level as up 5 with a proper club fitting.

 

Ams trying to hit up is universally a disaster, as it leads to earl and excessive right tilt, which leads to early extension.

 

Unless you’re swinging over 140 mph and trying to compete in LD, make a good swing, hit the ball solid and your aoa will be what it should be.

 

Trying to chase one number is a good way to lose distance and accuracy.

 

Optimum is between -1 and +2….which again, look exactly the same.

+1 to all this, covers everything I was going to say and a bunch of stuff I wouldn't have thought of. 
 

On 2/28/2023 at 8:38 AM, nkurz said:

I feel like hitting a ball off a tee is already so different than hitting anything else that worries about bleed over seem unfounded.  These are incredible players who can make a ball do amazing things.   I have trouble believing that they wouldn't be able to keep their driver swing separate if they wanted to.   

 

This is where the flaw in this thinking is. Yes they are incredible players that can do amazing things with the ball and yes they could all probably separate their driver swing if needed, but is that the MOST consistent? The big thing you're missing here is the fact that they're ALL incredible players that do amazing things with the ball and what that means for how tight the competition is. Despite being that incredible they all have their strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies, and it only takes the slightest shifts to put you out of competition. Stats like average proximity to the hole show the difference between #1 and #190 is about 8". The difference between #1 and #50 in GIR is 5%. When everyone is incredible, no one is incredible, and you have to fight for every little scrap you can get. Like @PostandGhost said above, it's a strokes gained benefit analysis and they've been moneyballing this for decades now. If hitting up on the ball made that big of a difference, everyone would be doing it. 

Aside from all that stuff as well, the entire conversation around AoA has been completely muddied by the fact that the negative AoA "problem" that many weekend golfers have is a symptom of several other swing faults which produce several other problems, MANY of which get blamed on AoA incorrectly. This has screwed up the perception of AoA and has created this binary "down bad, up good" view that is both wrong and damaging. Down is not inherently bad, up is not inherently better, and either can be better OR worse depending on a number of factors. 

[GolfTurkey]

The two things that irritate me the most about this topic are that ridiculous Trackman chart that probably messes up as many golfers as Foresight LM's giving people the impression that 1,900 RPM spin is good, and those YouTube videos "proving" that hitting up boosts distance.

 

Some YouTuber will post a video of himself hitting up on a driver 2-5 degrees with their normal swing and then hitting 50 yards shorter when hitting 5 degrees down.

 

Well, no s**t Sherlock. First of all the "up" swing is with their proper swing not some contrived snake-killing downwards hack and secondly their driver is fitted to the first swing with the upwards AoA and is thus ill-fitted to the other swing. Those videos make astrology look respectable.

[TLUBulldogGolf]

I don't know that I agree that they couldn't easily shift between the two swings or that they are even two different swings, you can do most of it with just setup. There is also a ton of variance between their highest and lowest launch angles on the radar stats, though that could be with all different clubs. It would be interesting to see Aoa stats and how they have shifted recently. I would agree that a less positive/slightly negative Aoa gives a better combination of distance and control and you can easily still get good launch numbers so most guys 'stock' shot is likely around there. LPGA players have a lot less speed so they shift slightly towards maximizing distance.

 

Edited March 2, 2023 by TLUBulldogGolf

[mikpga]

Predictable Ball Flight…

[mgoblue83]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet (I think) is that the men have enough speed and spin to keep the ball in the air when launched at 12 degrees while the women don't. If the women launched it lower the ball would go nowhere because it wouldn't stay in the air. It's the same reason most women don't play long irons while most men do. 

[MattC555]

Ping's blog talks about it a bit too:

 

https://ping.com/en-us/blogs/proving-grounds/optimal-launch-and-spin

Quote

In 2018, the highest average launch angle on the PGA Tour belonged to Sam Saunders at 14.7°. If a 17° launch angle maximizes distance, why does no one on the PGA Tour launch their driver that high? The answer is angle of attack. 
 

To explain why, we first need to understand ball-flight laws. Ball-flight laws determine, for a given angle of attack and loft presented at impact, how high the ball will launch. If launch angle was determined entirely by the club face, then the ball would launch with exactly the presented loft at impact (100% toward the face). If launch angle was determined entirely by the path of the club, then the ball would launch along the angle of attack (0% face). As a sanity check, we know that a negative angle of attack does not launch the ball into the ground, so launch angle should be primarily determined by the loft at impact (>50% face). In fact, according to research conducted at the PING Proving Grounds, on a driver the ball will launch 85% toward the face. 
 

According to Trackman, PGA Tour golfers have an average angle of attack (AoA) of -1.5° on a driver. For a -1.5° AoA and desired launch of 17°, the delivered loft at impact needs to be 20.25° in order to satisfy our 85% ball-flight laws. (Explanation: The presented loft is 21.75° greater than the AoA, the ball launches 85% of the way toward the face (21.75° * 85% = 18.5°), which results in a 17° launch (-1.5° + 18.5° = 17°). 

 

However, this simply isn’t practical for a PGA Tour golfer. Hitting a ball at a “glancing” angle of 21.75° (20.25° delivered loft minus -1.5° AoA) reduces ball speed and would likely result in 4,500 rpm of spin. Therefore, the recommendation would be to try less loft, as this can result in a lower launch angle, less spin and greater ball speed. This now becomes an optimization problem to find the perfect loft. Through impact modeling and ball-flight simulation, we can evaluate all the potential lofts and pick whichever loft maximizes distance.

 

In our simulation, the launch conditions range from 171.3 mph ball speed, 3.8° launch angle, and 980 rpm spin at the lowest loft, 168.1 mph ball speed, 10.4° launch angle, 2,760 rpm spin at the optimal loft, and 157.2 mph ball speed, 20.5° launch angle, 5,450 rpm spin at the highest loft. Interestingly, the projected optimal launch angle of 10.4° and back spin of 2,760 rpm closely matches the actual PGA Tour averages of 10.9° launch angle and 2,686 rpm spin rate. The best golfers in the world, naturally, have gravitated toward the launch conditions that optimize performance for their given attack angle. 

The general principal – that slower-ball-speed players need higher launch and higher spin while players with faster ball speeds require lower launch and lower spin – isn’t always correct. In the optimal launch and spin chart, in general, slower ball speeds and increased attack angles result in higher recommended launch angles. However, ball speed does not have much influence on the recommended spin rate; angle of attack is the primary source of change in the recommended spin rate.