I was reading the advertisements in a golf magazine the other day when I found myself scratching my head about the term “coefficient of restitution.”
It must be important, I thought. But what the heck does it mean? My interest was further piqued when I found the same term used by several manufacturers.
Coefficient of restitution, I discovered, means the elastic properties of a golf ball. The higher the COR, the higher the velocity off the clubface.
Then there is MOI. That means “moment of inertia.” It means resistance to twisting of the clubhead on impact.
“Torque” is a little less mysterious. I’ve heard it used by auto mechanics working with wrenches. I suspect that in golf it applies to the twisting of a club shaft. Another popular term today is “kick point.” It has nothing to do with football, but with where the shaft flexes.
The language of golf has changed considerably since the days when manufacturers told readers of their ads only that their brands of golf balls flew farther and their irons and woods hit the ball straighter and longer. No one mentioned COR, MOI, kick point or torque.
I was sublimely ignorant in those bygone days. I based my decisions in buying golf clubs as often as not on what my favorite pros were playing and how the woods or irons looked when I set them behind the ball.
As for golf balls, well, that was based on what most of the touring pros played or what I could afford at the time. “Feel” was a factor, too. If the ball felt too hard or too soft, I looked for another brand.
Blade irons were great so long as I struck the ball in the “sweet spot,” which is the precise place in the face of the club at which all the weight and momentum come together. It is about the size of a dime. Maybe a penny.
Perimeter weighting expanded that sweet spot by carefully distributing weight around the periphery of the iron. I can’t say as a historical fact that Karsten Solheim and Ping came up with the first perimeter weighted iron, but it certainly was the first that was widely embraced by golfers.
Lie and loft angles are important to all golfers and I suspect that most of us have known what those terms mean for almost as long as we have been playing the game. It is simply the way the heads of irons are made or bent to ensure that they sit on the ground properly for a player (flat or upright) or that they launch the ball at a preferred angle.
Today when I shop for a golf club, I still admire its appearance. I may check to see what pros are playing them. I’ll even ask about loft and lie.
But I leave MOI, COR and all that other high-tech stuff to the people with degrees from MIT.
It’s a lot less of strain on the brain.
Address correspondence to Clair Goodwin, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, Mo. 64802.
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