Moveable weights, good idea or good marketing?

Hobbit said:
Do moveable weights really work? Can an 18 gram weight moved front to back on the sole of a club make much difference? 18grams is less than 1 ounce, for us old coffin Dodgers.

where's Scienceboy when you need him? I vaguely remember from the dim and distant past that a weight at the end of a piece of string swung around has a dynamic weight well in excess of its static weight... Force=massXdistance...

But will less than 1 ounce make that much difference, or are we all falling foul of another good marketing ploy?
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Stick in a golf shaft 10g heavier than the one you have now and most people will notice a difference. Some will benefit, others will lose out.
 
PuttPuttSteve said:
Until yesterday I hadn't altered the weights or loft on my JPX850, which was set at 9.5* with the weights at the heel and toe positions, as prescribed at the club fitting. So yesterday, just to test the effect, I moved both weights centre-forward and de-lofted to 8.5*. Huge difference - much more penetrating flight but also much less forgiving. Would be good if I was a more consistent ball striker.
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Yes in slot 2 and 3 it is much less forgiving for sure. You can instantly hear when you miss the middle. The club lets you know about through the vibrations and sound.
 
Liverpoolphil said:
Nice new driver :thup:

Have you gone onto a launch monitor to try the settings on there and see what numbers you get ?
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Impulse buy! Used the spec suggested by my son, and based on the fittings I've been to for other clubs in the last couple of years.

Could all end in tears!
 
Hobbit said:
Do moveable weights really work? Can an 18 gram weight moved front to back on the sole of a club make much difference? 18grams is less than 1 ounce, for us old coffin Dodgers.

where's Scienceboy when you need him? I vaguely remember from the dim and distant past that a weight at the end of a piece of string swung around has a dynamic weight well in excess of its static weight... Force=massXdistance...

But will less than 1 ounce make that much difference, or are we all falling foul of another good marketing ploy?
Click to expand...



Today I used my new Taylormade R15 with no less than two movable weights. Now, I realise my concentration levels may have been higher because it is a new club, but what a difference it made. I moved one weight to draw, and left the other central. This in theory should give good distance, with a slight draw. Being a new player, eliminating the slice when I drive has been a problem. In fact I would say that 50% of my drives had at least a small slice. Today I didn't slice a single drive. Who is to say that I won't go out tomorrow and slice everything, but today I can tell you these adjustable weights work.
 
I've tested pretty much every driver available over the last week and the weights do what they say on the tin so to speak but only if you measure them on comparable strikes/swings. E.g. the TM M1, Cobra F6+, Mizuno 850 all affect the spin rates etc in line with expectations, albeit with my shonky swing the variance was much larger than just the result of changing weights!!! :rofl:

Been interesting actually, I know now that I don't generate loads of spin with the driver so either low spin ones or drivers in the low spin settings actually do me more harm than good overall (the longest ones are longer but worse consistency wise, both distance and dispersion). I'm not the fastest swinger in town though and I'm sure others will find the opposite to me.
 
Hobbit said:
Do moveable weights really work? Can an 18 gram weight moved front to back on the sole of a club make much difference? 18grams is less than 1 ounce, for us old coffin Dodgers.

where's Scienceboy when you need him? I vaguely remember from the dim and distant past that a weight at the end of a piece of string swung around has a dynamic weight well in excess of its static weight... Force=massXdistance...

But will less than 1 ounce make that much difference, or are we all falling foul of another good marketing ploy?
Click to expand...

The head of a Driver weighs around 200 grams (normally a little over), so you would expect that moving almost 10% of that around should make a difference!

I dabbled with TM's MWT system years ago and didn't really notice much difference between swings.As others have stated, getting a consistent swing is the difficult bit!

However at KofD day at Stoke Park, the 'fitting' definitely showed that changing the attributes of the club around did make a noticeable difference!

Oh! To answer the question in the title...I think it's both! Great for tailoring a Driver (normally) to your specific needs! However, once you find the setup that suits you best, it shouldn't be fiddled with!
 
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Like most diver adjustability options I feel they are good for fitters but highly limited for home tinkering by most club golfers.

It's a good market ploy in the sense that in the majority of cases you would have to be looking at the latest models to allow you to make the most from a full fitting.
 
palindromicbob said:
Like most diver adjustability options I feel they are good for fitters but highly limited for home tinkering by most club golfers.

It's a good market ploy in the sense that in the majority of cases you would have to be looking at the latest models to allow you to make the most from a full fitting.
Click to expand...

Going back to what I wrote then, and perhaps I was lucky. The R15 has 2 weights. If both are placed central then you have maximum distance, but less forgiveness. If both are placed furthest apart then you get the most forgiveness, but least distance. A combination of the weights moved from fade to draw and centrally give you what you want. I know I have a tendency to fade my drives a bit, so I put one weight dead centre, and the other half way between centre and draw. Perhaps I was lucky, but it appeared to work perfectly. Of course, ask me tomorrow and it may be a different story.
 
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