Simulator Session After Lessons; Struggling To Optimise My Strikes And Numbers

[Denny100]

Hi Everyone

Just looking for some advice and thoughts from people on my numbers, and some trends I am seeing in my numbers.

Had a very interesting session at Warwickshire Golf Sim today due to poor weather, and would definitely recommend it to anyone.

Ive been working on my swing recently following a couple of lessons with the ambition of getting my swing better for next season. My index is 0.9 and I want to get closer to scratch, but I know I have a lot of work to do to get to this point.

Im trying to get my strike more optimal, but especially with the driver. My ball flight for too long has been low launching, but "spinny". Im working hard on getting a better launch angle by launching the ball higher but flatter with all clubs, especially driver. Ive been working in the lessons to have more shoulder tilt behind the ball at address, and the club exiting more down the line and higher through impact. Im seeing some good signs already.

With the driver particularly, im struggling. Ive had quite a few Toptracer and Trackman sessions where ive been hovering around a 10 degree launch which I dont feel is optimising my strike.

Today, I got the following numbers after a good batch of 50 or so drives:

AVERAGE CARRY 248.7
AVERAGE TOTAL 267.7
AVERAGE BALLSPEED 152.8
AVERAGE CLUBSPEED 108.0
AVERAGE SPIN 3535
AVERAGE LAUNCH 16.0

I can when I hook things up nicely move my swing up to the 110-112MPH region, but the launch angle then starts to drop around 10 degrees again.

Its just a spinny, cutty ball. I am a fade player but its just too spinny.

But just for context, i thought i would also add in the iron numbers from the clubs ive gapped today which im happy with, albeit the 6 iron seems an outlier that i should check i feel.

5 Iron: 200.3 Carry, 133.9 Ballspeed, 95.1mph swingspeed, 5814 spin
6 Iron: 196.8 Carry, 128.8 Ballspeed, 92.4mph swingspeed, 6156 spin
7 Iron: 176.7 Carry, 123.8 Ballspeed, 89.2mph swingspeed, 6258 spin
8 Iron: 166.5 Carry, 119.2 Ballspeed, 87.8mph swingspeed, 6680 spin
9 Iron: 151.8 Carry, 113.4 Ballspeed, 86.5mph swingspeed, 8349 spin


I think these numbers for the irons look not too bad for me.

But its the spinny driver that goes nowhere thats killing me.

With my swing speed numbers, can you tell me what i SHOULD look for to optimise my driver launch?


Thank you in advance!

 

[BubbaP]

Think you need to see a pro with a launch monitor where they put the sticker dots on the club.

As you mention the spin seems too high. Might guess is you have a downward AoA with driver (hence you focusing on shoulder tilt at address). But no point in listening to a chomper like me ? after reading a few words on a forum ?

Go see someone you can trust.

 

[SimonC]

I have a few questions:

1) Do you tend to strike the driver low on the face?
2) What loft & model is your driver?
3) Do you have the angle of attack & club path numbers to go with the above?

Looking at your numbers with a clubhead speed of 108mph you should be getting more than 152.8mph ball speed this is only a 1.41 smash factor, you're getting 1.39 smash with a 7 iron & nearly 1.41 with your 5 iron. If these are Trackman numbers you should be looking at a smash factor of 1.5 with your driver as a perfect strike which would give you 162mph ball speed. Your spin is way too high too with a launch angle of 16 degrees, you want to knock at least 1,000rpm of spin off to get anywhere near optimal if not a little more. Without seeing all of you club data it looks to me as though you may well be hitting up on the ball but striking it low on the face or you are striking the ball with an open face which would add loft & spin.

You are leaving around 25 to 30 yards of distance on the table with the above numbers, have a play around on this https://flightscope.com/products/trajectory-optimizer/ & you can see that dropping the spin to 2,000 & increasing the ball speed to 162mph keeping everything else the same your carry goes from 244.5 yards to 272.5 yards (28 yards more carry) & you would also get more run as the decent angle will be lower.

 

[Deleted member 3432]

I was at my local Toptracer range yesterday. My driver distances were way down on what I see on course for the simple reason the highest tee setting was way too low. I normally tee the ball extremely high and hit a very flat ball, I simply couldn't launch the ball high enough at the range to keep it in the air and I suspect there was hardly any spin on them either. Hate range balls with a passion...

Iron numbers were about what I expected but just ignored the driver figures.

 

[BiMGuy]

I was at my local Toptracer range yesterday. My driver distances were way down on what I see on course for the simple reason the highest tee setting was way too low. I normally tee the ball extremely high and hit a very flat ball, I simply couldn't launch the ball high enough at the range to keep it in the air and I suspect there was hardly any spin on them either. Hate range balls with a passion...

Iron numbers were about what I expected but just ignored the driver figures.

I'm convinced Toptracer use a random number generator for their launch and distance numbers.

 

[SteveW86]

The below may be of interest to you, less club head speed than you but can be used for comparison

 

[VVega]

6 Iron: 196.8 Carry, 128.8 Ballspeed, 92.4mph swingspeed, 6156 spin
7 Iron: 176.7 Carry, 123.8 Ballspeed, 89.2mph swingspeed, 6258 spin
8 Iron: 166.5 Carry, 119.2 Ballspeed, 87.8mph swingspeed, 6680 spin

Only about 500 difference in spin between 8i and 6i would be very suspicious to me. Should be closer to 1000 per club.

https://blog.trackmangolf.com/trackman-average-tour-stats/

Nothing is wrong with 10* launch angle, question is why so much spin - AoA and strike location are the parameters to check.