Got a nasty slice off the tee box? Spend more time looking for your ball in the rough than on the fairways?
Don’t worry. Now there’s a club for that.
With every new sports season, new technologies hit the market that aim to better equip and better prepare athletes for their realm of competition. Such is particularly the case in golf, as the arrival of spring temperatures seems to coincide with the unveiling of many new advances in the sport.
This season, the golf world has been buzzing about the latest round of technology designed to help golfers keep their drives on the straight and narrow — the square-headed driver.
“It’s the hot thing,” said Penny Hickman of Par for the Course. “So many people just want to hit it straight. With these types of clubs, you’re going to hit it straight.”
Two companies have released their versions of square-headed drivers, as Nike has produced the Sumo2 and Callaway has delivered the Fusion FT-i.
These two manufacturers are departing from the typical driver shape, choosing instead to give these drivers more square, box-like dimensions.
The reason for the change is not simply to be aesthetically different from everyone else. As Mike Stachura reports on golfdigest.com, the new drivers are being made as a way to maximize moment of inertia, which is the “resistance to twisting on off-center hits.”
When a traditional driver strikes a ball slightly off-center, the club head tends to twist slightly at the shaft at the moment of impact (or inertia), resulting in drives that go astray. With the square-headed driver, some of the weight has been shifted to the back of the club, which helps keep the driver from twisting as much, thus giving the user a straighter drive.
The concept is not entirely new, just the design. Hickman said she used a Cleveland Hi-Bore driver — which came out last season — that has a scooped-out back to distribute weight differently to, once again, reduce driver head twisting.
Hickman said the point of the square-headed driver is not to add any distance to one’s drive, as she said she had not noticed any difference in drive length compared to a traditional driver.
“The main thing it you’re going to hit it straight,” she said, “and the game is easier when you are in the fairway more.”
The drawback to the square-headed club is that it has a lesser degree of workability, so golfers wanting to hit fades or hooks will find it much harder to do so, since the point of the club is to not allow those shots.