As weight is added to the grip end, the device will show a lower Swingweight. This is due to a flaw in the Swingweight instrument. Most club makers today believe that the Swingweight of a club will be reduced by adding weight to the grip end of the club.
However, most club fitters misuse the scale today. The Swingweight Scale is meant as a tool for adjusting the clubhead weight of golf clubs for all the clubs in the set to have the same feeling, heft or MOIG. The mass of the clubs and the properties of the golfer´s body also plays a role. Matching by MOIG would be a step in the right direction for matching golf clubs however, there are further complications to overcome. As an instrument for measuring the MOIG is now available from Rational Golf LLC of Florida, it would be irrational to continue to use the approximate method of Swingweight. He found that all his balanced clubs would have similar upward force at the end of the grip when balanced over a fulcrum 14 inches from the grip end. Robert Adams made an instrument that would provide an indication of whether all the clubs in a set of golf clubs would have similar MOIG. There were no instruments available for measuring the moment of inertia of golf clubs at the time. One can imagine how difficult it would be to adjust all 13 clubs until they all felt like having the same MOIG. The moment of inertia around the center of the grip is henceforth referred to as MOIG. When Robert Adams was matching his set of golf clubs by waggling the golf clubs in a horizontal plane, he was attempting to measure the moment of inertia of the club around the center of the grip. There is, of course, no such thing as an off-the-shelf set of clubs that are fitted or matched to every golfer.
It is an easy way for club manufacturers of matching golf clubs as they can produce standard clubs that will, supposedly, fit any golfer. However, today, with the more modern shafts, that have purposeful variation along their length, and the tendency to mix and match a variety of shafts within a single set, the less likely it is that a Swingweight matched set is relevant as a method of matching golf clubs.Īnother glaring flaw in the Swingweight system is that it does not take the properties of the golfer into consideration. When the Swingweight method was introduced, it had some credibility as all the shafts in the set of clubs at the time were made out of wood. This was the original intent of the Swingweight process. If a set of clubs having the exact same grips and identical shafts trimmed incrementally are matched by Swingweight using only the clubhead for making adjustments, then the MOI of each club will be reasonably matched. Other scales were developed, but none proved popular. He measured Swingweight, the upward force at the grip end of the club when balanced on a point 14 inches down the shaft on a “Lorythmic” scale using an arbitrary system of letters A to G and numbers 0 to 9, with A0 being the “lightest”, and G9 the “heaviest”.
Robert Adams developed the first known system for matching golf clubs within a set in the 1920s (US Patent No. The golf industry seems to have given up on the search for a scientific method of matching golf clubs.
Golf enthusiasts have explored a few non-scientific methods over the last hundred years, most notably the Swingweight method, still used by the vast majority of golfers today. A properly matched set of clubs will provide superior consistency with regard to ball flight, direction, and distance. Matching of golf clubs has been considered the Holy Grail of golf since the beginning of golf club manufacturing about 500 years ago.
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