THE GEAR TO HELPYOU FIX A SLICE

From “draw” drivers to softer balls, you can buy your way to straighter shots

IRONS

There aren’t many brands who shout about draw-biased irons, but Cobra’s new F-MAX Superlite have “Draw” stamped on the head. More brands probably don’t do it because if they did, they’d put o half the potential customers who’d be interested in a set. More golfers need help squaring the clubface and most don’t like to admit it. The truth of the matter is that a lot of game improvement models probably have a degree of draw bias built in anyway.

HOW THEY WORK

Let’s take Cobra’s new F-MAX as an example. Generally, there’s more mass positioned towards the heel than the

DRAW WOODS

Draw woods are nothing new, but draw drivers in particular have made a sizeable comeback, and now all the leading brands make one. How does a draw driver di er from a regular model? Usually there’s more weight located towards the heel, some have o set hosels and some will have a subtly closed face angle, which points left of the target.

HOW THEY WORK

It’s common for draw woods to come with higher lofts, and that’s because slicing golfers often have slower swings. But more loft also means less side spin, which increases accuracy. Heel weighting helps position the centre of gravity more in-line with the typical impact position of a slicer, and an o set hosel gives a fraction more time to square the clubface at impact. The idea of a closed clubface (points left of the target) is that a slicer’s swing is more likely to deliver the clubface square to the target line. toe. It means the weight naturally wants to rotate around the shaft and slam the clubface square or closed to the target line at impact. Extra o set also helps square the face, as it gives a little more time before impact occurs. Hybrid-style irons can also help, because their wider heads have a centre of gravity more towards the heel, so naturally have a more left sided tendency.

THE BALL

Callaway started a golf ball revolution when it introduced the original Chrome Soft a few years ago. It brought low compression, soft feeling golf balls centre stage, with tour usage and a very competitive price tag compared to other tour balls. Every golf ball brand now has a soft/low compression model and it’s how they spin less which makes them straighter.

TECH CAN HELP, TOO...

The shot tracking specialists at Shot Scope say golfers would stand more chance hitting greens with approaches if they aimed at the back left corner of the green and took a club to go 11 yards further than their yardage suggests. Their reasoning is two-fold. One, most golfers think they hit the ball further than they actually do. And two, club golfers have a horrible tendency of slapping shots weakly away to the right side of the green.

HOW IT WORKS

You pop shot trackers in the end of each grip in your set and they talk to an app (or you wear a watch like the Shot Scope which gathers the information). After every round you can see where each shot has ended up. By looking for trends and patterns, you can see how badly a slice is a ecting your scores.

HOW THEY WORK

Golf ball engineers didn’t really set out to make more accurate balls; more accuracy is actually a byproduct of creating lower-spinning balls to go further. Callaway says their pros spotted how Chrome Soft was actually too straight. It meant they couldn’t shape shots, especially with irons into tight pin positions. So they made a firmer, higher spinning Chrome Soft X. How they work is down to some clever physics and how the di erent layers of a ball compress and bounce back in tandem, along with the velocity that’s generated. All you need to know is less sidespin means more accuracy. Just don’t think all low compression balls are low spin – they’re not.