Golf Equipment Terminology for Dummies

ALLOY - The combination of two or more metals to optimize material properties. Most cast titanium clubheads, for example, consist of 90 percent titanium, 6 percent aluminum and 4 percent vanadium yielding a combination that is stronger than pure titanium.

BALANCE POINT - The point at which the shaft of a club balances when placed on a fulcrum (a imger, for example).

BALATA - A resilient substance derived from a balata tree (or bully tree) used to make ball covers.

BI-METAL - A combination of two metals in a clubhead (or, in the case of the popular Orlimar TriMetal fairway woods, three metals

BLADE - A traditionally designed iron, featuring a smaller clubhead, thinner top line and a little offset. The head is solid.

BORE-THROUGH HOSEL - The best example is the Callaway Big Bertha family of metalwoods, in which the shaft extends an the way through the hosel and out the bottom of the sole where the end is capped with a rubber plug.

BORON - A premium lightweight man-made fiber that is five times as strong and, twice as stiff as steel. Boron has the highest compression strength of any composite material. It also has high modulus.

BOUNCE - The amount of the trailing edge of the club which is below the leading edge.

BULGE - The amount of curvature in the face of a club.

CAMBERED SOLE - A sole that is curved from front to back.

CAST - Clubs first appeared in large numbers in the late 1960's. The trade-off is diminished feel and ability to maneuver a golf ball, two things that seldom concern the high-handicap golfer .

CASTING - A manufacturing process, incidentally one that dates back thousands of years, that basically consists of the following steps: heating up metal into molten state, pouring that metal into a form, then letting the metal cool so it assumes that form.

CAVITY BACK - An iron with a depression or scooped-out area in the back of the clubhead; this weight generally is redistributed to the perimeter of the head.

CENTER OF GRAVITY - The modern term for sweet spot; called CG for short; if a clubhead (without the shaft) is balanced on a pencil, the balance point will be the center of gravity; contemporary club designers, using lighter materials, elongated club heads and other weighting schemes, have been able to move the CG to suit their needs.

CIRCUMFLEX POINT - The point along the shaft where the degree of bending is greatest. It influences ball trajectory.

CLUBHEADS - This is quickly becoming a non-issue since almost the entire market now consists of investment cast, perimeter weighted, cavity back designs. Forged irons have virtually disappeared from the marked place.

COMPOSITE - A blend or mixture of different substances, the broad category of composite golf shafts include graphite (graphite fibers mixed with resin) and other hybrid shafts not made entirely of metal.

COMPRESSION - The amount of resilience in a ball, or how much it compresses at impact. The higher the compression, the greater the required force to fully compress the ball. It is a misconception that a ball with higher compression (100) will travel further than a ball with less compression (80 or 90). The distances are virtually the same. A greater difference is in the area of feel. A higher compression ball will feel harder than a ball with less compression.

COUNTER-BALANCING - The intentional adding of weight in the grip area (with lead or lead tape) to lessen the swingweight crown: the top of a wood or metalwood.

DEAD WEIGHT - The overall weight of a golf club.

DROOPING - A downward bending of the shaft during the swing which creates shots off the toe of the club.

DYNAMIC MEASUREMENT - Taken with the club being swung by a person or robot.

ELASTOMER - A polymer which has the elastic properties of rubber. Used predominately in the covers of balls or for inserts in putters.

FACE BALANCED - Normally refers to putters, which are face balanced if the face points toward the sky when balanced on a fulcrum; the theory here is to promote a square-to-square putting stroke (no opening the clubface on the back swing and then closing it down on the through stroke).

FACE COATING - Any of various micro-thin substances applied to the face of clubs; Black Ice, perhaps the best known, is a ceramic coating borrowed from aircraft applications.

FACE INSERTS - Any face plate that is inserted in an iron or wood; originally found in wooden woods, now, however, prominent in irons; the most common configuration is a titanium face insert in a stainless steel body; because there are rules governing the height of insert materials (in microns), the roughness of a metal insert (to produce back spin) is precisely regulated.

FILAMENT WINDING - Sheets of pre-preg (see definition graphite or boron are layered and rolled onto a mandrel, then cured to make a shaft.

FLAG-WRAPPING - A carbon fiber shaft construction method, also known as tube rolling, in which each piece (flag) is uniformly cut and arranged in layers at desired angles around a mandrel, then cured in an oven.

FLEX - A broad term to describe the rigidity of a golf shaft; commonly accepted flexes are L (ladies), A (seniors), R (regular), S (stiff) and X (extra stiff); unfortunately the golf industry has been unable to agree on any measurement method or standard for flex, so there is no uniformity from one company to another; actually a golf shaft flexes at several different points, but flex point is used as a general description of where the bend seems the most prominent.

FLEX POINT - Also called bend point or kick point; most often labeled as low, mid or high; a low flex point is nearest the clubhead and produces a shot with the highest trajectory; a high flex point is farthest away from the head and produces the lowest trajectory.

FORGED IRONS - They are made of softer steel and provide more greater feel and feedback for accomplished players. The process consists of hammering and shaping the clubhead, then cooling, grounding and polishing it into its final shape. Most of the forgings on the market today are cavity back models which feature many of the perimeter-weighting advantages of investment cast.

FORGED TITANIUM - Made with a forging process as opposed to the traditional casting process. Sometimes used as face inserts in titanium metal woods. Some manufacturers believe forged titanium combines a softer feel with optimum distance.

GRAPHITE - A synthetic material that is heat-induced to make soft, black carbon/graphite filaments. Graphite fibers are available in different strengths and modulus values. Graphite is an excellent substitute for steel in shafts for several reasons. It is lighter (but just as strong) so it can be swung faster to create more clubhead velocity and, in turn, greater distance. It also has dampening qualities which make it a better choice for seniors and others with hand, wrist, arm and shoulder ailments.

GROOVE - The (scoring) lines on the face of the club.

HEEL-TOE-WEIGHTING - A redistribution of the weight from a central sweetspot to the heel and toe areas of the club to expand the effective hitting area.

HOSEL - The neck of the club into which the shaft fits.

INVESTMENT CAST - A manufacturing process which effectively expands the sweetspot by perimeter weighting the club head. The clubs are cast in a mold.

KICK POINT - Also, Flex Point. The point in the shaft where the degree of bending is greatest. It determines the ball's launch angle. A lower flex point creates more loft because the "kick" is nearer the clubbed. Better players need less help from the shaft. They create their own clubbed speed and kick and generally use shafts with higher flex points. Mid-to-high handicappers, seniors and women need more help getting the ball airborne so a lower flex point is to their advantage. Flex point has a direct bearing on trajectory and as a result determines how easy a club is to hit, or at least the golfer's perception of the ease or difficulty factor. Also, better players with smooth, flowing swings may benefit from softer shafts with lower flex points. Physically strong players who swing very hard, even if they aren't low handicappers, are probably better off with strong shafts. As a general rule, most golfers use shafts that are too stiff.

LIE - Angle formed by a club's shaft and the bottom of the clubbed.

LIQUID METAL (or metallic glass) - Either term refers to a high-tech manufacturing process (first introduced in 1959) that centers on a cooling system that gives metal alloys glass-like materials. Metal is heated and then cooled at such a high rate of speed that in 20 seconds what was once molten metal could be held in your hand. This cooling process strengthens the molecular structure of the material so there are no seams; the material is incredibly hard and strong. In the case of golf clubs, they are so hard that traditional stamping machines cannot engrave scorelines in the face of the driver. That has to be done by a laser etching process. These metallic glass materials, it should be noted, do have a degree of brittleness, which is why the laser etching is done in a liquid medium to keep the metal from shattering.

LOFT - The measurement, in degrees, of a club's angle. Short irons have more loft than long irons.

MANDREL - A tapered steel rod around which composite materials are wrapped to make a shaft.

MODULUS - A measure of stiffness. It refers to material's ability to resist bending or stretching. The higher the modulus, the stiffer the fiber.

MOMENT OF INERTIA - The amount of twisting in the club head at impact; the higher the moment of inertia, the lower the amount of twisting; manufacturers claiming to have a larger sweet spot actually have improved the moment of inertia rather than the sweet spot.

OFFSET - The relationship between the clubbed and the shaft in which the clubbed is set off the line or slightly behind the shaft. Offset clubs promote getting the hands through the impact zone ahead of the club. A game -improvement feature in club design.

ONSET - The opposite of offset; the club face is positioned in front of the hosel and shaft; very few clubs, with the exception of some putters are onset.

OVERSIZE - A word whose definition keeps expanding; once a Big Bertha driver head, at 235 cubic centimeters, was considered huge; many driver heads now exceed 300 CC's in volume.

PERIMETER WEIGHTING - A weight distribution scheme in which weight is positioned largely around the outer section (rather than the middle) of the clubhead; designed to produce better shots on miss-hits; results are more dramatic on bigger club heads.

PERSIMMON - A hard and durable wood from the persimmon tree; used for most of the 20th century to make drivers and fairway woods; now mostly replaced by stainless steel and titanium, even though persimmon woods hit the ball as far and, according to some, have the added advantage of gear effect (because of optimal bulge in the face, gear effect is the fading or drawing of the ball back toward the fairway on miss-hits).

POLYMER - A soft plastic-like substance frequently used in putters with poured face inserts (such as Odyssey).

PREPREG - Or, pre-impregnated. Graphite or boron filaments are impregnated with epoxy resin to form rolls of tape which are used by shaft manufacturers to create.

SCORELINES - The lines, either in a U or box shape or in the traditional V shape, that are engraved into the face of a club. These scorelines help induce the coefficient of friction, which we know as creating backspin. The scorelines enable water and sand particles to escape so that metal and ball have more contact during impact.

SURLYN - A synthetic material which replaced ablate as the ball cover of choice for most golfers because of its durability; first introduced by Spalding in its Top-Flite model balls.

SWEET SPOT - The precise point on a clubhead where contact with the ball feels best; by definition, this is a spot and not a large area as stated in many ads from golf equipment companies; a claim for a larger sweet spot probably means only this: that off center hits are more forgiving because of perimeter weighting and modern weight distribution.

SWINGWEIGHT - A measurement that reflects the effective weight (or feel) of the club head in relationship to the rest of the club when balanced on a 14 inch fulcrum; adding one-half inch of length will increase a club's swingweight by about three swingweight points.

TITANIUM - A titanium alloy with high strength-to-weight ratio, plus ability to withstand fatigue which provides great consistency.

TORQUE - A force that produces, or tends to produce, torsion or rotation. A relative measure of how much twist there is in a club.