Golf clubs for beginners are better than they have ever been.With today's golf clubs, even the least experienced people can play and enjoy the game of golf. “No matter what your age or skill level there are clubs that can help you.” New golfers can make it easier on themselves by choosing clubs that are geared to higher-handicappers.As a beginner, you will have problems making solid contact with the ball. Hitting the ball towards the heel or toe of the club-face is common among all golfers, not just beginners. You may have trouble returning the club-face to a square position at the bottom of your swing. Hitting the top of the ball or hitting the ground first (a fat shot) are also problems for most golfers. You may have problems getting the ball up in the air and keeping it on line. Most recreational golfers, men and women, do not have the swing speed to create enough back-spin to get the ball airborne and keep it on-line. Thankfully there are golf clubs that are designed to help you get more accuracy and better distance.As a beginner, and even after you have played for a while, you will appreciate all the "help and forgiveness" you can get from your golf clubs. “Game improvement” is a term given to any golf club or club-head that is designed to offer “less distance loss” and/or “less loss in accuracy” when the ball is hit away from the center of the club-face. These clubs will also help you "get the ball up in the air faster" and will lessen the effects that side spin has on your golf ball. Key design principles are weight distribution, clubhead size and styling.The position of the Center Of Gravity within a clubhead alters both the trajectory and the accuracy of shots. There’s a vertical COG location. (how high up in the head the COG is from the sole). A horizontal COG location (how far over it is from the center of the shaft in the hosel of the head). A depth COG location (how far back from the face it is located). The intersection inside of the head of these different balance points is the Center Of Gravity of the clubhead. “Moment Of Inertia (MoI)” is a term being used more and more by golf club manufactures. (to describe the amount of forgiveness in their clubs)Moment Of Inertia, or MOI, is a property of physics that indicates the relative difference in how easy or difficult it will be to set any object (clubhead) in motion about a defined axis of rotation. The higher the MOI of an object, the more force, will have to be applied to set that object in a rotational motion. There are three different MOIs which can be measured for the club itself.Two of these are important in the design of the clubhead. First, when you hit a shot off the center of the face, even though the head is secured to a shaft, the head will try to rotate around the vertical axis going through the clubhead's center of gravity. In marketing terms, this is the head design property that has a bearing on the amount of "forgiveness" a clubhead offers for off-center strikes. The larger the clubhead, and/or the more the designer incorporates perimeter weighting, the higher the MOI of the clubhead about its center of gravity vertical axis will be. The second refers to the MOI of the clubhead about the shaft axis.When the golfer swings the club on the downswing, the clubhead is rotating around the axis through the center of the shaft. Little is spoken about this MOI in equipment marketing, but it is an important design factor that can affect the accuracy of the shot, not the distance. The bigger the head or the more weight that is placed far out on the toe of the clubhead, the higher the MOI of the head will be about the shaft's axis. There is also a MOI for the whole golf club, when swung, the club being "rotated" around the golfer during the swing.The longer the club, the heavier the head, the higher the MOI will be in relation to you swinging the club. There will be more resistance and a slower swing. Clubfitting theory states that if all clubs in a set are made to have the same, identical MOI, the golfer will be more consistent because each club will require the same effort to swing. The current method for matching clubs in swing feel is called swingweight matching.Swingweight is an expression of the ratio of the weight in the grip end of the club to the weight in the rest of the club on down to the clubhead. Swingweight-matched golf clubs are not matched for MOI, but come relatively close to MOI matching. MOI matching of clubs is a swing matching system currently offered only by more advanced custom clubmakers. You can swing lighter clubs faster than heavier clubs. These are some of the game improvement features most golfers will appreciate.Perimeter weighting Perimeter weighting means that the weight of the club-head is positioned around the outside of the club-head. Perimeter weighting increases the “moment of inertia” of a club-head which means the club-head will be more resistant to twisting on mishits. Perimeter weighting will help make your mishits go a little straighter. Shots off the heel or toe will be more solid. The more weight that is moved to perimeter the more forgiving the club the will be. Large face area To help with inconsistent ball contact an oversize club-head will help. An oversize club has a “large hitting area” so there will be fewer mishits. The bigger the club-face the bigger the hitting area, the less the club-head is going to twist. Low center of gravity design If the center of gravity of the club-head is low and far back from the face, the ball will have a “tendency to fly higher”. This helps golfers with slower swing speeds, and golfers who have a hard time getting the ball in the air. The “lower the center of gravity” and the “farther back from the club-face the center of gravity” is, the higher the ball will fly for any given loft, and more back spin will be imparted on the ball. The farther back and lower the center of gravity the more game improvement. Off-Set club-head Off-set club-head allows a little more time for the club-face to return to square. An off-set hosel moves the leading edge of club farther back from the shaft. This helps golfers square the club-face at contact. It will also help keep your hands in front of the ball which will help with prevent fat shots. The degree of off-set determines its forgiveness. The more of these design features a golf club possess, and the higher the degree of forgiveness designed into these features, “the more forgiving the golf club is going to be. ”The length of the golf club and the loft of the club-face will also have an effect on your ability to swing the club.Each club in your set will be a “different length”, and will have a “different loft angle” on the face of the club-head. They are designed this way to allow you to hit the ball different distances using your same swing. This gives you a golf club that will be suitable for just about any yardage you may encounter on the course. "The longer a golf club is and the lower the loft angle of the club-face the harder that club will be for you to both swing and control". The more difficult a club is for you to swing and control the more likely it will be to cause you problems. Slightly shorter clubs will make accurate club-ball contact a better possibility. More loft on club-face means it will be easier to get the ball in the air. Added loft will increase backspin and make the left and right curves less pronounced. Game improvement features are found in:
Driver The Driver will be the toughest club for you to master. It will be your longest club with the least amount of loft and will be the hardest to control. Much of the driver head technology is aimed at making them easier to hit and generating more distance with greater forgiveness, A more forgiving driver means greater room to compensate for swing errors. The larger the club-head The large driver head creates a larger hitting area and increases the club-head's “Moment of Inertia.” The large driver head helps move the center of gravity further back from the club-face which will help provides a higher launch angle to the ball at impact. The higher the loft angle on your driver, the less likely you are of hooking or slicing the ball, the ball will have more back-spin than side-spin. More loft means it will be easier to get the ball in the air, and will likely go a little farther as well. Fairway woods For fairway woods, the technology is very similar to that used in drivers, only the heads are smaller and the shafts shorter, and the lofts greater. The term “fairway wood” is used to refer to all woods other than the driver. Most standard sets of golf clubs include the # 3 and # 5 fairway woods. The # 7, # 9 and # 11 fairway woods that are available are often referred yo as Utility Woods. The smaller heads with higher lofts and shorter shafts of the fairway and utility woods makes them easier to control. The # 3 wood is the second longest club and except for the driver has the least amount of loft. Many golfers will use the # 3 wood from the tee when accuracy is more important than distance, for this reason a larger club-head and bigger club-face is still of value in the #3 wood, The importance of club-head size lessens as the clubs get shorter and the loft is increased. The main benefit of the “shorter fairway and utility woods” is “getting the ball airborne” on a steep trajectory, and this is dependent on a smaller,“low profile club-head”. These woods will have a larger concentration of weight in the sole. By lowering the center of gravity it will help you in a couple of ways. First it helps you "hit the ball longer and straighter off any lie. Secondly it helps get the ball airborne in an optimal trajectory. The low profile woods are able to hit the ball out of the longer grass more cleanly than irons. The long flat sole of the fairway woods make them smoother than an iron through the grass, rough and sand. The leading edge is not as sharp as an iron which makes it less likely to dig in. Irons The more game-improvement benefits your iron possess, the more forgiving your clubs is going to be. The larger the head, the deeper the cavity on the back of the head, the wider the sole, the more round the sole shape, the more loft on the club-face are features that will help immensely.
Are all game improvement designs that make these clubs easier to use. For irons, perimeter weighting will help to make those mishits go a little straighter. Your shots off the toe or heel will be more solid. An iron with a wide sole will slide through the turf easier and is less likely to dig in which will help reduce the chances of hitting the ball fat. A wide sole will also help lower the center of gravity of the club-head. The lower the center of gravity the easier it is to hit the ball below its center. This always helps get the ball up in the air and will put more backspin on your ball. A thick top-line will help you with your set-up, many new players find this feature helps them to align their golf club properly. It is important to understand that even with game improvement features most golfers find it difficult to hit the longer and less lofted #3, #4 and even the #5 irons that are included in most sets of golf clubs. Hybrid clubs Hybrid clubs are fairly new and have become very, very popular, they are cross between a fairway wood and a iron. Hybrids combine the best elements of fairway woods and irons into one club whose goal is to be easier to hit. A hybrid club has a hollow-body club-head that is comparable in loft to fairway woods and irons in a set of golf clubs. The shafts are shorter for more control and accuracy. The hollow construction also helps raise the hybrids moment of inertia which contributes to its resistance to the twisting of the club-head on off-center hits. The hollow construction allows for the sole to be much larger than on an iron, shifting the center of gravity farther back from the face. This design also puts more of the weight in the sole which tremendously lowers the center of gravity, it will create more backspin on your ball which will counteract side spin and keep your ball straighter. This means the ball gets airborne, flies high and lands soft. Compact heads and features such as rounded soles or rails on the bottom help you deal with a variety of different lies, out of the rough or on the fairway. Hybrids are smaller, more compact, shorter and easier to control than comparably lofted fairway woods. Manufacturers match the hybrid number to the corresponding iron number, the best indicator of distance when looking at hybrids is the loft. Most 3 hybrids match up closely with a 3 iron in loft. Loft being equal, most hybrids will perform better with regards to distance and forgiveness. Wedges Because of it's length, loft and design, game improvement features are not needed in this club. Putter There are three main types of putters, the “traditional blade”, a “heel-toe” club-head and “mallet” club-head. Putter head sizes have grown with the popular two or three ball alignment style mallet putters. These larger heads possess a high moment of inertia making them resistant to twisting on off center hits. For a putter you should look for large headed mallet with alignment aids, they provide greater stability if you hit the ball off center and make shorter putt much easier to align. Next: Buying a set of golf clubs
Buying a full set of golf clubs is the easiest and best way for a beginner to get started.
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