Big Driver Test 2007

 

Acronyms

Recent years have seen golf manufacturers using more and more acronyms to convey the fact that their product is better than their competitors. Although it may sound impressive to have as many letters after one’s name as possible, what use are they if nobody knows what they mean? Here we’ve compiled a quick list of popular acronyms and their definitions.

MOI - Moment Of Inertia is the distribution of weight in the clubhead which maintains clubhead speed on off-center hits. Placing weight further back in the clubhead increases the MOI, and keeps the clubhead moving through the ball when the club tries to twist as a result of a mishit shot.

COR - Coefficient of Restitution is a measurement of the clubface’s ability to rebound the ball, expressed as a percentage that is determined by a ball’s speed off the clubhead divided by the speed at which it struck the clubhead. The current USGA rule limiting the coefficient of restitution means that when the clubhead impacts the ball, there cannot be more than an 83-percent transfer of the energy of the head to the ball.

CG - Refers to the Center of Gravity. This is the point within the head of a golf club at which it would be perfectly balanced. The position of the center of gravity within a clubhead can affect the trajectory of shots. A CG position that is low and toward the back of a clubhead will, for example, encourage a higher trajectory.

Whether our explanations are of any use perhaps depends on your knowledge of golf club design, which let’s face it, for the majority of us isn’t that great. So why give us this information in the first place? All we wanted to know is ‘will this club work for me?’. And to that end we did the driver test whilst trying to keep things as simple as possible - although you might want to read our explanation of lie angle and clubface angle once more.