Bulge Face & The Gear Effect: How It Helps Your Game - Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Bulge Face & The Gear Effect: How It Helps Your Game - Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

When you’re looking at Woods and the new modern drivers, high breeds in fairway woods, you might start to notice that the club face isn’t actually flat. It sounds a bit alien because an iron face is flat and a putter face is flat but if I’m aiding my golf ball down here and I’m trying to hit it with something that’s curved, well surely that’s going to be more difficult. Well actually the bulge on the club face as we call it, a bulge is designed to help you hit the ball straighter. It helps the benefactors of spending a lot of money, a lot of dollars on technology, trying to help you hit the ball a bit straighter. And the bulge is one of the things that they brought into the game to try and help that ball fly nice and straight, particularly on the off center hits.

Now if you hit a ball into the toe of the driver that would normally create a lot of hook spin and the ball would hook down to the left hand side. But the bulge face actually means that the ball will start out to the right hand side and that ball will draw down to the center. Now it’s clearly better to hit a ball in the center of the golf club, definitely where you should be trying to hit it. But the bulge on the face would mean that the off center hits although they wouldn’t be perfect shots and they wouldn’t fly down straight, they would be better than if you had a perfectly flat face. If you have a perfectly flat face, you get what we call gear effect where the club face opens as you hit, if you hit in the toe and the ball spins back from right to left and it would just cause a hook.

But the bulge on the face pushes the ball right and then it curves back in. So believe me, the bulge on the face although it can look quite strange if you’re only used to playing irons, the bulge on the face is designed to help you out. One word of caution with this is making sure that when you’re setting up to the golf ball, you really focus on good square alignment. Because with the curved face trying to point at your target, your fairway or your flag can be quite awkward, so be careful that you don’t start looking at the heel or the toe because there the curved sections, look at the dead center of the golf and try to focus on the dead middle.

And really work hard on your alignment, and if you’re struggling with that, maybe look at a product that has an alignment drawn into it. Something like the Thomas Golf Clubs, have a painted line drawn down the center of the golf club. So as you are lining up, it’s like a rifle line if you like a sight line that helps you just point everything straight in line with the middle of the fairway so you don’t get put off by the rolls and the bulge on the club face. So that’s a good explanation of why the club is curved but don’t be put off by that, it’s there to help you.

 2012-06-06

When you’re looking at Woods and the new modern drivers, high breeds in fairway woods, you might start to notice that the club face isn’t actually flat. It sounds a bit alien because an iron face is flat and a putter face is flat but if I’m aiding my golf ball down here and I’m trying to hit it with something that’s curved, well surely that’s going to be more difficult. Well actually the bulge on the club face as we call it, a bulge is designed to help you hit the ball straighter. It helps the benefactors of spending a lot of money, a lot of dollars on technology, trying to help you hit the ball a bit straighter. And the bulge is one of the things that they brought into the game to try and help that ball fly nice and straight, particularly on the off center hits.

Now if you hit a ball into the toe of the driver that would normally create a lot of hook spin and the ball would hook down to the left hand side. But the bulge face actually means that the ball will start out to the right hand side and that ball will draw down to the center. Now it’s clearly better to hit a ball in the center of the golf club, definitely where you should be trying to hit it. But the bulge on the face would mean that the off center hits although they wouldn’t be perfect shots and they wouldn’t fly down straight, they would be better than if you had a perfectly flat face. If you have a perfectly flat face, you get what we call gear effect where the club face opens as you hit, if you hit in the toe and the ball spins back from right to left and it would just cause a hook.

But the bulge on the face pushes the ball right and then it curves back in. So believe me, the bulge on the face although it can look quite strange if you’re only used to playing irons, the bulge on the face is designed to help you out. One word of caution with this is making sure that when you’re setting up to the golf ball, you really focus on good square alignment. Because with the curved face trying to point at your target, your fairway or your flag can be quite awkward, so be careful that you don’t start looking at the heel or the toe because there the curved sections, look at the dead center of the golf and try to focus on the dead middle.

And really work hard on your alignment, and if you’re struggling with that, maybe look at a product that has an alignment drawn into it. Something like the Thomas Golf Clubs, have a painted line drawn down the center of the golf club. So as you are lining up, it’s like a rifle line if you like a sight line that helps you just point everything straight in line with the middle of the fairway so you don’t get put off by the rolls and the bulge on the club face. So that’s a good explanation of why the club is curved but don’t be put off by that, it’s there to help you.