When purchasing new golf equipment, one of the words that often gets banded about by the salesman is ‘offset.’ Now a lot of people don’t necessarily understand what offset is but more importantly what can offset do for you in your game to help you. So offset is a term that we use that refers to the fact that the leading edge of the golf club is set behind the middle of the shaft. Now if you look at this driver this is an offset driver. So when we look at the leading edge it actually sits slightly behind the middle of the shaft in comparison to a normal driver where the leading edge sits level or slightly ahead of the center of the shaft.

Now it doesn’t necessarily look like a lot of camera there but actually when you stand over the top of it and you look down at two different golf clubs, there is a noticeable difference that most of the face of this one is in front of the shaft and a lot of the face of this one is tucked behind the shaft. Now what can that do to help you and why do we want it? So during the swing, we know that there’s a club – the club has a centre of gravity, and the centre of gravity is generally going to be let’s just say the middle of the head. The middle of the head is going to try and line up with the centerline of the shaft when the club is swinging quickly. The forces that pull down on the club are actually going to bend the shaft this way to get the head lined up.

Now if I’ve got an offset club I’ve got more of that head behind the shaft. So the centre of gravity is further from the shaft. As that swings down that centre of gravity has further to travel and therefore bends the shaft more. Now when you look at the way that shaft bends it bends this way, it actually squares the head up more and get the head to aim more left. Now if the head is aiming more left, the ball will go more left. So that becomes useful if you are a slicer. If historically you deliver the club head in an open position and the ball has gone to the right-hand side for the right-handed golfer. Having an offset head means the head will bend forwards more and the face will be aiming more left at the point of contact. If the face is aiming more left the ball will not slice quite so much. So if you’re a slicer of the golf ball and for some people if they don’t hit the ball particularly high, having the offset head, the head aims more left, it adds more loft, the ball will fly better.

So why don’t we all use offset drivers? Well actually if you’re using a normal profile driver and hitting the ball straight, using the offset driver makes the head aim more left and higher, therefore you hit the ball high and left and you end up pulling the ball off the left-hand side of the fairway. So if you’re a straight driver of the ball an offset driver is not for you. If you’re a slicer of the golf ball and you struggle to get the ball to go straight and high enough, an offset driver will react better when you hit it and I think if you use offset and plenty of loft you’ll actually hit straighter tee shots.