golfrewind.com

I have noticed that there seems to be a slight movement of sorts in some of the golf forums toward back weighting, mostly in putters and also in other clubs like drivers, and other woods with a lot positive feed back. I also noticed on some of the tour events, that most the players using YES putters have some sort of cap or weight in their putter( I heard that they might be signing on with some one for back weighting ). Is this the start of a trend that could see it's way back to the retail word and into our hands? If so does anyone have any feed back of there own on back weighting, and how much to use, as well as where to get it.

Are you talking about adding a strip of lead tape to a club to make them a bit heavier? Or about buying some extra heavy screws for your adjustable driver? What are the benefits that you see mentioned?

Personally, I wouldn't expect miracles from it! The club manufacturers try to make their clubs the correct weight (within the constraints of their function, for example 'game improvement iron' vs. 'players iron') so an un-fooled-around-with club is a good starting point. If a player has a preference for a slightly heavier swing-weight, they might add some lead strip to their irons, or some of their irons. And if they want their putter to feel a bit heavier they might add some weight to that. But do not think that the club manufacturers were too cheap or careless to omit the extra weight, and that the equipment tinkerers on the forum have discovered a magical way to improve on their clubs! That said, I think experimenting with the putter is a lot less harmless / possibly more helpful than experimenting with the other clubs, that need to be swung fast!

I think he is talking about adding weight to the end of the club ...up around the grip area. Golf smith is selling those weights that goes in the end of the grips but unless you know what size you need it can be very $$

I have 30g backweight in my driver. This is a direct result of a launch monitor fitting using impact tape on the clubface. Without question, the added butt weight resulted in a greater number of center face contacts. Over the years I have "resurrected" guys' clubs by backweighting them. Irons, drivers, and putters alike. 10-40g in a driver, 60-110g in a putter are the ranges I have used. Adding weight to the grip end will definitely "fool" the swingweight scale... in these cases you can not judge a club by its measured s.w. The club may feel ever so slightly different in your hand, but it won't be a lighter feel as the s.w. suggests. Normally, I recommend looking at buttweight for more aggressive hitters or for irons that the player can't feel the clubhead or have trouble getting through the ball.

I am exceptionally skeptical about adding weight in the grip, because it really should have no effect on how you swing. Here's a good test... do you swing significantly differently with and without a glove? Because if you don't, grip weighting is not for you -- a golf glove is around 25 g, right in that range the previous poster said he added. If you don't notice a difference in club performance (not feel, obviously with glove will feel differently that without glove) that depends on whether you wear a glove or not, then putting a little bit of weight in the grip end of your club isn't going to matter.

Related link, without comment:

kuykendallgolf

I have probably 100 examples to exemplify that there are benefits to backweighting. Its true some guys will not benefit from it, but for every one of them there is someone who does benefit. Like I stated, the actual feel of golf club will not change all that much-- I threw the term swingweight in there because I assume most of you are familiar with it. Its all about performance. As far as adding 100g to a putter, try it out once and get back to us....

Can you show me any studies that showed that the grip weighted club performed best? That is, two identical clubs were given to the golfer, one grip weighted and the other not, and the grip weighted one wins a significant majority of the time? You have to give them both without telling them which is which, because just adding that weight to the grip and telling them how much better it will be is classic placebo effect. Have you ever told someone you backweighted their club for them, but didn't, and they still came back raving?

I've got a club making buddy with whom I've talked about this before. He told me that he surreptitiously performed this exact experiment on some of his customers. He back weighted some of the clubs and some not back weighted, and asked which clubs had the better feel. I.e. can you feel the clubhead better, feel the shaft, etc. No significant difference between the two at all. That is, the backweighted (bw'ed) club was said to have the better feel over the non-bw'ed one almost exactly as often as the non-bw'ed one was said to have more feel that the bw'ed one. My buddy did this on "over 100 customers" to show it to himself. He got the inspiration to do this after talking with another clubmaker he knows who had done it to over 10,000 people. Again, null result. Players didn't pick the bw'ed one as any better than the non bw'ed one.

Does it just have to be the grip? What about using a heavier shaft? Again, the weight of a glove is exactly the same as the weight you are saying adding here, are you really telling me that swinging with or without a glove is a significant difference? Heck, instead of doing work to their club, why not just have them buy some cheap zinc rings and have them wear that... it's the exact same thing!

I can see this being slightly helpful for putting. Simply because it is not a full swing, and because usually backweighting putters involve significantly more mass. But, in general, all the evidence I've seen is that it is placebo. The amount of mass we are talking here is so small, and putting it in the hand does nothing to affect the rest of the club.

Finally, straightshooter, you may not want to comment on the link, but I will. firstly, I respect Kuykendell as a physicist, but he's made some mistakes here. Firstly, you don't rotate about about grip in a golf swing, the center of rotation should be your spine. You don't hold the butt end of the grip still and rotate about that. So, if Kuykendell is right about simply moving more mass closer to the center of the axis of rotation... why don't we all wear lead vests when golfing? That would move a lot of extra mass to the axis of rotation... your spine. Secondly, how can 90 g be the optimum for everybody? In the wide spectrum of human variation, everybody does best with exactly the same grip weight? That's just laughable. Thirdly, the webpage is clearly aimed at selling something, and so is hardly objective.

So, in summary, I'd like to see something objective. I've got the results my buddy told me and the results from his clubmaking colleague that they seem pretty convinced that it does nothing to increase feel at all. On the other hand, when you tell someone that you've dramatically improved their clubs, golf is a mental enough game that sometimes that all it take for their game to improve is to tell them how much better their club is now. Finally, again, we are talking about the same weight as the golf glove or a ring or two. Really, you're going to tell me that you're going to swing the club significantly different if you forgot to put on your wedding ring that morning? Or, in my case, I'm going to get married in the near future -- I should probably leave my soon-to-be-gotten wedding ring at home when I golf, otherwise it'll change my swing as it is now?

I'd like to see some objective test results. I'm open minded, I'm open to the idea, but if and only if it really works. So, bring me some proof. I promise I'll change my mind if you can bring me some objective statistically significant proof. But, at the moment, from the information I've gathered it seems like it is all placebo and insignificant.