Your driver is designed to self-correct many of your bad swings. Some might argue it’s the easiest club in the bag.
Have you heard the term “gear effect”?
When a ball is struck on the toe or heel of the driver, it produces a “gear effect”. Gears move in opposite directions. When you strike your driver on the toe, the toe actually deflects or moves slightly backwards, you could also argue the heel is speeding up. This “backing up” happens around the CG or Center of Gravity located inside the driver head. Nothing twists around the shaft. The ball then comes off spinning in the opposite direction as the toe of the head is twisting back. This is your gear effect.
What Makes It Easiest Club In The Bag?
The spin off the toe forces the ball to hook wildly for the right handed player. So how is it… that toe and heel shots start over the rough and generally end up curving to the middle of the fairway?
Driver faces have Bulge, they are not flat. You can see it’s rounded from left to right. Therefore, you could argue the edges of the driver face are actually shaved down. Since manufacturers know that a shot off the toe will create right to left curve, because of indisputable gear effect, this shaved edge is actually projecting the ball out even further right so the gear effect curve will finish in the fairway. If there was no Bulge, every ball would start straight and finish in the left rough. Golf would actually be pretty hard without all this help! Did you know driver faces also have vertical gear effect? I’ll save that for another time.
