Josh’s Tips & Tricks: Loft Sleeve

Intro

Hello golfers, welcome to this week’s tips & tricks. I have been doing lots of custom fitting over the last few weeks and with all of the new products launching I thought I would share some of my knowledge. Adjusting the loft sleeve of a golf club can impact your ball flight in a few ways and knowing what to adjust can really help make the misses smaller. Lets have a look at the adjustability of different brands and how the sleeve can change the flight.

Changing loft

One of the main reasons for adjustability in drivers, fairway woods, and hybrids is to help change the loft. For most golfers loft is their friend. It keeps the ball in the air for longer giving more control. If a longer club has a higher launch and more backspin it has less sidespin and therefore stays in play. This however can be at the cost of distance. To maximise driver distance you want a high launch with low spin and plenty of clubhead speed. Not enough spin and the chance of that ball missing right or left are highly increased. Finding the correct launch angle and spin are key to hitting long and straight tee shots.

I very often see people taking loft off the driver because they want to hit the ball lower making it go further. This is a very common misconception and generally means the ball doesn’t have anough spin and without the energy to keep the ball in the air, it just falls out of the sky actually losing distance.

Face Angle

Lots of people don’t consider this when adjusting loft on a golf club. Changing the loft of a golf club also changes the face angle. Adding loft to a golf club closes the clubface and taking loft opens the clubface. Considering most people miss right with a driver, taking loft off a driver can be a dangerous game as it will make the clubface point more to the right. Something I do on a daily basis is add loft to drivers to help make the clubface point more left and to make it launch and spin slightly more making it more forgiving.

A good example of this is actually myself. I played a few weekends ago and missed every fairway right. I then adjusted my driver and added 1* of loft which closed the clubface about 1*. This added a bit more spin and started the ball a little more left. I then played the next week and hit almost every fairway. This may just have been a concidence but i’m, pretty confident the way the club was set up helped.

Brands

Each brand has a slightly different hosel for adjustment. They all offer similar changes but do it in slightly different ways. Below I have attached photos for some of the brands we sell here at Windmill. I adjust and use these lofts sleeves when teaching people and custom fiting to help them get the ball flight they want to see.

If you have a Ping, Callaway, Taylormade or Cobra driver these should look familiar. Sometimes in fittings the current driver isn’t necessarily wrong for the player, its just in the wrong setting. If you have one of these loft sleeves check it and see what loft and face angle the driver is set to. You can visit the manufacturer website for more information on this too.

Summary

Technology is beeter than ever and adjustability of fairway woods makes custom fitting lots easier. If you’re in the market for a new driver check your current settings before making a spontaneous purchase. I can usually help people gain distance and control over the ball by making slight swing changes and adjusting the loft sleeve.

If your driver doesn’t have adjustability then it’s probably time for an upgrade. Having adjustability in the hosel means you can influence your ball flight without making swing changes.

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See you soon,

Josh