What is the Loft of on your Driver?

Some chat on twitter today which involved the STP and Hank Haney, who both suggested that amateurs should be using 11.5° or 12° and that doing so would result in greater distance.

I am interested to see how many of us are using higher degree drivers.

Super for example has mentioned that his 3 wood is pretty much as long as his driver and I wonder if this is to do with the higher loft working better with the way amateurs hit the ball. Has anyone ever been advised at a driver fitting to go for a higher loft driver? At a driver fitting will the fitter even bother to get you to test something like an 11°+ loft?

I have a 10.5° driver. I have never tried a driver with more loft so cannot comment on whether or not I could hit it further with more loft.

My previous driver was 9° and I had major difficulties with it, both in terms of accuracy and distance.

10½ degrees now. It's a TM SLDR which everyone says (rightly) has a lower launch angle. I have it set up slightly higher on the hosel thing as well, so I'd guess it's set to 11 degrees now. Strangely enough the shaft seems to make a difference - I did have the stock Fujikura which I changed to a Kurakage. It goes 5 yards further but with a tighter dispersion, and a higher trajectory. I can't understand enough physics to explain this.

I did have a TM r7 which I really liked. That was only 9½ degrees, but started the ball higher than the SLDR.

Higher trajectory is fine with the courses being wet and muddy at the moment, I wonder if I'll be adjusting the loft when the ground dries up.

I think TM had a big promotion (last year, year before?) encouraging us to use more loft. I'm sure there is some sense to that, although I am a committed 9.5 Titleist man, and wonder to what extent it was marketing driven? Mind you TM, marketing - I must be getting cynical!

My TM r7 says 10.5 but actually measures as 11. I think my launch angle is too high so I'm with my clubfitter next weekend to go through driver analysis. According to him current thinking for amateurs is to maximise carry distance and any roll out is a bonus.

A lot of TM's marketing is driven from the US where climatic conditions and watered fairways favour higher flighted drives.

Move to the UK and stand on a tee facing a 30mph headwind and a rock hard fairway (ok, maybe not at the moment) and you may not want such a high trajectory.

Mine's a 9.5° but I have it set at its max loft - it's a Titty 910 D3 so I think that makes it 11° in actual use.

Higher loft = less sidespin for one thing, which for most amateurs is a good thing.

Most amateurs don't get anywhere achieving optimal launch angles either and many actually have a downward angle of attack (AoA) at impact when, I think optimal launch is around 10°-13°, assuming optimal spin (~2750rpm??). If an amateur has, say, -4° AoA at impact and a 9.5° driver, they're launching at ~5.5° - it's not going far, or very straight, like that.

My old Titleist 907 was 9.5 but with its original shaft my launch angle was nearly twice that. A new shaft helped but my current driver is 8.5, and goes plenty high still.

navyblueshorts wrote:Mine's a 9.5° but I have it set at its max loft - it's a Titty 910 D3 so I think that makes it 11° in actual use.

Same here but a D2