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What is "forgiveness" in a Driver?

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jlukes

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I have a lot of friends that I golf with that don't really understand what makes a club forgiving. Most of the time when they hear that a driver is forgiving, they assume that the driver will make their slice/hook smaller.

However, when I think of forgiveness, I think of distance loss when not hitting the sweet spot.

What is forgiveness?
 
I agree with you. It's one of the reasons why I liked/fitted into the Bio Cell over other drivers was on my mishits I gave up a fraction of the distance that I gave up in the other drivers that I was trying.
 
I agree as well. I don't think much can fix a club face being too open or closed. When I think of forgiveness I'm usually thinking a larger sweet spot and high MOI to stop twisting so much.
 
And altering the alter face angle or weight of the club to help minimize your miss doesn't make a club more forgiving in general, but it does help minimize a miss via fitting.
 
i think it's both. in general, the reduction of penalty to your shot compared to how much you miss from the sweetspot. That could be distance or direction.
 
But you can still hit a huge slice or hook when hitting the sweet spot.

Face forgiveness can't do much if face path and face angle in relation to path are all out of whack
 
For me, the most common things that happen which I attribute to "forgiveness" are:

1. A shot hit on the toe of the driver turns over and rolls out nicely with a little draw. I lose 15 yards or so of carry, but I gain 10 yards of roll. I quite often get bailed out by my irons as well. I can hit them far out on the toe (as in, as much of the ball hits grooves as hits chrome) and still get a good shot out of it.
2. A shot hit low on my irons gets up in the air with a reasonable amount of carry and spin compared to the quality of the strike.
 
For me its very simple.
Forgiveness equals the ball reaction off the face comparatively between all areas of the surface.
 
Consistent flight outside of center. Basically a less fancy way of saying what Josh mentions above.

If I can hit it out on the toe in inside on the heel and still sniff fairway, I'm calling that beauty consistent.
 
JB said:
For me its very simple.
Forgiveness equals the ball reaction off the face comparatively between all areas of the surface.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

JB - do you feel that when discussing forgiveness, many if not all golf companies are intentionally vague on what "forgiveness" is so that the average consumer can interpret it any which way they like (ie fix my slice)
 
I used to think a forgiving club would cure the slice.

Now I think of it as results generated from slight mishits. A bad swing is a bad swing, Forgiveness... to me is how bad of a swing can I put on a ball and still obtain decent results.
 
I don't expect forgiveness to fix my hook or slice. That's the indian, not the arrow. But I look for a club that when I hit the ball out on the toe, that stays in play and doesn't punish my distance too much. I don't expect to hit it say 240 in the center of the face, and 238 out on the toe. But I don't want it to turn in to 240 in the center and 210 out on the toe.
 
JB said:
For me its very simple.
Forgiveness equals the ball reaction off the face comparatively between all areas of the surface.
Click to expand...

Just what I think as well. Most of us are not good enough to hit the driver dead center each and every shot, so if I can still hit the fairway with off center hits and not lose a ton of distance, I'd call that forgiving and many of todays driver deliver this.
 
jlukes said:
Exactly.

JB - do you feel that when discussing forgiveness, many if not all golf companies are intentionally vague on what "forgiveness" is so that the average consumer can interpret it any which way they like (ie fix my slice)
Click to expand...

Not really. What should a company say? "You stink at golf, your swing looks like a rodent getting caught in a bear trap and our equipment is never going to help that". I think their goal is simple (for most companies). To create the best they can and maximize revenue in doing so.

The truth is that after studying this stuff for 6 years every single day, the amount of R&D done to assist in face forgiveness is staggering. The things I have seen by some companies such as hosel design to make up for more weight with adjustable tips is amazing. The flip side is the same thing could be said for those companies that have completely ignored it.

I believe that the forgiveness across the face from some companies right now is so far superior to where it was just 5 years ago its staggering. Think back to the 2009 drivers and how different many were in search of the forgiveness. FTiQ, Dymo, Monster, etc. Now look at what we are seeing with the ability of adjustments, weight placement and more.
 
When I can put a driver in the garage for a few weeks when trying out other drivers but then place it back into the bag and it still performs like we were never apart.

Total forgiveness
 
ddec said:
I don't expect forgiveness to fix my hook or slice. That's the indian, not the arrow. But I look for a club that when I hit the ball out on the toe, that stays in play and doesn't punish my distance too much. I don't expect to hit it say 240 in the center of the face, and 238 out on the toe. But I don't want it to turn in to 240 in the center and 210 out on the toe.
Click to expand...

Or based on my experience this past weekend, 258 center and then 196, 203, 207 on the toe.
 
JB said:
Or based on my experience this past weekend, 258 center and then 196, 203, 207 on the toe.
Click to expand...

that's just gross. Just like everything else, something I'll try out. My current driver is not forgiving, but it works better for me compared to the one that was more forgiving. However if I see numbers like you and other THPers this past week, then no thanks to that one.
 
JB said:
Not really. What should a company say? "You stink at golf, your swing looks like a rodent getting caught in a bear trap and our equipment is never going to help that". I think their goal is simple (for most companies). To create the best they can and maximize revenue in doing so.

The truth is that after studying this stuff for 6 years every single day, the amount of R&D done to assist in face forgiveness is staggering. The things I have seen by some companies such as hosel design to make up for more weight with adjustable tips is amazing. The flip side is the same thing could be said for those companies that have completely ignored it.

I believe that the forgiveness across the face from some companies right now is so far superior to where it was just 5 years ago its staggering. Think back to the 2009 drivers and how different many were in search of the forgiveness. FTiQ, Dymo, Monster, etc. Now look at what we are seeing with the ability of adjustments, weight placement and more.
Click to expand...

No denying that face forgiveness has increased. I am not even saying that this is the club companies' faults. However, I feel that there is a huge misunderstanding by the average golf as to what "forgiveness" implies.

You are right, the club companies are not going to come out and say that "our club cannot help your huge slice caused by a huge over the top, outside in swing that you have". So the large segment of amateur golfers will continue to buy new equipment year after year because the newest clubs are "more forgiving".

Yes, they ARE more forgiving - just not in the way most weekend golfers think.
 
Canadan said:
Consistent flight outside of center. Basically a less fancy way of saying what Josh mentions above.

If I can hit it out on the toe in inside on the heel and still sniff fairway, I'm calling that beauty consistent.
Click to expand...
Well put Dan, I think of forgiveness as giving me the greatest chance to keep the ball in play and especially the fairway.
 
A very good topic, one we've touched on tangentially in other threads and one which deserves more thought.

I see "forgiveness" somewhat differently. I think I can articulate 4 types:

Assuming that the standard deviation of your normal hacker's ball strikes remain consistently spread over a club face, a forgiving club can offer the following, either together or separately:
1. Bad shot "correction" - Example, this is what you see with the Taylormade slotted irons that turns low face skulls into surprisingly good shots that get up. You say to yourself, "That shouldn't have happened, that wasn't me." (The trade-off being that high face strikes on those same irons stink.)
2. Bad shot "dampening" - As exemplified by a big ol' 460 driver like the forgiving Amp Cell, where bad shots just don't end up being bad as we knew they should have been when we sliced it or hooked it. They still go left or right, but not as much, and you're grateful for the dampening.
3. Enlargement of sweetspot so marginal shots actually fall within good range - Your basic effect caused by cavity backed irons -- thank you Ping for proving this one for us 40 years ago.

My fourth type of "forgiveness" is harder to explain and is probably due to a fortuitous combination of head, shaft, weighting, and a person's individual quirky swing. That's where you just seem able to bring that quirky club back to square and make tight clusters of impacts closer to the sweetspot. If you use impact tape, you don't see many outlying heel and toe strikes and you wonder how come? In effect, this club becomes "forgiving" because you can't take it off center as much, just like another club might be "unforgiving" if you struggle to bring it back to center. We've all had clubs like this.

I confess that in the past I've probably been guilty of labeling certain clubs as "unforgiving" when in actuality I was struggling to bring them back to center. They might really have very forgiving faces when measured cm for cm across their faces. I can't see it or benefit from it because my impacts are shotgunned all over the face. Likewise, I think my current driver is "forgiving", when in actuality my impacts with it are just statistically closer to the center, for whatever reason. My bulletin board of old impact tapes certainly confirms this.
 
Mark - sounds like you are in alignment with most of us: Forgiveness relates to shot performance on off-center (non-sweetspot) hits, not swings that have poor club path/face angle
 
So is the general misperception of forgiveness that you can put any swing you want on the ball and get just as good results as the guy swinging perfectly?

My understanding is that forgiveness is minimizing mis hits as much as possible in an effort to keep the ball in play. I agree that those mis hits, laterally or vertically, should result in loss of distance.
 
A rodent caught in a bear trap would be an imporvement for my swing.
 
For me it's missing high and low on the face. My usual miss with a driver is usually just a little high on the face. If I do hit it there I don't want the ball to turn into a gyroscopic experiment.
 
adamw238 said:
For me it's missing high and low on the face. My usual miss with a driver is usually just a little high on the face. If I do hit it there I don't want the ball to turn into a gyroscopic experiment.
Click to expand...


I am not sure about others, but my experience with modern drivers is that high on the face is hotter than a firecracker.
 
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