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Wedge grooves and spin?

SuperStroke
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blugold said:
No. They don't. They funnel debris. Grooves do not impart spin on the ball. They funnel debris (grass, dirt, moisture) away from the contact point between the ball and clubface. The contact between the ball and surface area imparts spin on the ball.

I am all for debate, but this is a discussion about how things actually work. This is not a debate. I will stand firm on this.
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Ok I get what you're saying about funneling of debris away from the contact point. I agree.....but I also agree that by design, grooves play a huge role in grabbing the surface of the ball and cutting into the meat of the cover thus imparting spin. Phil Mickelson can write a book on groove construction.
 
To further answer Yeti's question, I think groove wear is more mental than anything else.
 
blugold said:
Technique, lie, and the ball will play the biggest role in spin.

Interesting enough, ever look at a Hopkins wedge? Just grooves. No laser etching or acid wash or extra roughness. Just grooves cut into metal. And those Hopkins wedges spin just as good as Vokey SM4s, SM5s, and Mack Daddy wedges.
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So what you are saying is spin milling is a marketing catch phrase touted as the latest technology breakthrough in wedges... but really it's just a pretty cosmetic design.
 
Bobby Purify said:
Ok I get what you're saying about funneling of debris away from the contact point. I agree.....but I also agree that by design, grooves play a huge role in grabbing the surface of the ball and cutting into the meat of the cover thus imparting spin. Phil Mickelson can write a book on groove construction.
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Simply not the case. Grooves do not "grab the ball" and spin it. They simply don't. I wish I had a better way to say it or more credibility.

Grooves help with spin but not by grabbing the ball.
 
Almost every golf club has grooves cut into its face to grab the golf ball and impart spin to it. Primarily this is backspin, which is rotation around a horizontal axis in the opposite direction to the flight of the ball. Golf balls have dimples on their outer surface in order to grab the air and allow the spin to take effect.

This is a copy, paste from livestrong which had a snippet on what I was saying
 
blugold said:
Simply not the case. Grooves do not "grab the ball" and spin it. They simply don't. I wish I had a better way to say it or more credibility.

Grooves help with spin but not by grabbing the ball.
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So when you cut into a pro v and see groove slices after a sand wedge from the fairway that isn't caused by the grooves grabbing into the meat of the urethane cover?
 
YetiLooper said:
So what you are saying is spin milling is a marketing catch phrase touted as the latest technology breakthrough in wedges... but really it's just a pretty cosmetic design.
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Yes sir.
 
Blu Gold I think I know what you're saying and yes physically it does make sense...I just think it applies to both that and grabbing the balls surface.
 
I'm honestly not sure if Im learning anything by following this discussion or not...
 
Create Backspin
This is one of the most common golf myths. Backspin is created by the ball’s compression on the club face.
The loft presented to the ball during contact with the club face distorts it in shape and gives us the launch angle and all of its backspin. The ball doesn’t ride up the club face, as commonly suggested, but instead gets embedded in the face where the groove lines reside.
Simply put: The more loft, the more backspin.
​
This means club face grooves have no influence on the launch angle or backspin. Well-known club designer Ralph Maltby built a set of irons with no face groves at all and played with them extensively to prove this point to skeptics.
Also, in the 1980’s the USGA undertook extensive groove type testing and concluded that in dry conditions it was loft, not grooves, that created backspin on the ball.

:zsimpsons:
 
Bobby Purify said:
So when you cut into a pro v and see groove slices after a sand wedge from the fairway that isn't caused by the grooves grabbing into the meat of the urethane cover?
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Funny enough, I have never had to clean golf ball out of the grooves. I have had to clean it off the clubface. have you ever actually looked at a scuff in a ball? The scuff isn't in a clean parallel pattern.
 
YetiLooper said:
So what prevents them from filling us up with mumbo jumbo about technologies in other clubs?
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They don't? There was a driver called Rocketballz for jeebus sake. Haha. You care about spin on wedges. so the companies throw spin type names on their wedges and distance type names on their woods.
 
ArmyGolf said:
I'm honestly not sure if Im learning anything by following this discussion or not...
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Heck maybe I'll learn something that's why I enjoy reading this forum...lots of well versed linksters. I've got zero ego when it comes to this game I need all the help I can get.
 
Johnny Hack said:
Create Backspin
This is one of the most common golf myths. Backspin is created by the ball’s compression on the club face.
The loft presented to the ball during contact with the club face distorts it in shape and gives us the launch angle and all of its backspin. The ball doesn’t ride up the club face, as commonly suggested, but instead gets embedded in the face where the groove lines reside.
Simply put: The more loft, the more backspin.
​
This means club face grooves have no influence on the launch angle or backspin. Well-known club designer Ralph Maltby built a set of irons with no face groves at all and played with them extensively to prove this point to skeptics.
Also, in the 1980’s the USGA undertook extensive groove type testing and concluded that in dry conditions it was loft, not grooves, that created backspin on the ball.
Click to expand...
Quality and quantity.
 
blugold said:
Funny enough, I have never had to clean golf ball out of the grooves. I have had to clean it off the clubface. have you ever actually looked at a scuff in a ball? The scuff isn't in a clean parallel pattern.
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Happens to me almost once per round...Next time I'll take a picture...not to prove a point but it really is kind of strange when it happens.
 
blugold said:
They don't? There was a driver called Rocketballz for jeebus sake. Haha. You care about spin on wedges. so the companies throw spin type names on their wedges and distance type names on their woods.
Click to expand...
Exactly. But they never claimed to add rockets to the drivers to generate more clubbed speed... they do claim that milling increases spin though.
 
Bobby Purify said:
Happens to me almost once per round...Next time I'll take a picture...not to prove a point but it really is kind of strange when it happens.
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Don't look at the club. Look at the scuff on the ball. If it was grooves grabbing the ball, the scuff would be uniform and consistent. Every scuffed ball I have achieved, it looks like a thicket of lines, not straight edges.

If this was caused by one groove gripping into the cover, I am a giraffe

scuffed-ball.jpg
 
Grooves on a golf club function much like grooves on a tire, they are there to channel debris away from the contact surface.
 
YetiLooper said:
Exactly. But they never claimed to add rockets to the drivers to generate more clubbed speed... they do claim that milling increases spin though.
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"they" is a few companies. And they can say whatever we will buy.
 
Bobby Purify said:
Almost every golf club has grooves cut into its face to grab the golf ball and impart spin to it. Primarily this is backspin, which is rotation around a horizontal axis in the opposite direction to the flight of the ball. Golf balls have dimples on their outer surface in order to grab the air and allow the spin to take effect.

This is a copy, paste from livestrong which had a snippet on what I was saying
Click to expand...

Livestrong, the best place for information about balls.

Dimples cause there to be a layer of turbulent flow around the ball in flight, which stabilizes the airflow and reduces drag in flight.
 
Johnny Hack said:
Create Backspin
This is one of the most common golf myths. Backspin is created by the ball’s compression on the club face.
The loft presented to the ball during contact with the club face distorts it in shape and gives us the launch angle and all of its backspin. The ball doesn’t ride up the club face, as commonly suggested, but instead gets embedded in the face where the groove lines reside.
Simply put: The more loft, the more backspin.
​
This means club face grooves have no influence on the launch angle or backspin. Well-known club designer Ralph Maltby built a set of irons with no face groves at all and played with them extensively to prove this point to skeptics.
Also, in the 1980’s the USGA undertook extensive groove type testing and concluded that in dry conditions it was loft, not grooves, that created backspin on the ball.

:zsimpsons:
Click to expand...
Well put, I think.

I always find it interesting when you see a Tour Pro hit a wedge on the Konika Minolta Swing Vision camera. The ball's only action is compression at impact.
 
blugold said:
Funny enough, I have never had to clean golf ball out of the grooves. I have had to clean it off the clubface. have you ever actually looked at a scuff in a ball? The scuff isn't in a clean parallel pattern.
Click to expand...

while I agree with EVERYTHING you have posted in this thread, and disagree that grooves impart enough spin to affect the results of a golf shot, I have hit wedge shots and seen bits of the cover stuck in the grooves and/or on the face on the groove edges. and if memory serves, it was with older models of balls that were notorious for poor durability.


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Looking at this video the ball begins spinning before it leaves the face, it's miniscule but the ball does roll up the face. I've also heard the reason the PM grind wedges have a longer toe is so the ball can ride the face more... don't quote me on that though.

https://youtu.be/wmOLGp2ffFA
 
blugold said:
No. They don't. They funnel debris. Grooves do not impart spin on the ball. They funnel debris (grass, dirt, moisture) away from the contact point between the ball and clubface. The contact between the ball and surface area imparts spin on the ball.

I am all for debate, but this is a discussion about how things actually work. This is not a debate. I will stand firm on this.
Click to expand...
http://www.pga.com/node/77953

Here is the article from the PGA discussing the groove changes and reasoning behind it.

The grooves do serve to channel unwanted junk from the point of contact by this logic, the only benefit to grooves would be shots out of the rough more than off the tee or fairway.

Have you ever bought a new wedge and hit some shots around the green comparing it to an old wedge? New wedge will check up where the old one roll out much more because of the wear on the grooves: less bite, less spin.

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