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does more offset make the ball go left?

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t0mmy91

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good afternoon all, i started golfing in july last year with a set of taylormade RSI-1. i hit the irons well between 7-Aw. i have been trying to hit the 4/5/6 irons but i struggle. i read somewhere that more forgiving clubs have a greater offset that helps get the ball in the air, so i purchased a set of the taylormade Aeroburner irons to try out. they are more offset then my RSI-1's. i cant hit them straight at all. everything goes left. any ides why? i have to aim my body right and swing to the right to get the ball to go towards target.....this is with every club in the set, not just the long irons. i cant figure this out.............
 
Offset isn't designed to make the ball go left. It is a common miss with amateur golfers playing offset irons, but the left movement is the result of a swing flaw not a design characteristic.
 
Short answer is no.
 
Again with no. I played very offset ping G5's when I first started playing and you couldn't have paid me to hit the ball left. Just didn't happen.
 
blugold said:
Offset isn't designed to make the ball go left. It is a common miss with amateur golfers playing offset irons, but the left movement is the result of a swing flaw not a design characteristic.
Click to expand...

ok, what i think is weird though is that i can hit my RSI-1 straight and they are offset, but just not as much as the aeroburners. is the swing flaw you are referring to a common same one for most people that hit an offset iron left, or different to each person? if its often the same, would you mind telling me which it is?
 
t0mmy91 said:
ok, what i think is weird though is that i can hit my RSI-1 straight and they are offset, but just not as much as the aeroburners. is the swing flaw you are referring to a common same one for most people that hit an offset iron left, or different to each person? if its often the same, would you mind telling me which it is?
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Could be several factors. Is the ball starting left and staying left?
 
i wonder if this could be it, maybe it looks like i am square but am not.............hmmmmm
"offset lowers COG and helps get the ball airborne. The only thing that could help you square the club more is if you line up behind the ball. The most common culprit for a hook with more offset is a natural tendency to line up with the face closed a bit (hosel to toe line) rather than making the face square to the line. A square face with a high offset club can look open a bit, but it's not"

also, one more difference, do you think this matters? my RSI-1 have regular flex steel shafts and the aeroburners have stiff flex steel shafts.
 
t0mmy91 said:
i wonder if this could be it, maybe it looks like i am square but am not.............hmmmmm
"offset lowers COG and helps get the ball airborne. The only thing that could help you square the club more is if you line up behind the ball. The most common culprit for a hook with more offset is a natural tendency to line up with the face closed a bit (hosel to toe line) rather than making the face square to the line. A square face with a high offset club can look open a bit, but it's not"
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That is what I was getting at with the start left, stay left comment. This is a the typical issue I have with offset.
 
I'm not an expert and I'm kinda putting this out there more as a question for those who know a lot more than me. Maybe their answer will help you some? I'd always heard that offset provides a 'little bit' of extra time to close the face for amateurs having trouble leaving the face open. What you are describing seems to be a lot larger difference than offset alone would cause. I think a large part of your issue could be tied to lie angle. You might be too upright with the Aeros (heel strikes turf first causing face to close). A couple reasons, and I could be dead wrong? I think the Aero long irons are a bit more upright to begin with . You mentioned the RSI was R flex and the Aero S. What might also be happening is that your swing with the R flex is sufficient enough to flatten the RSI clubheads some through the impact zone (your dynamic lie angle). Whereas with the S flex maybe you don't flatten it as much so your dynamic lie there is more upright? I think several thing might be playing into this, but lie angles and face alignment issues might be having a much greater impact than simply the minor difference in clubhead offset. Also, I'm assuming you golf right handed...or completely disregard.
 
I don't think it makes it go left but I think for the no or little offset guy a minor adjustment can be made to prevent it if it's happening
 
I think there are a lot of variables in play here. The likely culprits to me are either the difference in shaft flex or an alignment issue with the offset. The Aeroburners are designed to have a draw bias versus the Rsi1s, but I doubt it's enough to make a dramatic difference.

Does the ballflight for both start on the same line or does the Aeroburner start left?
 
No. The offset assist players getting their hands in-front of the ball especially on long irons.

Hitting left could be MANY things. Some have proffered lie angle and I can tell you that today's clubs are much more upright than the earlier sets (70's, 80's etc) I had to have my newer Bridgestone J-38's bent 3 degrees flat to match my Hogan Apex PC's. YMMV

Bob (Diveguy)
 
hi guys, the lie angle on the aeroburners and RSI-1 are identical. the loft on the aeroburners is one degree stronger than the RSI-1. the swing weight on the aeroburners is D2 and RSI-1 is D2.5, club length is the same, offset is one degree higher on aeroburner. RSI in reg flex and aero in stiff flex. my original thoughts in buying the aeros were to have the added forgiveness and bigger head but i was not aware that the offset was different and that it would make a difference like that. i went again today and hit both the RSI-1 and the aeroburner in 7i and 5i, alternating between rsi and aero. the aero definitely go left........then i pick up the RSI and it goes straight again.......crazy.......this is on trackman, once the snow melts i need to see them both at the range.

i read that a stiffer flex would be more accurate and possibly go a little right. i hit my RSI (reg flex) straight to a tad left, so when purchasing the aeros, i thought a stiff flex might put me dead straight each time...........
 
Man, lots of interesting thoughts on what offset is really designed to do.
 
Here's just one expert opinion on the matter in the form of a response to someone asking about hitting pull-hooks and if they were caused by offset:

What your teacher said can be true. Offset does two things to ball flight and can be a source of a problem in the set up too.

One, the more the hosel is out in front of the leading edge of the head, the farther back the Center of Gravity will be from the shaft centerline. For golfers with a midway to late unhinging of the wrist-cock angle on the downswing, this can cause the shaft to bend forward just a little more before impact, which in turn increases the trajectory from the loft being higher at impact due to the shaft;s increased forward bending. But it won;t do that for golfers with an early release because the forward bending of the shaft is triggered by the release. So if the release happens too early, the shaft bends forward and then comes back to just about straight by the time of impact.

Two, offset does allow a split second more time for the hands to continue rotating around before impact. With slicers who leave the face open on the downswing, this is good because it can reduce how open the face is at impact. But it also can cause a pull hook if that extra time allows the hands/wrists to rotate past square to closed. That's not a sure thing though for golfers like you who do not leave the face open because of the third thing.

Third, there are a LOT of golfers who get messed up in their stance and alignment and even ball position from the visual effects of offset. It IS very common to see a golfer generate pull hooks simply from the offset causing them to set up with the shoulders pointing left.

Either way though, moving to a less offset iron can get rid of either cause, whether it be the over-rotation of the hands from too much offset or the alignment problem.

However, 3mm of offset is very small and so I am going to say that your pull hooks are more likely from an alignment problem not related to the offset, or from a swing error that causes you to come into impact a little outside to in with the face closed a little to that path.

What are called "non-offset" irons really have 1-2mm of offset and not usually 0. The reason is because if you make a true 0 offset iron, the eyes see an optical illusion that makes it seem the leading edge is in front of the hosel. So most experienced designers will always use 1 to even 3mm as the offset on the irons that they intend to be viewed as "non-offset irons." Real offset, ala Ping or Callaway's game improvement models runs from 7 to 9mm in offset. so my comments about ball flight and hand/wrist rotation and messed up alignment are for this greater amount of offset, not when you are down at only 3mm.

Hope this helps and thanks for your post!!

TOM WISHON

http://www.wishongolf.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6211
 
For me it seems to go left when I hit an offset club. Granted I have very limited experience with hitting anything offset.
 
My MP-33's have very little offset.

I was out of town last month, and went to the range and hit some SGI irons with a tonne of offset.

I was hitting pull hook after pull hook. Felt like I was hitting the ball well, and taking a good swing. It was a totally uncharacteristic mistake for me. Yet, it was happening shot after shot.

It was the off set.

I could eliminate the pull hook by holding the face open slightly longer, but that wasn't a habit I wanted to get used to, so I just stopped. The gentleman next to me was nice enough to lend me his irons (how nice is that???) and my normal shot was back.

In my limited experience, and confirmed by what Wishon writes above, offset can cause you to hit a pull hook. It may not be common though.

It would be easy to check if you could hit some irons without offset and compare.
 
Maybe I'm just weird then. No matter how much offset a club has I still hit them all the same way.
 
cbaker2882 said:
Maybe I'm just weird then. No matter how much offset a club has I still hit them all the same way.
Click to expand...

I am the same way. I am currently swinging clubs with more offset than I have played in 4 years. I have no issues (on a launch monitor) getting the ball to go right.
 
I personally struggle with offset clubs because I can't seem to adjust alignment wise.
 
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