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A quiet search for more distance

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The purists may argue, but in marketing golf equipment distance is No. 1. All else follows.

When you understand that the USGA capped maximum ball speed on drivers back in 2008, this becomes a marketing challenge that essentially narrows the field to a few large, well-financed companies that can tell a story and have the credibility of Tour presence. Are they telling the truth when they promote a new line as being longer? The answer is yes. But in an absolute sense, the new driver line being touted may not be longer. Remember that clubs are sold to humans, not absolutes.

If I have a good swing path, 100 mph of swing speed and a relatively steep angle of attack, I might pick up yardage from a design that spins the ball less and offers multiple lofts to fine tune launch angle. Conversely, at a furious 85 mph, less spin produces a knuckle ball-like effect and I can lose yardage because I need spin to optimize carry distance. And, to go a step further, the average fairways you play are significant.

I can even try the variety of softer golf balls to see if there is a combination that is optimum. And, here again, this is golf. Optimum off the tee may not produce the same happy results around the greens. As I said, golf is a game of many variables.

Now I don’t have to explain to anyone that I’m well past the retirement age. It’s evident in many ways, not the least of which is my golf swing. I know there is a new data-driven world of smash factor, ball speed, spin and launch angles. In fact, when I occasionally play with a good young golfer, it’s fair to say I don’t speak their language. Sounds like a pure conflict: on the one hand, I bemoan my annual distance loss, on the other I pay little attention to the technical components defining distance.

I have one constant I look for: it’s “quiet,” and I’ll explain. A driver may have forgiveness designed into the head and the purpose is to make mishits somewhat more effective. Those same heads (and all heads) have what we call a “sweet spot,” which is more accurately described as the center of percussion. It’s that very small spot on the face where maximum energy is delivered to a golf ball.

I don’t care what your swing speed is: distance will be optimized by hitting the sweet spot and sound will be the key, or better said, an absence thereof.

Those soft, quiet hits mean that there is very little energy being lost at impact and the golf ball compression is being optimized. To say it a different way, when you feel vibration at impact, you are feeling energy created from an off-center hit and not being delivered to the ball. I realize that today’s 460cc heads are an echo chamber compared to the persimmon of old, but the sound created from a center of percussion hit isn’t robbing you of distance. Every great player I was privileged to watch hit balls had a quiet sound at impact, meaning that they consistently struck the center of percussion.

A good test is longer clubs. To get a 47-inch long driver head back to the ball you will speed up, however, that doesn’t mean all the speed will be at impact. And even if it is, the challenge of hitting the sweet spot is significantly greater. Some can handle it in today’s world of 40-gram shafts. One of the fun things in the game is the possibility that somewhere in the combination of longer, lighter shafts there is an extra 20 yards of distance. 

Back to the smash factor, ball speed lobby. Those things are important when you are constantly hitting shots on the center of percussion. It is possible that there is a combination that even allows for a degree of mishits and is still distance friendly. This is golf, you can always find the exception, but most of us are better off looking for that quiet sound that we can produce consistently (especially on Nos. 9 and 18).

In our search, I see this mistake made all the time. A few weeks ago, I watched a demo day for a while at a club where I play. One of my friends was hitting drivers and he hit maybe 10-15 balls with each of 3 to 4 variations. I know I’ve written about this before, but only the first one, maybe two, with each club counted. After that he was setting a new challenge: his ability to adjust to that club. And if one shot along the way does go farther, it’s hard to ignore. This particular guy is an industry all-star. He has the money and buys 4-5 new drivers a year, each being the “greatest.”

We all want longer, and to paraphrase a TV ad, “Go quiet my friends.”

Barney Adams is the founder of Adams Golf and the inventor of the iconic "Tight Lies" fairway wood. He served as Chairman of the Board for Adams until 2012, when the company was purchased by TaylorMade-Adidas. Adams is one of golf's most distinguished entrepreneurs, receiving honors such as Manufacturing Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young in 1999 and the 2010 Ernie Sabayrac Award for lifetime contribution to the golf industry by the PGA of America. His journey in the golf industry started as as a club fitter, however, and has the epoxy filled shirts as a testimony to his days as an assembler. Have an equipment question? Adams holds seven patents on club design and has conducted research on every club in the bag. He welcomes your equipment questions through email at barneyadams9@gmail.com Adams is now retired from the golf equipment industry, but his passion for the game endures through his writing. He is the author of "The WOW Factor," a book published in 2008 that offers an insider's view of the golf industry and business advice to entrepreneurs, and he continues to contribute articles to outlets like GolfWRX that offer his solutions to grow the game of golf.

14 Comments

14 Comments

  1. Jay

    May 6, 2015 at 2:03 pm

    Great read – as usual – THANKS

  2. Larry

    Apr 30, 2015 at 4:44 pm

    Agree 100% with Barney, hitting sweet spot with driver is the best way to pick up or in my case (over 65) keep distance. I play very much with a single plane (Graves Academy) type swing (I power that swing almost all arms) and I can say with hitting sweet spot at my age I still drive as long as when I started at age 42…I just finished playing a 2 day scramble with a large group all over 60 and my drives were as good as anyone’s at worst 230 and most a lot farther… I spent a lot of time afterwards showing a handful of my age golfers how I can almost stand in place and hit a drive over 200 yards in play….using that dam Moe Norman funny looking swing putting the sweet spot on the ball…..

  3. Chuck

    Apr 30, 2015 at 4:08 pm

    I like all of Barney’s contributions, but a serious question here…

    I presume — and Barney hasn’t convinced me otherwise — that the Tour players I have watched hit driver all have hot-melted driver heads which lowers the sound of the strike on large titanium heads.

    And about advertised distance…

    Yes, Barney is right about “distance” being the end-all mantra in selling new equipment. Which of course means club manufacturers taking a driver with an extremely long (46″) and light (55 g) shaft to a mechanical testing lab, where that club would out-perform a shorter (43.5/44″) inch driver with a 70, 80 or 90 gram shaft. Trouble is, real golfers aren’t machines. And most golfer would probably be better off with shorter and less-ultralight drivers. Am I right, Tom Wishon?

    • Barney Adams

      May 6, 2015 at 7:36 pm

      Hot Melt aka Rat Glue. Hated working with it still have some shirts with patches. It’s used on tour for a variety of things and while it has a dampening effect that isn’t the primary reason. Roughly 20% of the tour players and 99% of the ” tinkerers”

  4. alan

    Apr 30, 2015 at 1:38 pm

    guys dont be so literal. sound is a metaphor for good ball striking. in this case quiet sound

  5. UA Golfer

    Apr 30, 2015 at 12:49 pm

    I know its a good shot when I barely feel the strike.

  6. RG

    Apr 30, 2015 at 11:42 am

    Another great article Barney! You keep up the good work , young man.

  7. Brett H

    Apr 30, 2015 at 9:53 am

    I dont know about “quiet” shots being the long ones but the shots that you don’t feel definitely are. I can definitely say that when I upgraded drivers after a few years you immediately tell the newer tech has enormous sweet spots/forgiveness. I just cant justify upgrading every year for the amount of golf I play right now or else I probably would.

  8. Ben

    Apr 30, 2015 at 9:11 am

    I have no idea what I just read

  9. R

    Apr 29, 2015 at 4:24 pm

    Same concept applies with hitting your irons. The best shots are the ones you “don’t feel.”

  10. Andy

    Apr 29, 2015 at 2:00 pm

    LOL… I traded for a brand new custom-fit Krank driver last year, and there is nothing quiet about it, and the face hit location matters not. It is crazy load, and sounds like the aluminum bats making contact at college baseball games. I kind of like it..

  11. Greg V

    Apr 29, 2015 at 11:19 am

    Love it!

    Thanks for another great article. I have one “quiet” driver, but I am always on the lookout for another!

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Opinion & Analysis

The 2 primary challenges golf equipment companies face

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As the editor-in-chief of this website and an observer of the GolfWRX forums and other online golf equipment discourse for over a decade, I’m pretty well attuned to the grunts and grumbles of a significant portion of the golf equipment purchasing spectrum. And before you accuse me of lording above all in some digital ivory tower, I’d like to offer that I worked at golf courses (public and private) for years prior to picking up my pen, so I’m well-versed in the non-degenerate golf equipment consumers out there. I touched (green)grass (retail)!

Complaints about the ills of and related to the OEMs usually follow some version of: Product cycles are too short for real innovation, tour equipment isn’t the same as retail (which is largely not true, by the way), too much is invested in marketing and not enough in R&D, top staffer X hasn’t even put the new driver in play, so it’s obviously not superior to the previous generation, prices are too high, and on and on.

Without digging into the merits of any of these claims, which I believe are mostly red herrings, I’d like to bring into view of our rangefinder what I believe to be the two primary difficulties golf equipment companies face.

One: As Terry Koehler, back when he was the CEO of Ben Hogan, told me at the time of the Ft Worth irons launch, if you can’t regularly hit the golf ball in a coin-sized area in the middle of the face, there’s not a ton that iron technology can do for you. Now, this is less true now with respect to irons than when he said it, and is less and less true by degrees as the clubs get larger (utilities, fairways, hybrids, drivers), but there remains a great deal of golf equipment truth in that statement. Think about it — which is to say, in TL;DR fashion, get lessons from a qualified instructor who will teach you about the fundamentals of repeatable impact and how the golf swing works, not just offer band-aid fixes. If you can’t repeatably deliver the golf club to the golf ball in something resembling the manner it was designed for, how can you expect to be getting the most out of the club — put another way, the maximum value from your investment?

Similarly, game improvement equipment can only improve your game if you game it. In other words, get fit for the clubs you ought to be playing rather than filling the bag with the ones you wish you could hit or used to be able to hit. Of course, don’t do this if you don’t care about performance and just want to hit a forged blade while playing off an 18 handicap. That’s absolutely fine. There were plenty of members in clubs back in the day playing Hogan Apex or Mizuno MP-32 irons who had no business doing so from a ballstriking standpoint, but they enjoyed their look, feel, and complementary qualities to their Gatsby hats and cashmere sweaters. Do what brings you a measure of joy in this maddening game.

Now, the second issue. This is not a plea for non-conforming equipment; rather, it is a statement of fact. USGA/R&A limits on every facet of golf equipment are detrimental to golf equipment manufacturers. Sure, you know this, but do you think about it as it applies to almost every element of equipment? A 500cc driver would be inherently more forgiving than a 460cc, as one with a COR measurement in excess of 0.83. 50-inch shafts. Box grooves. And on and on.

Would fewer regulations be objectively bad for the game? Would this erode its soul? Fortunately, that’s beside the point of this exercise, which is merely to point out the facts. The fact, in this case, is that equipment restrictions and regulations are the slaughterbench of an abundance of innovation in the golf equipment space. Is this for the best? Well, now I’ve asked the question twice and might as well give a partial response, I guess my answer to that would be, “It depends on what type of golf you’re playing and who you’re playing it with.”

For my part, I don’t mind embarrassing myself with vintage blades and persimmons chasing after the quasi-spiritual elevation of a well-struck shot, but that’s just me. Plenty of folks don’t give a damn if their grooves are conforming. Plenty of folks think the folks in Liberty Corner ought to add a prison to the museum for such offences. And those are just a few of the considerations for the amateur game — which doesn’t get inside the gallery ropes of the pro game…

Different strokes in the game of golf, in my humble opinion.

Anyway, I believe equipment company engineers are genuinely trying to build better equipment year over year. The marketing departments are trying to find ways to make this equipment appeal to the broadest segment of the golf market possible. All of this against (1) the backdrop of — at least for now — firm product cycles. And golfers who, with their ~15 average handicap (men), for the most part, are not striping the golf ball like Tiger in his prime and seem to have less and less time year over year to practice and improve. (2) Regulations that massively restrict what they’re able to do…

That’s the landscape as I see it and the real headwinds for golf equipment companies. No doubt, there’s more I haven’t considered, but I think the previous is a better — and better faith — point of departure when formulating any serious commentary on the golf equipment world than some of the more cynical and conspiratorial takes I hear.

Agree? Disagree? Think I’m worthy of an Adam Hadwin-esque security guard tackle? Let me know in the comments.

@golfoncbs The infamous Adam Hadwin tackle ? #golf #fyp #canada #pgatour #adamhadwin ? Ghibli-style nostalgic waltz – MaSssuguMusic

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Podcasts

Fore Love of Golf: Introducing a new club concept

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Episode #16 brings us Cliff McKinney. Cliff is the founder of Old Charlie Golf Club, a new club, and concept, to be built in the Florida panhandle. The model is quite interesting and aims to make great, private golf more affordable. We hope you enjoy the show!

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Opinion & Analysis

On Scottie Scheffler wondering ‘What’s the point of winning?’

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Last week, I came across a reel from BBC Sport on Instagram featuring Scottie Scheffler speaking to the media ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush. In it, he shared that he often wonders what the point is of wanting to win tournaments so badly — especially when he knows, deep down, that it doesn’t lead to a truly fulfilling life.

 

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“Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it because I’ve literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport,” Scheffler said. “To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world, because what’s the point?”

Ironically — or perhaps perfectly — he went on to win the claret jug.

That question — what’s the point of winning? — cuts straight to the heart of the human journey.

As someone who’s spent over two decades in the trenches of professional golf, and in deep study of the mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the game, I see Scottie’s inner conflict as a sign of soul evolution in motion.

I came to golf late. I wasn’t a junior standout or college All-American. At 27, I left a steady corporate job to see if I could be on the PGA Tour starting as a 14-handicap, average-length hitter. Over the years, my journey has been defined less by trophies and more by the relentless effort to navigate the deeply inequitable and gated system of professional golf — an effort that ultimately turned inward and helped me evolve as both a golfer and a person.

One perspective that helped me make sense of this inner dissonance around competition and our culture’s tendency to overvalue winning is the idea of soul evolution.

The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has done extensive research on reincarnation, and Netflix’s Surviving Death (Episode 6) explores the topic, too. Whether you take it literally or metaphorically, the idea that we’re on a long arc of growth — from beginner to sage elder — offers a profound perspective.

If you accept the premise literally, then terms like “young soul” and “old soul” start to hold meaning. However, even if we set the word “soul” aside, it’s easy to see that different levels of life experience produce different worldviews.

Newer souls — or people in earlier stages of their development — may be curious and kind but still lack discernment or depth. There is a naivety, and they don’t yet question as deeply, tending to see things in black and white, partly because certainty feels safer than confronting the unknown.

As we gain more experience, we begin to experiment. We test limits. We chase extreme external goals — sometimes at the expense of health, relationships, or inner peace — still operating from hunger, ambition, and the fragility of the ego.

It’s a necessary stage, but often a turbulent and unfulfilling one.

David Duval fell off the map after reaching World No. 1. Bubba Watson had his own “Is this it?” moment with his caddie, Ted Scott, after winning the Masters.

In Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, reflecting on his 2011 Super Bowl win, Rodgers said:

“Now I’ve accomplished the only thing that I really, really wanted to do in my life. Now what? I was like, ‘Did I aim at the wrong thing? Did I spend too much time thinking about stuff that ultimately doesn’t give you true happiness?’”

Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”

Eventually, though, something shifts.

We begin to see in shades of gray. Winning, dominating, accumulating—these pursuits lose their shine. The rewards feel more fleeting. Living in a constant state of fight-or-flight makes us feel alive, yes, but not happy and joyful.

Compassion begins to replace ambition. Love, presence, and gratitude become more fulfilling than status, profits, or trophies. We crave balance over burnout. Collaboration over competition. Meaning over metrics.

Interestingly, if we zoom out, we can apply this same model to nations and cultures. Countries, like people, have a collective “soul stage” made up of the individuals within them.

Take the United States, for example. I’d place it as a mid-level soul: highly competitive and deeply driven, but still learning emotional maturity. Still uncomfortable with nuance. Still believing that more is always better. Despite its global wins, the U.S. currently ranks just 23rd in happiness (as of 2025). You might liken it to a gifted teenager—bold, eager, and ambitious, but angsty and still figuring out how to live well and in balance. As much as a parent wants to protect their child, sometimes the child has to make their own mistakes to truly grow.

So when Scottie Scheffler wonders what the point of winning is, I don’t see someone losing strength.

I see someone evolving.

He’s beginning to look beyond the leaderboard. Beyond metrics of success that carry a lower vibration. And yet, in a poetic twist, Scheffler did go on to win The Open. But that only reinforces the point: even at the pinnacle, the question remains. And if more of us in the golf and sports world — and in U.S. culture at large — started asking similar questions, we might discover that the more meaningful trophy isn’t about accumulating or beating others at all costs.

It’s about awakening and evolving to something more than winning could ever promise.

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