When you ask for a driver to be built at 45.5″, you would think it would be as simple as that.
In the words of Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend!”
On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, co-hosts Johnny Wunder and Jake Morrow explored why the different OEMs all measure the length of golf clubs differently.
While the USGA officially measures length by placing the sole of the club on a 60-degree plane and then measuring from the intersection of the shaft and that plane to the end of the grip cap, not all OEMs do it this way.
“I had this discussion today with a lot of the guys, and the general consensus is the reason for it is they all think that you should measure from a different spot, essentially,” Morrow said. “Some of them measure from the middle of the sole, some of them only measure length once you have bent the irons, because if you bend the iron flat, they get longer. Right, like it’s longer, shorter, so they only will measure them after you bend them. Some of them measure it before you bend them. Some of them are on a 60-degree ruler.”
Because of all these different measurement methods, OEM Tour Trucks actually have a marking on their rulers for what a 46-inch driver on a USGA ruler would be, so they can ensure all of their drivers are conforming.
While this doesn’t affect the general consumer too often, you see it show up when ordering irons because some companies, like Titleist, Callaway and TaylorMade, have a standard length of 37″ for a 7-iron while Cobra, Mizuno and Srixon list it at 37.25″. Yet, those clubs might all be the same length.
So why wouldn’t this just be standardized to the USGA method?
“The reason why I think that there’s no urgency to get it done at an OEM level is because there is a little level of unpredictability from truck to truck and OEM to OEM,” Wunder suggested. “So it basically incentivizes them to go, no, we’re going to do it our way. We measure on this ruler.”
So they next time you go looking for a specific length, make sure you know which ruler that club is getting measured on, because the difference could mean something later on.
For more from Wunder and Morrow, listen to the full episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped here, or watch it below.
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