Has technology helped or hurt the golf club industry?
Heads are bigger, shafts are lighter, drives go farther, consumers are buy more equipment over their lifetime than their parents or grand parents who golfed ever did, I’d say technology has helped quite a bit over the last 20 years.

Are golf companies over hyping their products by using engineering jargon to make their clubs out to be more than what they are?
You bet they are!

Moment of Inertia (MOI), Coefficient of Restitution (COR), Center of Gravity (CG) are just a few of a long list of technical keywords used by club makers to help hype their products performance. What does it all mean? If I have trouble hitting it past the ladies tees, is a high MOI driver going to help me?

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“COR” is an acronym for “coefficient of restitution.” Coefficient of restitution is a measurement of the energy loss or retention when two objects collide. The COR measurement is always expressed as a number between 0.000 (meaning all energy is lost in the collision) and 1.000 (which means a perfect, elastic collision in which all energy is transferred from one object to the other).

The current USGA rule limiting the coefficient of restitution of a clubhead states that the COR cannot be higher than a measurement of 0.830. This means that when the clubhead impacts the ball, there cannot be more than an 83-percent transfer of the energy of the head to the ball.

“Moment of inertia,” or MOI, is a property of physics that indicates the relative difference in how easy or difficult it will be to set any object in motion about a defined axis of rotation. The higher the MOI of an object, the more force will have to be applied to set that object in a rotational motion. Conversely, the lower the MOI, the less force needed to make the object rotate about an axis.

Center of Gravity (CG) of any object is the one small point which represents the intersection of all the possible balance points of that object. In a golf clubhead, the CG can be determined by balancing the head on its face, sole, or any place on the head – the intersection inside of the head of all these different balance points is the center of gravity of the clubhead.

From golf.about.com/

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Who gains from all of this? Is this information for real? Will golfers benefit from a driver with a high COR and low Center of Gravity?

Answer – You betcha.
But here is the kicker. Since there are very specific rules and measurements that designers and club manufacturers must abide by, the playing field has sort of leveled out a bit, meaning that most of todays drivers should be of equal performance, so to speak. No, your $39.99 Wal-Mart special driver cannot be compared to a TaylorMade Tour Burner driver, but the gap is narrowing. Shaft quality is now the focus for a lot of players that are looking for a little extra yardage and control. This is why when some you go to your nearest golf shop in search for a new driver or fairway wood, you end up having 5-6 different options of shafts to choose from per model. It’s not all about flex anymore, there are kick points, torque and shaft weight you also need to consider, all playing a key role with your drives trajectory and ball spin.

MOI, COR & Center of Gravity – yeah, they all say it, but they all need to stop saying it!

Note to all club manufacturers

You’re boring the every day golfer with these pointless acronyms that mean nothing! I say to you all (Callaway, TaylorMade, Titleist, etc.), adopt the caveman approach to marketing your new equipment – “Club real BIG, ball go far!” Now I’d buy that approach!

Next topic I might try tackling – Offset clubs: Can they help my slice?