Walk down any PGA Tour driving range and you’ll see players using towels, brushes and tees to clean their grooves after every shot. As the clubs get shorter, players seemingly get more obsessed with making sure their clubfaces are free of any dirt. More than just a mindless task, there is a belief that a dirty clubface reduces spin and creates inconsistent distance control.
Throughout the bag, spin plays a crucial role. With a driver, for example, if you have too much spin, you’ll sacrifice distance, and too little spin will cause the ball to tumble quickly out of the air. That give-and-take with spin continues with irons. We’ve all hit that knuckleball 7-iron that scurries through the green. Not enough spin. Or that ballooning shot that gets eaten by the wind. Too much spin.
With shorter irons and wedges, most golfers rely on spin to create a more consistent trajectory and faster stopping power. It’s the difference between an approach that tumbles over the back and one that takes one hop and stops. On pitch shots, more spin often increases a golfer’s margin for error, as he or she doesn’t need to rely solely on height to stop the ball near the hole.
In other words, we know spin matters, but when it comes to maximising spin, does a clean clubface matter as well?
Our test
To measure whether a dirty clubface affects spin and distance control, a Golf Digest staffer and plus-2 handicapper, Drew Powell, hit five shots with a 60-degree wedge with a clean clubface, and then five with a dirty clubface. The dirty clubface was created by taking a divot and not cleaning the grooves, simulating the reality for any golfer who doesn’t clean his or her clubs. We measured spin rate using Foresight Sports’ GCQuad launch monitor.
What we found
Clean clubface
Shot 1: 11’10”, 8,314 rpm (revolutions per minute)
Shot 2: 49’, 11,164 rpm
Shot 3: 6’ 2”, 10,065 rpm
Shot 4: 7’ 9”, 12,230 rpm
Shot 5: 22’ 3”, 10,989 rpm
Average proximity: 19’ 5”
Average spin rate: 10,552 rpm
Dirty clubface
Shot 1: 18’ 1”, 7,574 rpm
Shot 2: 7’ 2”, 5,814 rpm
Shot 3: 45’, 5,748 rpm
Shot 4: 6’ 11”, 3,949 rpm
Shot 5: 14’ 10”, 5,679 rpm
Average proximity: 18’ 5”
Average spin rate: 5,759 rpm
What does it mean
We found that a dirty clubface has a substantial effect on spin rate. The average spin rate with the clean clubface was just more than 10,500rpm, which is nearly double the average of 5,759rpm with the dirty face. For reference, the PGA Tour average spin rate for a full lob wedge is roughly between 10,000 and 11,500rpm.
This radical change in spin rate is due to how dirt affects the grooves on a club. When the clubface is entirely clean, the grooves play to their full depth and have the maximum ability to grip the ball, which creates spin. When those grooves are filled with dirt, however, they are effectively much shallower, which decreases friction and spin.
In practice, this disparity in spin had a tremendous impact in how the ball reacted on the green during our test. With a full swing with a lob wedge, the balls struck with a clean clubface landed about hole-high, took one bounce forward and spun back significantly on the fairly soft greens.
The average proximity on these shots was about 19 feet, with three of the five shots ending up inside 12 feet. Two shots, however, landed short of the hole, so after spinning back, they ended much further from the hole.
With a dirty clubface, on the other hand, the balls didn’t spin back nearly as much. Interestingly, these shots landed about the same distance as the clean clubface shots, but the ones hit with dirty grooves mostly took one hop and stopped, resulting in a proximity that was actually one foot closer.
A couple factors are worth considering. With Powell being a better-than-scratch golfer, taking a full swing with a lob wedge and hitting into a soft green, maximum spin wasn’t ideal. The vast majority of golfers in most instances, however, would benefit from maximising the spin they produce with their wedges, which can be done by cleaning the clubface.
Verdict
A clean clubface significantly increases spin rate versus a dirty clubface. Clean grooves produced nearly double the amount of spin as dirty grooves on a full shot with a lob wedge.
While we tested full shots, this disparity in spin rate is significant on chips and pitch shots, as well. When you fail to generate enough spin on short shots around the greens, your margin for error decreases – you must land the ball in the perfect spot for it to roll out to the hole. And you need plenty of green to work with to plan for this roll out.
With more spin, however, you can land the ball closer to the hole and get it to check up faster. This is particularly important on short-sided shots, where quick stopping power is essential to keep the ball close to the hole.
And as our test demonstrates, one crucial factor to maximising the amount of spin and control you generate is making sure your clubface is fully clean before hitting a shot.
