Clubhead Cup Face and How it Affects Performance
All driver heads as well as some fairway wood and hybrid heads are manufactured from a number of separate pieces which are welded together to complete the final construction of the clubhead. Most common are driver heads which are manufactured from 4 separate pieces, as shown by this illustration below.
Of the separate pieces which make up the complete clubhead, one is always the clubface. Within such types of driver, fairway wood and hybrid head construction, the face can be formed to be welded to the body in two different ways, one called an EDGE WELDED face and the other referred to as a CUP FACE CONSTRUCTION.
The above illustration shows the more common of the two, an edge welded face. In a clubhead with an edge welded face, the face is made so that as the term states, the welding line to secure the face piece to the body of the head is on the very edge of the face. To contrast, the cup face is formed in a manner so the face piece is more like a cup, meaning it could hold water because the edges are angled around the surface of the face. In a cup face construction, the welding line to secure the cup face to the head body is not on the edge of the face, but is rather a distance back from the edge of the face. Below is an illustration of a cup face construction to contrast against the above edge welded face design.
The purpose of a cup face construction is to improve the amount of face flexing for areas off the center of the face to achieve a higher ball speed and from that, better distance, performance and a more solid feel from off center hits. In modern clubface performance, the more the face flexes inward from impact with the ball, the higher the speed of the ball will be coming off the face.
With an edge welded face, a portion of the welding line that secures the face to the body extends past the actual seam onto the rear surface of the face. This welding line can extend ¼” onto the back of the face, all 360* around the face. That can act as an additional “stiffener” or “brace” to prevent the face from flexing as much inward for shots hit off the center of the face.
Since the welding line on a cup face construction is well back from any portion of the face, this means the welding line is nowhere near any portion of the face. In addition, the inside edge of the face is more curved so there is no additional agent causing resistance to the face flexing inward. Below is a photo showing an actual cup face 4-piece driver head on which the pieces of the head and the cup face have been initially tack welded to position the pieces for full robotic welding.
There is no question maximum ball speed comes only from impact in the center or slightly above the center of the face. But with a cup face construction, accompanied by a variable thickness face construction, in comparison with a uniform thickness edge welded face, the off center hit performance can be improved remarkably.
Tom
Can you tell me what golf company’s make cup face drivers.
BOB:
No that is not possible for anyone to know what companies use a cup face construction on their drivers. Information like that is never made public. The golf companies’ production factory vendors are kept tight lipped about what they do so they cannot say anything related to their golf company customers’ design models. There is no way of knowing this unless someone bought one of ever driver model in the game and cut the head in half to look. Obviously that isn’t going to happen.
TOM
This website just cut open a bunch of major OEM driver heads and all of them look to be edge welded – no cup face.
http://www.mygolfspy.com/a-look-inside-9-drivers/
Tom, is more precision required to line all the edges up for cup face construction? Cheaper to manufacture edge welded face? Any imperfections on a cup-face iron alignment can be ground away.
Speaking of that – any thoughts on cup faced irons?
I have heard that average players do not benefit from clubs with high COR because average players club head speed is not high enough. Probably there is some exponential relationship between club/ball speed for high-COR clubs. Would you please break this down for us in your easy-to-understand way? That would be helpful for those of us who are trying to decide if we should go spend money for the latest high-COR clubs. Admittedly, the latest high-COR clubs also have other features that help average players add distance, but I was trying to separate out the high-COR part. Thank you.
JOHN: No question that ALL players benefit from an increase in COR. It is just that as clubhead speed increases, the actual number of yards of distance increase from the increase in COR is greater than it is for those with slower swing speeds. Same as with backspin, the higher the clubhead speed the more the backspin will be on a shot with a head of any given loft. To give you an example of this relationship of clubhead speed to COR, it is best I do that with an iron because everyone now plays with a titanium driver that… Read more »
I’ve been thru 4 iron fittings to find the best shaft for me….. My senior iron speed is 68-70
I used 979 ss and srixon 575. We have zero fitters that will help you. Instead, they want to sell you the most expensive shafts. Can you advise?
DAVID Thank you for taking the time to stop by and ask for a little help. Ever since the trend toward super expensive graphite shafts found its way into the golf industry from Japan, I have been a strong opponent of that trend. Very simply, in the past 15 years when I have been doing very extensive in depth research into shaft design and analysis, I have yet to find a high dollar shaft that cannot be duplicated in its weight, flex, bend profile and torque for a fraction of the cost. In fact I got a bit of a… Read more »
I agree with most statements made here. The ability to understand Clubhead Cup Face and How it Affects Performance in this market will show your strength in the future. Two things I like about the post, one it is straight forward and two it does not attempt to promote anyone’s position particularly. Thank you for the article Tom.
Thanks for the kind comments and glad you appreciate our efforts to simply educate golfers about the truths surrounding golf club performance. While we’re very proud of our club design and engineering capability and innovation in our own work, we do think it far more important just to state the facts so golfers can make better club buying decisions. A cup face construction in a clubhead certainly can help a face become more forgiving for off center hits. At the same time, an edge welded face, if engineered correctly, can also create a face that does a very good job… Read more »
Tom, Just wanted to let you know that Griffin paid you a compliment on a video. Also consider your remarks as a club builder valuable information for us Dummies out here. Can we make clubs w/o the “disappearing loft decease” that the big manufacturers & get a better result? One reason I didn’t like CB irons is that the loft just keeps getting higher & I like a clean look not a shovel. Also I always thought blades were a better choice in the scoring area such as 7,8,9 & PW. BTW I am 63 years old so you will… Read more »
Louis Thank you for your comments for sure. Much appreciated. No matter what, when it comes to the 6 iron on down in the set for 99% of all golfers, lower loft hits the ball farther. No golfer wants a set of clubs that hit the ball shorter distances than what he played previously. So that means “shrinking loft disease” is here to stay. Back in the late 90s to early 00s when I saw some OEM sets based on a 25* #5-iron, I thought that shrinking loft disease had to be over. That there was no way the big… Read more »
Tom
I’m enjoying these blog discussions. but wanted you to know there seems to be a formatting issue with the software. As the threads nest over the course of a discussion they get narrower and narrower. The last post is one word wide horizontally, and very long vertically. If this continues they will be one letter wide.
DALE:
Our webmaster just hit some fix switch for this, or whatever the electronic wizards like him do, and so this should be remedied. Don’t know if this requires a refresh or a clear cache on your part, but we’ll hope that it’s fixed now that I asked our webwizard to take care of it. Thanks for the heads up.
TOM
Don’t know where to put this comment so here it is… I’m a 3 handicap… Back in the 90’s I saw the market go from big club heads to small club heads… Then back to big… Same thing here… The industry has to constantly go back and forth in order to produce new shit they can sell… First it was the elliptical now it’s the cup… Couple of years from now it will be the elliptical face again… Anyone remember the orlimar? Following right after the big Bertha… Then the tour burner then the g2… Point is boys… If you… Read more »
RINDER Thanks very much for your comment but please allow me to tell you what “shit” really does matter in a golf club(s). What you are observing in your comment is the fact that the big mainstream golf equipment industry has always put the bulk of its attention and marketing behind the clubHEAD design/model. They do that because they all have to pursue a business model to build their clubs to one series of standard specifications so the clubs can be shipped to all the retailers to be sold off the rack to golfers who are sucked in by the… Read more »
Regarding the physics of the trampoline effect from face flexing, with the ball only on the face .005 second, is that really sufficient time for the ball to get a push from the rebounding of the flexed face?
A related question: does the flexing of the face reduce the amount of ball compression while the ball is on the face? Is there a trade-off between the assist from face flexing and ball compression?
Dale It’s faster than that. It’s actually 0.0005 secs – five ten thousandths of a second. Let me explain how this all works. Using the term “trampoline effect” is really not the greatest choice of terms because the clubface does not slingshot the ball off the face as a trampoline propels a person up. When we hit a golf ball with a club, no matter what there is a loss of energy when the ball is squished against the face and the face flexes inward a little bit. In a normal impact with a THICK FACE clubhead that does not… Read more »
OK,then if less compression of the ball means less loss of energy and a higher smash factor, shouldn’t everyone be using a high compression ball? What would be the reason for choosing a low compression ball?
Dale: Technically that is definitely true. A former USGA technical official has theorized that from a pure energy transfer standpoint, the ideal golf ball would be a hollow titanium sphere, for this very reason. But in reality the difference would be quite small to really not measurable in terms of distance difference. In terms of compression, golfers can feel a smaller difference in ball compression than what would have to be enough difference to show up as a distance difference. So the reason that a golfer would opt to use a low compression ball would strictly be the FEEL of… Read more »
Too bad the USGA didn’t cap the COR limit a little lower than the .830. If I remember correctly, the COR of persimmon is .780.
Jaacob: In terms of avoiding the expansion of elite level tournament hosting golf courses to 7500 yds, yes, that probably would have been avoided if the USGA had been able to anticipate the effect of titanium driver heads on the COR. But they didn’t and really, I don’t think they could have guessed this was coming in time to have enacted a rule limitation such as you describe. However, there is no question that the distance the tour players hit the ball would still have increased substantially even if the COR had remained at the level of persimmon and stainless… Read more »
Interesting thoughts. 🙂 Do you know if and where there are any swing speed stats prior to 2004? From 2004-2008, Trackman stats showed an average Tour swing speed of 110.x. The swing speed data on the Tour website from 2007-2012 shows an average range of 111.8-112.6…which in each year translated to 2.6 yards in total distance per mph of swing speed. So at least since 2004 the swing speeds haven’t changed significantly, just 1-2 mph. Out of curiosity, a few months ago I went back to 1980 with the driving distance averages on the Tour website. From 1980-1995 the distances… Read more »
Jaacob: Most of my older clubhead speed information came from Golf World USA magazine. For years now they have been a part of the Golf Digest USA family and it was from my being part of GD’s old Technical Advisory Panel in the 90s that I was close to the editors at both magazines. So they used to share data with me that they got from whatever sources they had. I think I remember that Golf World used to take one tournament a year on the PGA Tour and commission someone to gather data on various things related to equipment… Read more »