Why MOI Matching Is Important to Your Golf Game

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By now, most golfers who read even a little about golf equipment know that the acronym “ MOI “ stands for Moment of Inertia. And most golfers who are aware of the MOI of a golf club have been told this is a scientific property that is a big part of how forgiving a clubhead can be when a shot is hit off the center of the face.

All that is true. The MOI that almost every golf article has referred to is the resistance of the clubhead to twisting when the shot is hit off-center. Put more of the head’s weight all around the perimeter of the head and you increase the MOI, which in turn means when you hit the ball off-center, you lose a little less distance than if you do the same thing with a head that has a lower MOI.

But there is more than one MOI when we talk about golf clubs. One of the most interesting that so few golfers know about is the MOI of the whole golf club, the fully assembled clubhead, shaft and grip all together.

Any object that is put in motion to rotate about some defined axis of rotation has an MOI. In the case of your golf clubs, during the swing we rotate the club about TWO different axes of rotation. One is our spine. As we swing, we turn back and turn through so we are rotating each club about the axis of our spine.

The other is our wrists. When we unhinge our wrist-cock angle during the downswing, we are putting the club in motion to rotate about an axis that is our wrist-cock release. So in addition to the MOI of the head itself, every fully assembled golf club also has an MOI.

Why is this important?

It has been said for years by golf club experts that if we somehow can make all the clubs have the same exact swing FEEL, we should be able to make our swing be more repetitive, and from this, be able to hit the ball more consistently on center with control. Up until a few years ago, the way golf companies would try to make golf clubs have the same swing feel was through swingweight matching. Since 1920, golf companies have built sets of golf clubs so they all had the same swingweight.

But there is a different way to make your clubs all so they all require the same exact effort to swing to gain better shot consistency. It’s called “MOI Matching” and it is gradually convincing more and more golfers that it is superior to swingweight matching when it comes to making ALL the clubs in the set swing with the same exact feel.

Our research into MOI matching as a replacement for swingweight began in the mid 90s. In 2003, Wishon Golf pioneered the very first hardware and software to allow custom clubmakers to truly build sets of clubs in which the clubs are matched to each other by their MOI. Since then, more than 500 clubmakers have invested in the MOI matching equipment to be able to fit and build MOI matched sets of clubs.

Is MOI matching better than swingweight matching? The thousands of golfers who now play with MOI matched clubs believe so. Or at least that is the feedback we hear from the clubmakers who do this. MOI is a true scientific measurement of just how much effort it takes to swing a club. Swingweight is not. Swingweight is an arbitrary measurement of the ratio of weight in the head to the weight in the rest of the club. But as club lengths change, even when you make each club have the same swingweight, they do NOT require the same effort from the golfer to swing the clubs.

If MOI matching is so good, why do all the golf companies still build their clubs to matched swingweights? Mainly for two reasons, 1) MOI matching takes more time to do and costs more money in labor to do. 2) MOI matching works best when it is customized to each golfer’s different combination of size, strength, athletic ability and swing characteristics. The big companies build their clubs to one series of standard specs so their clubs can be bought off the rack. To really take advantage of what MOI matching can offer to shot consistency, the big companies would have to build their sets one at a time, for one golfer at a time. And that is something they do not do and cannot do.

If you’re interested in MOI matching, here is a link to more information, including answers to more questions about MOI matching – https://wishongolf.com/clubmakers/matching-golf-clubs-by-moi/