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Post by sandsaver01 on Jun 14, 2020 10:13:43 GMT -5
I had heard designers write that the "Roll" settings for Fairway, rough, and Heavy Rough made little to no difference in the actual performance and I wanted to verify this and see for myself. I built a little "stimpmeter" shown in the picture below: I put a green texture down on the top and down to the first marker pole, and then changed the texture for the rest into what I wanted to test. Putting from the marked line, just barely touching the ball started it rolling. I set the "Roll" numbers at 0, 5.0, and 10 and then did two runs with each texture and setting. ROLL SET | 0.0 | 5.0 | 10.0 | FWY | 10.5 | 11 | 13 | ROUGH | 3.9 | 4.0 | 4.1 | H. ROUGH | 3.2 | 3.2 | 3.4 |
As is shown in the data, there is maybe a 10% difference in roll on the Fairway texture between 0 and 10, and a very small change on the roughs' roll, with little actual difference between Rough and Heavy Rough. The bottom line seems to me to be that it may not matter what the designer sets for these settings, except for perhaps the fairway one. I have not yet figured out the actual quantitative effect of the "Terrain Firmness" setting when setting up the conditions for a match, and I am not sure how to test that, or whether it even matters. I know it has a real difference on greens, but how much on fairway, rough and heavy rough is hard to quantify.
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Post by ezzinomilonga on Jun 14, 2020 10:35:22 GMT -5
Is a quite interesting test, mate. Really. About your doubts, i have no data to support/confirm my idea, but i always suspected that on fairways and, mainly, rough and heavy rough, the firmness determines more than the roll setting how much distance a ball can reach, because it decides how much big will be the first bounce. Firmness and the slope of the exact point in which the ball strikes can makes a difference of many, many yards.
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Post by 15eicheltower9 on Jun 14, 2020 10:48:11 GMT -5
Thanks for taking the time, Mike. Always just went with the "it doesn't matter" approach. Now I can actually see it. I can see where if you wanted to make any impact you'd have to play with firmnesses and rolls. It also makes sense though when seeing it. I always associated the roll with grass length, which I should have expected a bigger impact on fairways than rough.
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Post by sandsaver01 on Jun 14, 2020 13:23:59 GMT -5
Replying to my own post!
I was curious about the firmness setting, both in the designer as default and the "Fairway Firmness" in the conditions setting so I did another small experiment.
I built a one hole course with the tee on top of a slope that was 120' long down 19', ending in a 21' vertical drop to a flat area with the hole. I putted off the tee just enough to start the ball rolling and gravity did the rest.
In the designer itself, for both rough and heavy rough, changing both roll and firmness from 0 to 1 together had no effect at all! For Rough, the ball traveled 144', for heavy rough it was 142' Again in the designer, for fairways, setting both to 0 gave 166' travel, both to 1 gave 174'; not really much difference.
Since the firmness setting in the game settings is only for fairways, I found very soft to give the same 166' and very firm the same 174' as in the minimum and maximum settings in the designer.
Basically to me the bottom line is these settings do not make a large difference at least under the test conditions. I know that green firmness SEEMS to have more effect, so I may waste some more time trying to test that as well.
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Post by sandsaver01 on Jun 14, 2020 15:49:28 GMT -5
Last boring post on this subject, I promise.
Hitting a 7I from the tee onto a flat green with no wind gave the following:
Carry distance was 157-158 yards, with the following final distance after roll-out
Speed VSoft Mod VFirm
144 163 165 168 163 163 165 169 187 164 166 169
As you can see, under these conditions the roll increases about 5 yards from Very Soft to Very Firm with this club
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Post by ezzinomilonga on Jun 14, 2020 16:57:27 GMT -5
All this is not boring at all. To be honest, i consider it a really interesting experiment. After all, golf is a game about details. And if a single little tweak can hardly have a huge impact on your game, a series of little tweaks definitely could. So said, about your last exeperiment, even if i personally believe that the range of 5 yards is realistic, i also believe that is hard to collect exact "scientific" data about this, beacuse even trying on a perfectly flat green with no wind, there is always to consider the little amount of distance you gain/lose everytime, having slightly different swings. And longer the club, bigger is this distance. I tell you this because, working me too on the nuances, i noticed after various tries that, especially on my longest clubs, the difference between a perfect swing in which the arrows reaches barely the bottom part of both the swingmeters (almost on slow, i mean), can be even in order of 5/8 yards, compared with a swing in which the arrows ends almost on fast..if my english makes some sense here (sorry ) But so said, even if numbers should be not correct to the inch, it stays a good experiment to understand how much every factor can help/inficiate a shot.
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Post by sandsaver01 on Jun 14, 2020 17:53:03 GMT -5
All this is not boring at all. To be honest, i consider it a really interesting experiment. After all, golf is a game about details. And if a single little tweak can hardly have a huge impact on your game, a series of little tweaks definitely could. So said, about your last exeperiment, even if i personally believe that the range of 5 yards is realistic, i also believe that is hard to collect exact "scientific" data about this, beacuse even trying on a perfectly flat green with no wind, there is always to consider the little amount of distance you gain/lose everytime, having slightly different swings. And longer the club, bigger is this distance. I tell you this because, working me too on the nuances, i noticed after various tries that, especially on my longest clubs, the difference between a perfect swing in which the arrows reaches barely the bottom part of both the swingmeters (almost on slow, i mean), can be even in order of 5/8 yards, compared with a swing in which the arrows ends almost on fast..if my english makes some sense here (sorry :D) But so said, even if numbers should be not correct to the inch, it stays a good experiment to understand how much every factor can help/inficiate a shot. What you say is true, Ezzino, however I used Beginner Clubs which minimize the impact of less than perfect swings, and also the carry distance for this 7-iron was always between 157-158 yards. Obviously longer clubs will be more affected - When I tried this experiment with a Lob Wedge, there was not enough difference between distances for VSoft and VFirm to be significant, that is why I settled on the 7I as a compromise since it is often used for approach shots.
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