For the vast majority of amateur golfers, we head on over to our local golf store, sporting goods store, or even find a place online to purchase our golf clubs. Those clubs remain in our golf bag for some time to come, with the only thought of changing the grips every now and then. A little knowledge with clubs and your swing can go a long way. So let’s look at how to measure swing weight golf. Not tennis because tennis has its own swingweight.
Some of us get to tinkering with a new brand of grips and or a completely different shaft that may be longer, shorter, a different flex and with plenty of different shaft weights. The problem with changing a grip or shaft, even without adding length or taking length off the shaft is you’ve most likely changed the swing weight of that golf club. For good or bad, you may have just altered how you hit the ball. Hint: A swing weight calculator may be all that you need.
It is said that most golfers cannot tell a change in a couple of swing weight points. However, some changes may alter your golf club swing weight by more than a couple of points. So lets learn how to measure swing weight in golf and how we might benefit by knowing how swing weight works.
How to Measure Swing Weight Golf Patent
I have an old device called the Lorythmic Swinging Weight Scale by Kenneth Smith. It sits nicely in my golf cave. The patent for the building of the device I own was filed by Robert W. Adams in 1931. However, in or around 1945 Kenneth Smith bought the rights to Adam’s swing weight scale. His belief was that although the 14 inch fulcrum which Adams came up with was fine for professional golfers, amateurs might be better suited when having their clubs measured using a 12 inch fulcrum. So Smith patented his own device in 1948 based on the 12 inch fulcrum and along the way called it the “official scale”. When writing his patent, Kenneth Smith made mention of Adam’s patent amongst others. As time went on, the “official scale” did not take off as Kenneth Smith had hoped. For reference, here is the United States Patent Office link for R.W. Adams device.
The simplicity of the “Swinging Weight Scale” is amazing. You put the grip under the holder on the right hand side and then the shaft sits in the holder on the left hand side. You then slide the weight until it shows a balancing of the peg on the right side. That weight slides along a scale with different readings. My Kenneth Smith Lorythmic Swinging Weight Scale starts off at a swing weight of A0 and goes to G10. Before I get too far while I hear that you don’t have one of these products, no problem. Later on, I’ll point you to a calculator at a website which in my experience works extremely well. So if asked, is D2 or D3 a heavier swing weight? The answer is D3. It is higher up on the scale.
How to Measure Swing Weight Golf with a Swing Weight Scale
So without getting too detailed, if asked how to measure swing weight in golf, you start around a fixed fulcrum point on the golf club. This is usually defined as a 14 inch or 12 inch fulcrum. The heavier the head of the club, the heavier the swing weight. Conversely, the heavier the butt end (grip end) of the club, the lighter the swing weight. Alright. Now that I might have you totally lost, look at the picture below.
So in my contraption, the fulcrum point is 14 inches from the grip end. The swing weight of this Sub 70 699 8 iron is D3. To me, the clubhead has a nice feel to it. For male tour professionals, the vast majority of irons have a swing weight between D2 to D5. Some PGA players hit that D5 to D6 swing weight. I saw Sergio Garcia, who I recently watched locally at a LIV Golf event at Rich Harvest Farms playing with a C8. I can hear some say, boy that is a light iron. Nope. To the contrary. He uses a heavier shaft but the lower swing weight results from having that heavier shaft as compared to more of the weight being near the head of the club. When it comes to the PGA, drivers typically run between D3 to D8 in swing weight. For women, the typical golf club has a swing weight between C2 to C9.
Online Swing Weight Calculator
I used this swing weight calculator as I was building my own clubs. Swing Weight Estimator
I weighed my club in grams and balance point (more on both of these later) from my Sub70 8 iron and entered them into the online swing calculator. You can see I entered the Balance Fulcrum in inches at 30.87 and the Total Club Weight of 367 grams. You can read the directions in the website link above but I chose a 14 inch Swingweight Fulcrum. A quick click on CALCULATE and I show a D2 as the swing weight. Pretty darn close to the snazzy swing weight scale that I use above.
Why Does Swing Weight Matter?
Why might swing weight matter? Here is a situation I ran into. A couple of years ago I ordered a Cobra King F8 driver off Ebay. You had the choice of color, flex, shaft, loft, and could even choose for the shaft to be shortened. Bingo. That is what I needed. But simply changing a shaft and having the shaft cut down changes the swing weight. In fact, for me it was the equivalent of 6 points. Going from D2 to C6. A drastic change in swing weight can throw off your swing.
Do Your Clubs Feel Heavy or Light?
Now you may or may not have ever been in this situation. Have you ever swung a club that felt too heavy or too light? It may not have been the actual weight of the club but rather the balance of the weight (swing weight). I had that happen with irons involving a change in shaft but no change in grip. I went through half a season swinging clubs with a recent change of shafts that were also cut down nearly an inch. The reason the clubs were cut down that much is because I stand all of 5′ tall and a shorter club feels better in my hands. What I didn’t know is that my clubs ended up between B9 to C2 in swing weight.
Lead Tape or Grip Change
The clubs were incredibly light in swing weight to me. Meaning I couldn’t feel the head of the club much while swinging the club. So hard to control, through my tempo off and my golf game suffered. A quick fix for a low swing weight might be to simply add some lead tape to the head. 2 grams of lead tape put on the head of a club increases the swing weight 1 point. Meaning a C2 club would go to a C3.
On the opposite end, if you know how to regrip a golf shaft and add 4 grams of weight with a heavier grip, you would lose 1 swing weight point. With my light swing weight clubs, I needed to go in the other direction. So, I could change that 50 gram grip over to a 25 gram grip and pick up 6.25 points in swing weight. The golf club which started off at C2 with a 50 gram grip is now sporting a new 25 gram grip. The club is now a C8 and if I add 4 grams of lead weight to the head of the club, it will be a D0. See how you can tinker with swing weight?
Let’s Add Some Confusion
To perhaps add further confusion, let’s add the same amount of lead weight to the clubhead of a driver that is at D3 and a D3 mid-iron. The swing weight will increase slightly more with the driver due to its increased length. If we did the same with a driver and a wedge, the driver would see yet an even higher proportionate increase in swing weight versus the wedge. The swing weight at the clubhead changes more with the length of the club. Still, we can say that on average:
- 2 grams of weight at the clubhead increases swing weight 1 point
- 4 grams of weight at the grip decreases swing weight 1 point
How to Measure Swing Weight Golf with Excel
I’ve used several online calculators but here is another option. You do need a scale that measures in grams to weigh the golf club you would like to find the swing weight of. Luckily I bought my wife a scale about 10 years ago that measures the weight of ground beef, chicken, etc.. which my wife separates and puts in 1/4 lb ziplock bags. Back in the good old days it was about $10 and is very accurate. That same scale doesn’t look to be available any longer but here are some other digital scales to check out. Just make sure the scale gets good ratings and can measure in grams. So I umm errr steal this scale from time to time and use it when either building clubs or when I want to know the swing weight of a golf club. Here is what it looks like while I am weighing my 8 iron.
So the 8 iron weighs 367 grams. Next, find the balancing point of the club. By balancing, I literally mean to put the club on your finger. There has to be a better way but I put my index finger getting a few inches away from the start of the club head and start looking for the balancing point. I use a small marker and put a line on that balance point on the shaft.
Then measure from the butt (grip) end of the club to where you’ve marked the club. For my 8 iron it is 30 7/8″.
Then take both of those numbers and use the link below which brings up an Excel spreadsheet. I actually had to use the calculator on my computer to figure out 30 7/8″ equals 30.875 to plug it into this formula. So I put in my 367 for total weight in grams and then 30.875 for the balance point. With this swing weight calculator, you can see my Sub70 699 8 iron has a swing weight of D2.8. With the Kenneth Smith device that I own, the swing weight came in at D3. So I would say this swing weight calculator tool is very accurate.
Just Bought Clubs from the Store?
Most people buy their golf clubs off the rack. In doing so, the swing weight, lie and loft, etc… are usually within some sort of manufacturer specifications. If that is your case, maybe check out a couple of your clubs with the swing weight calculator tool above. Most likely the swing weight of your clubs is just fine. For those of us who have changed grips and either are playing longer or shorter clubs, my recommendation is to figure out the swing weights of each of your clubs and correct when necessary.
Well, there you have it. If you’ve ever wanted to know how to measure swing weight in golf, hopefully I’ve given a little insight. While swing weight cannot tell you if the overall club is heavy or light, it does have an impact on how the golf club will feel in your hands, the weight of the clubhead in the backswing, and if tempo between body, arms, and hands works well while swinging through the ball. We all have different swings and body types with our own levels of strength and flexibility. If something does not quite feel right in your golf swing, you might want to pick up a few clubs and check out their swing weight.
