ONOFF / GIII at the 2016 Japan Golf Fair – As usual ONOFF was at the Japan Golf Fair and this year it’s all abuut the new Red Series Woods and AKA irons along with their new FF-247 hybrid iron and a super expensive HR-716 Driver. For those who were looking forward to a black series that will be next year so your Kuro Forged Irons are safe for another season or two. Shall we get started with some pics and a quick run down? Follow the Jump…
Roll the clock back 7+ years ago and Japan was still the premier source for non conforming hi COR drivers with pretty much every single brand in Japan having at least one non conforming head in their lineup. Some Japanese brands had heads with COR as high as 0.90, well over the legal limit of 0.83 COR. As 2006 came to a close most major mainstream Japanese brands decided that going forward, all their drivers would conform to USGA and R&A rules meaning hi COR heads became suddenly scarce and hard to find. Fast forward to the present and 2012 saw a resurgence of non conforming Hi Cor drivers. With many brands maxed out at 460cc and the 0.83 COR limit, brands decided that recreational golfers who wanted more distance were willing to pay for hi COR drivers and didn’t care if they were conforming or not since many recreational golfers don’t play in tournaments or competitions.
While a driver’s performance and distance can be attributed to many things, including, materials, design and the ultimately the ability to hit the sweet spot consistently (a big sweet spot helps too), a higher COR can be a quick way to more distance. COR stands for the Coefficient of Restitution and measures the elasticity of the collision between the ball and face at impact. The higher the number or higher the COR the more elastic the collision is. With all things being equal there has always been the debate as to how much impact COR actually has on distance. Some say for a 100mph swing, every 0.01 in COR can result in an additional 4+ yards. As swing speeds increase, that gain also increases. I want to stress again though that the COR of a driver is only one aspect of creating distance and even though there were many great Hi COR drivers back in the mid 2000’s, in my opinion, most conforming drivers today would probably out distance those non conforming drivers of old thanks to better materials, designs and bigger sweet spots and in many cases longer length shafts but we will get into that later.
