By Peter Weiss
Golf club makers build a slight bulge into the striking surface of the driver–a club used to smack balls a long way. Now, a scientist has calculated why that bulge helps balls curve to the middle of the fairway rather than hooking or slicing.
The analysis by physicist A. Raymond Penner of Malaspina University-College in Nanaimo, British Columbia, also shows that curvatures typical of commercial driver heads are near to the mathematically determined optimum.
“I was quite surprised that it came out so close,” says Penner, noting that the driver surface was developed by trial and error.