Question 42

Thanks, Kevin

Dear Kevin,

No, Moe's clubs did not have all the same upright lie angle. Natural Golf's first generation clubs did not have the same lie angle either. They were basically four degrees upright to standard . Moe did experiment with the same lie angle and length on all clubs but that didn't last long.

The principle around single axis golf is not how far you stand away from the ball or how wide your stance is. Having the golf shaft directly in line with your rear forearm is what gives you the technical advantage. You can stand very tall with very little spine angle, or you can stand far away with a much greater bend in the spine angle. With either of these address positions you have changed the lie angle considerably, and without having a golf club that will adjust for this, or that you can adjust, you must make compensation either with your set up, path, or your angle of attack.

The powers that be at natural golf believed that you should look like Moe Norman and practice his idiosyncratic distances from the ball and width of the stance. That's when I believed that they were on the wrong track.

My design for IMA irons overecame two problems. No. 1 - the oval shaped head has a hot spot that does not allow you to hit the ball consistent distances. You might hit a seven iron anywhere from a 165 yards to 195 yards depending where you hit the ball on the club face. Not a good way to score. No. 2 - the appearance of the oval shaped heads made it somewhat difficult to line up squarely.

I needed a design that would allow me to weight the golf club properly for all age groups, ability levels, and genders while keeping a high moment of inertia and being able to adjust the center of gravity in the middle of the face.

I covered the rest of the design concepts for the IMA irons in my answer to a recent question. Take a look at the Ask Scott archives for them.

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