Newbie question on spin rates

[Dave Lee]

Hey guys...been following this forum for awhile and finally decided to take the plunge and grab a skytrak. First thing I did was take it to the range to get an idea of how accurate it was. For the most part I was impressed but one number that seemed off was the spin. I hit 100 shots with various clubs and I would say 90% were in the 2000-3000 RPM range. What's weird was the carry and ball flight seemed right on..just added a ton of extra roll. To make sure it wasn't real, I took my 56 and hit a shot at the 100 yard flag. It pretty much landed next to it, jumped up once and stopped. The skytrak had the right carry number but it added 8 yards of roll due to 2000 rpm spin. The only time i was able to get realistic spin was on a few pitch shots and longer irons. Although those were hit or miss as well. I read the balls might be an issue so i'll try some on my net, this weekend. But any chance I should be worried the unit might be off? Thanks

[DirtyGarry24]

Range balls? Hitting mat?

[wbond]

I second the range ball and mat question. I'm betting its related to those two.

[brnixon]

Different brands of balls can considerably vary spin rates. Lower end "distance" balls are designed to not spin and therefore help reduce slices and hooks off the tee. As an example, I have been hitting Bridgestone E6 balls which are a fairly low spin ball but I had trouble getting back spin on approach shots. Usually never more than 4-5K rpm even with wedges. I just bought a pack of Srixon X-star-XV tour level ball and can easily get over 9K rpm on my wedges now. I also noticed my driver is much more difficult though with poor shots ballooning into the sky with 3-4K back spin and varying levels of side spin.

[DirtyGarry24]

I use prov1's or Snells for everything. I had a crappy old scuffed up top rock laying there and hit it with a 56 degree wedge. 3000 spin! My good balls spin 10k! Mind = blown...

[jut111]

balls. Never appreciated the difference in balls until experimenting with skytrak.

[Dave Lee]

Wow sounds like ball is the most likely cause. Guess I'll wait for my net to check it out. Although on the mat, wouldnt that increase the spin, if you can compress it cleaner ? Thanks

[wbond]

Depends what you believe. Some testing shows otherwise. Actually big reduction in spin.

[SkyTrak_Seth]

Interested to see what happens with real balls. Lighting outdoors can be tricky sometimes too, so always make sure you line up a black mark on the ball toward the unit before hitting - it helps the software track the spin better. On the mat - different mats do different things. The gel-type mats tend to grab the club, slow it down, close it down, lower the back spin.

[Lgnir]

When it comes to mats, I've been very pleased with my Martin Hall 5 Star mat. A huge difference over my Dura-Pro mat!

[Dave Lee]

There is a plastic film with a pull tab on the lens. It's somewhat confusing that there is a card that says warning don't pull off the film. But the manual and the fact it has a tab seems to say take it off. I saw some old posts on this but seems like some say pull it some say leave it. Would this also be impacting the spin measurements?

[DirtyGarry24]

A very thin pliable plastic film should be removed. The harder plastic film should not be removed. If it doesn't come off very easy then leave it there. It is very confusing.

[James James]

Not sure what country you are in, but in the UK at this time of year range balls never dry out. This decimates spin:

https://exploringimpact.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/wet-ball-testing.html

You should be seeing longer than normal distances due to the reduced spin, unless your club (and therefore) ball speed has dropped. You will get a feel for your normal ball speeds as you get used to practising with ST.

[Dave Lee]

Hi Guys,

Thought I would post a followup in case anybody else searches this topic. I did setup my hitting net in the garage and tested a few things. Right off the bat, I got significantly higher spin rates with both range and taylormade TP balls. Interestingly enough, the TP balls weren't out of this world higher than my range ball. Could just be my quality of strike haha. So that seems to lead the cause to be the mat or the sunlight.

Another side note, is I tested Qolf limited flight balls. They produced surprisingly close results to actual balls. Spin was maybe 1000 rpm lower but the direction and overall flight was close enough that i'm ok practicing with them. Then testing with a few live balls to confirm. Just to extend the life of my net..which I have a feeling a ball will flight through eventually. Regular foam balls had ok direction but the spin numbers and carry were just too off. Anyways thanks all for the help in figuring this out.