Smash Factor and Club Speed Calculator

[Clevited]

Note: I can't seem to upload it on here or in a pm. If you would like to try it out, send me pm with email you would like me to send it to.

I created a little calculator to help me guesstimate smash factor better than Skytrak seems to. I have checked it against a lot of real world data and it holds up quite well.

This is to be used only for well struck balls, it won't obviously work with poorly hit balls. Hotter than usual faces will also cause some descrepancy. I am sure there are some other instances where its accuracy breaks down but I am not striving to cover all of that.

It can be used to estimate smash factor quite accurately, but it can also estimate what your swing speed should be with another club of specified length. Its fun to use to see what your ceiling could be with the driver for instance given a full rip with a 7 iron.

If you have any questions about using it, or the assumptions I made, or how things are calculated let me know.

Otherwise I hope you find it helpful and accurate.

[Clevited]

Reminder to those who have sent me PMs. I need an email address to send the file to as this website does not allow me to upload or send excel files through PM.

Also, I felt like my fairway wood estimates might have been a bit off so I did some investigating. Trackman shows pga average smash is 1.47 for 5w and 1.48 for 3w. I call BS. I have yet to find trackman or GC2 data that shows this. Best I have seen is 1.45 off the deck, or tee so that tells me perhaps they have much hotter faces for those clubs on tour, or trackman was reading clubheads slow when they produced their swing speed/smash chart. I would not be surprised at all by that. I have looked at a lot of fairway wood data for pros, and swing speed numbers on trackman don't jive.3-5 mph slow wasn't too uncommon. I think trackman reads closer to the heal on a lot of clubs. GC2/HMT seems better at measuring club speed and therefore smash factor.

Just some observations probably only I care about lol.

[ProTee United]

You should be able to upload your XLS. Use the paper with clip icon on the top right of the editor. On the bottom you should see an Upload Attachment button.

[Clevited]

What the... I tried this several times when i first made this thread and it said file format not supported! Thanks for making me try again lol! This will be so much easier.


EDIT: For some reason, I am unable to download this on PC, but my phone can NP. So if you are having trouble downloading it, please just PM me still with email address and I will send it your way.

[Dave Lee]

Interesting concept. So it's estimating smash factor off the ball characteristics...then using that to get the clubhead speed? Clubhead speeds seem to be in the range i measure on my mevo. Although, will loft make a difference? Like players irons have 34 degree loft for 7 irons vs my apex cf16 have 31 degrees. That would impact smash factor I think

[Clevited]

Yeah, so I calculate smash based on the club selected, the launch angle, and the spin. The loft of your club won't matter much, what matters is the launch conditions. I essentially found a pretty good relationship between launch angle and spin. I used the trackman pga averages chart to create a formula for figuring this out. Really pretty easy, and quite accurate for most things if you hit the ball on the sweet spot.

If you had say a 3 iron loft in your 7 iron, then you might see some major issues. I intend to revamp my calculations to handle more things more accurately in the near future. But for now, standard or even stronger lofts seem to give reasonable if not very accurate numbers. More often than not, the smash tends to be within +-.03 and swing speed +-2 mph when compared to GC2/HMT GCQ or Trackman measurements. This is from testing against videos of Rick Shiels on youtube, as well as screen shots of pga players off the internet.

I appreciate the feedback, keep it coming if you have any other questions or suggestions.

[Clevited]

Hey Peeps,

I just noticed a bug where it wasn't calculating a club correclty on the first tab. I thought I would post a fixed version. Here you go. Again any feedback on its accuracy, or ideas for added functionality etc are appreciated.

[Clevited]

I updated my calculator again. I didn't change how I calculate anything, I just added the ability to do your entire bag and see your averages for launch angle, ball speed, spin rate, club speed and smash factor. I also added Trackman's pga averages so one can easily compare. Should be bug free but let me know if you find any. I plan to do some more refining of my calculation method in the next version. This might all end up being moot if Skytrak makes their clubspeed/smash factor calculations better but it is getting me by for now. Again, if you can't download, PM me with an email address to send it to.

Questions and feedback as always are much appreciated. Enjoy.

EDIT: Details about this calculator.

-It requires a pure strike, center of the club.
-The average smash factor calculation can't be used to show how often you hit center, but it is intended to show you if your mechanics are creating the best contact conditions. You can compare your numbers from your good strikes against pga pro averages.
-This can calculate your max swing speed potential across all clubs based on input from only one club. If you feel so inclined, you can take a full swing with a wedge, controlled or not and see what your potential could be with your driver for instance should you work at your efficency and technique with that club. You can see which club your efficiency/technique starts to fall apart on by comparing what it could be, to what it is. I have checked this against known numbers from multiple pga pro's, and even long drive pro's like Jamie Sadlowski and it jives very well.
-Swing speeds should be +-2 mph, smash factor +- .03 (extensively compared to Trackman data, and gc2/hmt/gcq using Trackman blog stats and Rick Shiels club tests, used center strikes only when comparing to gc2/hm2/gcq due to how it calculates smash based on part of club hitting ball)
-Abnormally hot club faces, extreme loft differences from what is considered standard loft will yield inaccurate results. It does do a good job against the hollow body irons I have checked, as well as the low spin, low lofted irons like Taylormade M2 etc. Hybrids and some fairway woods would be the most likely offenders "hot face" wise.

EDIT2:
-In the smash factor averages sheet, if you choose from the drop down the club you want for the first swing, all of the rest of the club names will change within that 5 swing group. If you change any other one besides the first one in each 5 swing group, you will forever have to change that one manually should you pick a different club at the top. I have since corrected this, and any slightly excel savy person can also. I will have that fixed when I post version 4, which will likely be the last version I will create.