Why is Lie Angle in Golf Clubs Important?

In depth look at how your golf clubs lie angle set up, could be costing you shots.

Hey everybody welcome it’s Andre Ang Golf Academy as always a very warm welcome to you thanks for tuning in watching the video today I really appreciate it quick advertisement break before we start you’re new to the channel watching my videos for the first time big welcome to you as well if you

Like the videos if you like the content maybe you could do me a massive favor hit that subscribe button and if you think the video is any good give it a thumbs up at the end thanks for that so I’ve done a video on this topic before

But it was several years ago when I talked about Li angles on golf clubs and I thought it’s time to revisit it although what I’m talking about will be the same content as it was several years ago you might have missed that first video things have moved on a little bit

Not much really Li angles L angle and I just wanted to explain it to you simply because I see a lot of golfers who come in here my studio for lessons or for fittings whose golf equipment especially the L angle which we’ll tell you about

In a sec is just so far out and it’s having a really big effect on how they hit the iron shots in terms of contact and Direction so what is Li angle basically Li angle is just the way that the club sits on the ground so this

Illustrates here if we’ve got a good liar standard Li the club sits pretty flush to the deck there is an argument to say that the toe of the club should sit very slightly off the ground because when a shaft flexes it bows forward slightly which tends to

Flatten out the LI angle so uh that’s open a little bit to debate but uh let’s keep it simple for today let’s just say a good Li angle sits fairly flush to the deck if your clubs are playing too upright then the toe of the club is

Coming off the ground so there’s a gap there between the ground and the toe of the club two upright and what happens here is this side of the club the heel of the club hits the ground first and for a right-handed golfer as the heel hits the ground it tends to close the

Club face making you pull shots to the left can also affect ball strike bit more Healy the ball strike can be if you get a club the opposite which is too flat you get the toe of the club in into the ground this bit hits the ground

First opens up the club face and pushes the ball off to the right again all these things which I’m going to say are are proven but I think they’re open to a little bit of interpretation digging around on the internet the general agreeance was that for every one degree that your clubs are

Out your ball could be going right or left anything up to four yards that’s quite a big number when you you think about it four yards isn’t it um also what affects this is obviously the person on the end of the club you know some golfers will consistently deliver

The club phase open some will consistently deliver it closed and as the fitter if the golfers not prepared to make changes to the swing and wants the lie angle to help them you can set clubs up in a fitting more upright or flatter to help alleviate the golfer’s

Problem wouldn’t be ideal but you can do that stick with me just want to show you something from ping so this is my ping fitting War when people come in for fittings for Ping equipment which is my number one selling brand we have all these different heads

In different L angles and I wanted to show you the Ping color code chart ping were one of the first companies to get into custom fit way back in the 60s they realized that one length of Club One Lie of Club couldn’t fit everybody and generally this is the way it works we’re

Digressing a little bit into length here but it is relevant to lie as the person gets taller as you get sort of above six foot tall we like to move into clubs which are longer than standard so if you’re a 6’2 we’d be probably fitting you depends on the length of your arms

As well we’d be fitting you into plus half an inch and if you’re much taller at 64 we’d be going an inch longer here’s the slightly complicating bit as you make a club longer you also make it play a little bit more upright so if I went plus half an inch longer than

Standard that club would immediately be playing one degree more upright and all these different color codes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 nine 10 different color codes represent different L angles and we have a way of measuring that we take the person’s height and then we measure the

Length of their arms and then we correlate this cross to give us the L angle this black is standard and then you go upright this way and flatter this way and this isn’t absolutely bang on what I’m about to say next but generally the taller the person becomes the more

Upright the liar the club should be and the smaller the person is the flatter should be doesn’t always work like that but it’s a good general rule of thumb and you can see on this little graphic here lie too flat ball wants to go out to the right lie to Upright remember the

Heel is going to hit the ground first and pull that ball to the left having a big effect on where your golf shot’s going to go let me build some clubs for you and illustrate to you on gc2 how the LI angles changing will affect where the

Ball goes okay everybody so what I’ve done is I’ve put together a ping g430 iron a standard length regular shaft in here but I’ve put it in the white dot if you look at the color chart up here you can see that the white dot is 3° upright

From standard now I normally play at a Red Dot which is 1° flat so this club is 4 de upright for me watch what happens as I hit the ball here hit a couple of shots so you can see that’s drast it’s not drastically going to the

Left but I’ve missed that green quite substantially and the thing that gc2 can show me if I just change graphics for you is that this club at impact was sitting 6.9 de upright as I struck it let me just change back onto this graphic here you can see Li angle has

Been measured 6.9 de up so what that looks like here if my hands the ground and that would be sort of a good L angle this club sitting way up as I hit it heel hits the ground closes the club face and I’m going to hit everything

Pretty much to the left of Target all day long now I’m not blowing my own trumpet here I could manipulate this Li angle I could try and hold this club face a little bit open because I’ve hit a lot of golf balls in my time so I

Can almost affect the line myself but I don’t want to do that ideally I want to have the club that set up absolutely perfect for me so I’m going to change this white dot into a red dot and we’ll see what effect that has on the LI angle

And where the ball goes that feels better I’ve gone back to my trusty Red Dot one degree flat I’ll show you a little close-up video of how the Red Dot looks in comparison to the white dot and you’ll you’ll just see how much the white dot the toe comes off the ground

In setup position so let’s hit a couple of shots now and let’s see if this Li angle gets a little bit better certainly looks better from from above I’ve actually hit that one a little bit out to the right trying to hit this straight but it’s definitely

Not going left let’s just see what the LI angle tells me I think that’s what we call operator error there so you can see now that the LI angle has gone from like 78° up just to one and a half degrees up I didn’t quite release the club on that

I left the club face a little bit open let’s try that again okay so there’s a better swing Ball’s gone pretty straight and my li angle delivery that’s a better example wasn’t it than the first shot the L angle now is 0.2 up which means that my club is not

Interacting with the heel or the toe keeping that club face Square obviously I could affect that I could keep the club face wide open or I could release the club and close it down and we would call that more operator error but the whole point of Li angle is it’s one more

Thing in the setup of the club that can help you play better golf certainly hit the ball straighter and I think that’s a very good illustration there um of of how much it’s affected me so you know got my li angles back to Red Dot now

Which is bang on but I was 7° upright and they’re saying for every one degree you could potentially be four yards offline seven fours 28 yards left for me that’s that’s a big number isn’t it so what can you do how can you go and check your Li angles well hopefully when you

Buy your clubs you’ve been fitted for them rather than buying off the shelf buying off the Shelf is very dangerous you you’re kind of rolling the dice and hoping you get the right fit so when you go to a reputable Club fitter you’ll have things like the length of the shaft

Measured for you the LI angle the shaft Flex the type of shaft the grip size all that sort of stuff is done in a fitting but let’s just say for instance you’ve got a set of clubs and you’re unsure if the LI is correct let’s just say you

Find you’re hitting lots of shots left or right and you don’t think it’s a swing issue then it could be your lies aren’t right you can take them to your local PGA professional or custom fit shop or any reputable golf shop and they should be able to measure you and they

They can do it in various ways they can use things like gc2 launch monitors which measure the lie angle you can go on a hitting board where you put tape on the bottom of the club and you hit off the board ping still think that’s the most accurate way to measure Li angle

Other people will disagree with that there are lots of other methods but if you then find your clubs are incorrect on the LI angles they can be put into what we call a loft and lie machine show you a picture of mine and you can bend clubs you can change the LIE certain

Clubs Bend better than others Forge clubs are a little bit softer and they Bend easier cast or stainless clubs will still Bend but you have to be careful and it has to be done by a professional who knows what they’re doing or else they can snap

So have a little think about it if you’re unsure go and speak to your local Pro or or whoever you go and talk to you about golf clubs and and check your Li angles um it could make a big difference didn’t it put your experiences Down

Below in the in the comment section you know if you’ve had problems with li angles or you use Li angles to compensate for maybe a problem in your goal site it’s quite an interesting topic but it is important I’m Andrew anorth thanks for watching the video today all the best bye for Now