I'm curious to see reponses to your question.
On a side note, I am not sure how much surface friction would contribute to floating the ball in a particular location, but spinning it should minimize that effect if enough of it was present to create an erroneous reading.
Mark,
Chris Burns wrote:
Here's one for you techies to think over and hopefully offer an explanation for.
I've been using my new ball spinner for a month or two and thought I'd see how the "equator" mark compared to the mark found when floating a ball via Pelz's method.
I took a dozen new balls, floated them all and marked the spot that bobbed out of the salt water solution. I checked them all twice. According to Pelz, the ball should be aligned while putting with this mark on top of the ball thereby causing the "heavy" part of the ball to rotate up and down while rolling instead of being at either side of the ball.
Then I spun the same balls and found the equator ring to miss the previous dots by anywhere up to 7/8". One ball's ring was only 1/16" from the floater mark, 3 others were 3/8" away, 7 were between 5/8"-3/4" away, and 1 was 7/8" away from the mark.
Now according to the ball spinner's instructions, you are supposed to align the equator ring vertically inline with the direction of the putt. The two methods don't seem to agree with each other.
I seem to remember Dave Pelz commenting that he sells the ball spinners but he considers floating the ball to be more accurate. I'm questioning whether there is any connection in the two methods. I compare the two methods to balancing a car tire and wheel assembly. The floating method is similar to a static balance and the spinning method is similar to a dynamic balance.
Does this mean the equator ring should be used when driving the ball? In this case, the high spin of the ball might be better served by the spinning reference ring. What about when putting? The rotation of the ball in this case is much slower, and would the mark established in the salt water solution perhaps be a more useful aid?
Any thoughts?
Chris Burns
