Face angles can influence the sideways movement of the ball for sure. Generally speaking, a 1 deg. of face angle change can effect the sideways movement of the ball by 7.5 yards. Of course there are a lot of factors involved. In the old days, to make a driver head look like it was square, we would actually bore the heads 1 to even 2 degrees open. If we made them actually square, or bored them to square, they looked closed. Closed face drivers did not sell. With todays modern, 460 cc drivers, the effect of that optical illusion is not quite as severe, but it is there. We can also do a lot more with weight to help square the club face in today’s drivers than we could with the smaller drivers in the distant past. We can move more weight a farther distance to influence club face rotation. A closed face driver is still a viable option and good for player types that tend to come over the top with an open clubface, producing a slice. If that type of player is not going to seek out professional help to improve the path and just wants something that can keep the ball in play, even with his slice, a closed face driver could reduce the amount of movement of the ball. That, combined with heel biased weighting, is about all you can do with club specs on a driver to help that kind of player other than making sure all other aspects of the driver are fit properly.
As far as open face angle drivers, any player that wants the club to sit square to slightly open at address (me) and does not have a tendency to come over the top with an open clubface would be more likely to see good results with a square to slightly open club face angle. Again, there are a lot of other factors. I still believe, and I have seen in fittings, that a player that does have the slice tendency can see improvement by being fit a a square face driver (or even slightly open) with other specs dialed in (length, shaft weight and flex, grip type and size). And, if the head has some draw biased weighting, we can see improvement. That being said, a closed face angle is the best way to see sideways movement improvement for those players like I mentioned above that are over the top with an open clubface and don’t want or don’t have the ability to improve their movement to correct it. For those players, the M890 in the 1 deg. closed options and the STi2 with it’s draw biased weighting are solid options and don’t have that severely closed look at address.
Britt Lindsey