Does the Price of the Shaft Ensure Better Shaft Performance?

In a word? No, the price of the shaft does not ensure that anything about the shaft will be better, whether you are talking the fit, the performance or the quality. Sad, but it is true. Over the past several years, a number of shaft companies have chosen to develop and market graphite shafts for woods which are VERY expensive. From the early 1980s when graphite shafts were first introduced until the mid 2000s, the most expensive graphite shafts cost in the area of $50 to $60. In almost every case, these were shafts which were manufactured to be very light in weight and with a very low torque measurement. Making a graphite shaft that weighs 65 grams or less and with under 3 degrees of torque costs more money because more expensive higher strength/higher modulus graphite fiber materials are required to get to that light of a weight with that low of a torque. But today, there are many shafts selling for $100, $200, $300 and even more which are of “normal weight” with a torque measurement in excess of 3 or 4 degrees. Why are there a number of shafts today being sold for such high prices? If you pay hundreds of dollars for a shaft, does that mean you will hit the ball farther, straighter or more consistently? There are FIVE elements in the design of a golf shaft which ordain every bit of its performance. Those elements are the, 1) Flex or overall stiffness of the shaft, 2) Bend Profile, otherwise known as how the stiffness is distributed over the length of the shaft, 3) Weight, which is important because the shaft’s weight controls the total weight of the whole club, 4) Torque, also known as the shaft’s resistance to twisting during the swing, and 5) the Weight Distribution, which is also referred to as the balance point of the shaft. At Bob Sailer Golf, I maintain a data base of shaft measurements for more than 2,000 different shafts. This data base is the core of the TWGT Shaft Bend Profile Software, a program which allows me to be able to make quantitative comparisons of shafts for the purpose of making better shaft fitting decisions for my customers. With this software program, it is possible to compare the design and production specifications of any shaft in the data base to any other shaft. In a nutshell, it is completely possible to find shafts which cost hundreds of dollars for which all of the performance elements are identical or so close to be considered identical in performance to shafts which cost less than $50. In all of Wishon's research, they simply cannot find any performance justification for the very high price charged for some shafts today. What makes a GOOD shaft is whether that shaft’s flex, bend profile, weight, torque and balance point are well matched to the golfer’s swing speed, point of wrist cock release and downswing force. There really is no such thing as a “bad shaft”; there are only poorly fit shafts and properly fit shafts. A properly fit shaft has no price guidelines or cost requirements attached to it. In order to find the right shaft for you, your clubhead/swing speed, downswing transition/tempo and point of wrist cock release has to be known. Then and only then will your shaft fitting needs be properly met.

Should I Use Graphite Shafts for Hybrids and Steel Shafts for Irons?

From the desk of Tom Wishon: Absolutely, and it is done all the time by tons of golfers. Industry statistics say that over 90% of all hybrids are sold with a graphite shaft, while only 30% of all irons are sold with graphite shafts. These trends most definitely say graphite is by the shaft of choice in hybrids while steel is the material of choice for iron shafts. But is that right? Since few hybrids are even offered by companies with steel shafts, if they were, would that make hybrids a better match to a set of steel shaft irons and thus offer a golfer a higher level of shotmaking consistency from hybrid to iron? As always with matters concerning the WEIGHT of golf clubs, it might and it might not – it depends on the golfer and his sense of feel for the weighting of his clubs. When we talk about the overall weight feel of a golf club, we are talking about both the total weight and the swingweight. Total weight is the weight of the parts – the weight of the shaft, head, grip all added up together. Swingweight is an expression of how much the golfer feels the presence of weight out there on the end of the shaft while the club is being swung. There is no question that a BIG part of each golfer’s shot consistency has to do with whether the total weight, swingweight or both together match well to the golfer’s strength, transition force, downswing aggressiveness and overall swing timing. Put a strong golfer with a fast, aggressive swing into a club with a light total weight and/or a low swingweight and the results can be a disaster of miss hits and terrible shot consistency. Likewise put a weaker golfer with a smooth, passive swing into a club with a heavy total weight and high swingweight and the golfer will lose distance and shot consistency. So if the hybrids have light graphite shafts and the irons have heavier steel shafts, won’t that mess up most golfers’ tempo and timing? No, it won’t as long as the headweight feel in both parts of the set is made so that it matches the golfer’s strength, transition force, downswing aggressiveness and overall swing timing. Depending on the actual weight of the graphite shaft in the hybrids, it may mean that the lighter the graphite shaft, the higher the swingweight may need to be in relation to the swingweight of the steel shaft irons in order to give them both a similar headweight feel. However, most graphite hybrid shafts are heavier (80g average) than graphite shafts used in drivers and fairway woods (65g avg). Thus when a heavier graphite shaft is used in a hybrid, its swingweight likely will not have to be more than 2 points higher than the golfer’s preferred swingweight in the steel shafted irons to produce a similar headweight feel. In the end, this and many other fitting decisions are best determined from working with a good, experienced Clubmaker. To find a Clubmaker in your area, head to our Find a Clubfitter locator here – http://wishongolf.com/find-a-clubfitter/ Until next time, TOM

Please explain Tom Wishon's 919THi driver clubhead cup-face design and how it affects performance.

All driver heads as well as some fairway wood and hybrid heads are manufactured from a number of separate pieces which are welded together to complete the final construction of the clubhead. Most common are driver heads which are manufactured from 4 separate pieces, as shown by this illustration below.

Of the separate pieces which make up the complete clubhead, one is always the clubface. Within such types of driver, fairway wood and hybrid head construction, the face can be formed to be welded to the body in two different ways, one called an EDGE WELDED face and the other referred to as a CUP FACE CONSTRUCTION. The above illustration shows the more common of the two, an edge welded face. In the edge welded face clubhead, the face is made so that as the term states, the welding line to secure the face piece to the head body is on the very edge of the face. To contrast, the cup face is formed in a manner so the face piece is more like a cup, meaning it could hold water because the edges are angled around the face surface. In a cup face construction, the welding line to secure the cup face to the head body is not on the edge of the face, but is rather some distance back from the edge of the face. Below is an illustration of a cup face construction to contrast against the above edge welded face design.

The purpose of a cup face construction is to improve the amount of face flexing for areas off the center of the face to achieve better distance, performance and feel from off center hits. In modern clubface performance, the more the face flexes inward, the higher the speed of the ball will be coming off the face. With an edge welded face, a portion of the actual welding bead that secures the face to the body is extends past the actual seam onto the rear surface of the face. This welding bead can extend ¼” onto the back of the face, all 360* around the face. It can act as an additional “stiffener” or “brace” to prevent the face from flexing as much inward for shots hit off the center of the face. Since the welding line on a cup face construction is well back from any portion of the face, this means the welding bead is nowhere near any portion of the face. In addition, the inside edge of the face is more curved so there is no additional agent causing resistance to the face flexing inward. Below is a photo showing an actual cup face 4-piece driver head on which the pieces of the head and the cup face have just been initially tack welded to position the pieces for full robotic welding.

There is no question maximum ball speed comes only from impact in the center or slightly above the center of the face. But with a cup face construction, and with a variable thickness cup face construction, in contrast with a uniform thickness edge welded face, the off center hit performance can be improved remarkably.

It seems the big OEM's are truly becoming marketing companies first and club manufacturers second. Are they?

Good call there for sure. If you follow the golf industry closely from a business standpoint, you could see this starting to happen back in the 1990s when several of the leading OEM companies decided to do an IPO and get on the stock market. Once you do that, the financial side puts more pressure on the company to keep pushing their sales and profit. And from that come product development decisions that are made much more on the basis of "what can that do for our sales" compared to what can that really do for the golfers.

PING could be the exception. Not only have PING remained a privately held company and chosen not to go public, but they have always operated their company with an engineer as the leader of the company, and not people from marketing, sales or finance.

Back in the 1980s before any of the golf companies went public, it seemed that the CEO or Pres of every golf company was a person who worked their way up through the engineering or product development side of the company. Then when all this heavy competition for sales and profit hit the industry, all the CEO's came from sales/mktg/finance.

Anyway, it really would be a dream if the majority of regular consumer golfers could know all this as well as know the facts of life about custom fitting versus standard off the rack. Maybe someday that will happen.

What type of shafts to OEM's put in their clubs?

From Tom Wishon:
I'll just chime in with some info on the shafts that the OEM companies use in their standard off the rack clubs because I have a good deal of experience to know about that.

When an OEM goes to work to come up with a shaft that is going to be installed in the millions of clubs they will make to be shipped to all the retail stores and pro shops to be sold off the rack, they have two primary requirements.

1) It cannot cost them much more than $10 because they want to keep their profit per club up as high as possible. With clubhead prices rising quite a bit over the past 2 yrs, the OEMs definitely do not want to spend much money on their stock shafts.

2) It has to be of a weight, flex and bend profile that would fit as wide of a range of golfers as possible. That means most stock shafts for drivers and woods are going to be in the area of 65 grams in weight, and will not be too stiff in the butt or tip section for each flex letter. Some OEMS are taking the additional approach to create their S flex stock shafts to be stiffer in the tip section for its flex than will be the R flex stock shaft. In other words, they make the S for a better player but the R for a very much average swinger.

Basically, as the golfer has a more and more aggressive swing speed, with a later and later release, the chances of most OEM stock shafts fitting them properly gets smaller and smaller - thus the need for better than avg to much better players having to spend even more money to get their standard off the rack club fit with a different shaft.

All this once again adds up to say that a golfer who buys off the rack and does not go find an experienced clubmaker to be fit for his/her clubs is unfortunately exhibiting behavior that is not very smart.

TOM

Is there anything to the stand alone wedge shafts that promise more spin and lower flight?

Most companies that make a separate, standalone wedge shaft such as the Spinner will design such shafts so they have the same overall stiffness as a shaft that would be installed in an 8 iron in the set. So they are in essence made to be 2 clubs softer in their overall flex. Thus if you have the DGS3 taper tip, you would use the 8 iron shaft in the wedge. If you had a parallel tip version, you would use the 8 iron tip trim amount for the shaft being put in the wedge.

What you're talking about in terms of lower flight with more spin is a MYTH - you can't make a shaft that offers a lower launch angle AND higher spin. To make a shaft offer lower flight means you have to make the shaft stiffer overall or make the tip section stiffer. When you do that, you act to LOWER the spin on the shaft, because stiffer shafts always spin the ball less than more flexible shafts. Can't be any other way.

When OEM's build to standard specs, how do they decide what standard specs are?

The answer to this questions is somewhat of a combination of events and action that all began many years ago.

The very first "standard specs" were chosen by individual clubmakers in the UK in the early 1900s who were in the process of converting their businesses from making one set at a time for one golfer at a time into more of a mass production basis. Up to this time, golf had not grown to be large enough for there to be a lot of golf courses with pro shops and club pros who were demanding to have sets of clubs in their pro shops to sell. Golfers of this era had to go to individual clubmakers to buy their clubs. While the clubmakers did not know all that much about individual fitting specs, they did at least know to build each set so its weights, grip size, and lengths were at least made to try to match to the physical characteristics of each golfer.

As the game grew and more courses were built in the early 1900s, more club pros got jobs at the courses and the pros decided they wanted to have clubs in their pro shops to sell to the golfers who came to the courses to play. Seeing this as a way to increase business, not all, but a few of the more enterprising clubmakers began to build sets to sell to the pros to be stocked in the pro shops and sold to the golfers. Thus this started the off the rack business model that still exists today.

The specs for these clubs were chosen by the clubmakers based on simple averages of the specs the clubmakers built for the golfers who previously had come to them to buy their clubs.

The American golf companies began to evolve in the very late 1800s and early 1900s. First were Spalding and MacGregor, followed in the 1900s by Wright & Ditson, in the 1910s by Wilson and the 1920s by Burke. Because America was so much larger than Britain and because golf evolved here such that there were no individual clubmakers in each town, almost right from the start the American golf companies pursued the "standard off the rack" business model. Their specs were adopted from having seen standard clubs made by the UK companies.

This all evolved through the 1930s to an actual series of standard specs that actually became agreed upon standards among the golf companies. Rarely did you see a golf company build their clubs with specs that were different. Men's drivers were always 43", 11*, 0 square and D2. Fwys were #2, 3, 4 and each 1" shorter than the driver, with lofts in progression of 13*, 16*, 19*. Irons were made on the basis of a 39" #2 iron at 20* loft/57* lie with all irons following at +4* loft, +1* lie and -1/2" length from there. PW had the same lie as the 9 because it was the same length at 35".

And those were the standards that no one deviated from. Until the 1980s. In the early 80s, the number of golf club companies tripled. All of a sudden competition for sales between this much larger number of golf companies became fierce.

Trying to find an edge on their competition, one company (I think it was Cobra from memory) decided to increase the length of their clubs and slightly lower the lofts of their irons. The reason was obvious - "if we make the clubs longer and lower in loft, golfers will hit the ball farther and we'll sell more clubs because everyone knows that distance sells golf clubs."

And thus started the trend of longer lengths and lower lofts that still goes on today. At first, drivers grew to 44". Then when every company pushed their driver length to 44, one of the companies jumped it to 44 1/2". Then to 45". Then to 45 1/2" and so on to where we are today at 46 1/2".

Same with iron lofts. Speaking only of the 5 iron to show the evolution, from the 80s on, the 5 iron went from 32* to 30*, then to 28*, then to 27* then to 26* and so on. Every time the majority of companies changed their lofts, some other company jumped their lofts stronger yet.

So these "standards" on clubs today most definitely were NOT determined by any research on what the "Average Golfer" needs. If you could say any one part of today's std club specs is based on some sort of average analysis of golfers, I suppose you could say the stock R flex shaft from most companies could be said to be chosen on that basis. But then too, if you look at all the stock shafts in the big company's clubs, you can find variations there.

But in terms of lengths and lofts, these are most definitely NOT chosen on the basis of what average golfers need to be able to play reasonably well. They were chosen to try to allow one company to gain a competitive sales advantage over another company, simply to sell more clubs.

What's sad is that most of the specs on std clubs today actually prevent most golfers from playing to the best of their ability.

But what's GOOD about this is that it very much does allow a good clubmaker/clubfitter to fit and build clubs for golfers that DO allow them to play better. The challenge of course is for the clubmakers to convince the golfers that what they can do for the golfer is better than what the big companies offer.