What Shaft is For You?

Six huge questions about shafts and the answers to help you glide it farther

Photo: Davies & Starr

Four swings. Question any player on the PGA Tour, and he’ll tell you it takes about that to tell if he has the right shaft. In fact, taking more swings than that can make it confusing. But in this era of launch monitors and computer-aided equipment analysis, getting the right shaft is like making an adjustment to a race car: One tweak, and the turns are seamless, there’s more acceleration down the straightaway and the car and driver perform as one.

In golf one shaft tweak can mean 15 yards.

It’s a fitting analogy, because the shaft has been described as the engine of the golf club. Making the right adjustments to your golf game’s engine is increasingly hard in a world of shafts made of new materials and weights as well as a multitude of feel characteristics. Golf Digest Playing Editor Nick Price, who experiments with shafts at his home workshop, says finding the right shaft requires one overriding principle. “You want it to be automatic,” he says. “If it’s not right, you’re going to feel like you have to manipulate the shaft. You’re looking for shot pattern, feel and uniformity. If those aren’t right in just a few swings, then throw it away.”

The characteristics Price is talking about might be simple to find if you have his repeating swing but hard to pinpoint for average golfers. Nevertheless, the concept is simple and powerful. As the PGA Tour’s Chad Campbell puts it, “When a shaft feels right, you just trust it.” That trust is the foundation for improvement, whether you’re a pro or just wishing you were one.

Says Skip Kendall: “I’m looking for a crisp sound and a swing that feels effortless. If I have the right shaft, I’m not having to work hard to hit shots.”

Aaron Baddeley: “I wouldn’t try anything more than four swings. You’ve got to get that desired flight right from the start. If it takes any longer than that, you’ve already started to adjust to the shaft.”

Luke Donald: “I don’t look at numbers. I test it, and I’m looking for the right penetrating trajectory. It should just feel solid.”

Kenny Perry: “It’s all about ball flight. If I get a shaft that’s too stiff, the ball sort of balloons on me. I need a shaft that has a small kick to it, a small movement down there.”

Jesper Parnevik: “I always want to test in the wind. That’s the last test for me. I prefer a very stiff feel with a high flex point. I want the shaft to go all in one cut. Tiger’s shaft to me feels like it’s made out of rubber, but to someone else it would be very harsh. But Vijay’s driver is like a huge cement pole. . . . I can usually tell in one to two shots.”

As you can see, it’s about getting a feeling that improves a player’s comfort level. It’s a challenge for the fitter, particularly when it comes to getting the right driver shaft for an amateur.

With qualified fitters and better launch monitors unfilled to the golf public, the average golfer has the opportunity to get en suite like a tour player. But unlike the pros, we don’t have teams of experts working to tweak our engines on a regular basis. We also have day jobs. We need to supply ourselves with a working knowledge before we go messing nearly below the hood. Let’s look at six huge shaft questions. The answers (compiled from our own investigate) will go a long way toward getting you technology you can trust.

Q: Does the shaft really matter that much?
A: Not everyone is convinced the shaft is an influential part of clubhead performance. Some believe the shaft’s impact on performance is in the nebulous area of feel. The belief is that a shaft that doesn’t feel right might not produce your best hits consistently, but it won’t affect the way a clubhead functions. In truth, at impact the clubhead behaves as if it were not attached to anything at all. Though, most believe the shaft plays a vital role. One of those is Bob Dodds, executive technological director for the Qualified Clubmakers’ Society.

NANO

Nanotechnology optimizes graphite by utilizing strong, lightweight and super tiny (one-billionth of a meter) particles. Note: Shaft cost guide, not including labor: $=less than $50; $$=$51-$100; $$$=$101-150; $$$$= more than $150 (from top). ALDILA NV ProtoPype, $$$. Single-wall carbon nanotubes for stiff-tip performance. GRAFALLOY Prototype Comp NT, $$. Molecular carbon for stabilizing tip. ACCUFLEX Evolution,$$. Composite technology designed to reduce shaft deformation for straighter shots. Merynn Ito

“I can take a terrible clubhead and place a excellent shaft in it and make it work for a given player,” he says. “But give me the best designed head in the world and place a shaft into it that has not been properly fit for that golfer, and that club will be unhittable. It’s the shaft that makes the club work.”

Today companies are spending more time trying to walk down the aisle specific shaft characteristics to their clubhead designs. In some cases, these lead to product-specific shaft designs, so-called stock shafts. (Note: You can tell it’s a stock shaft because the shaft band prominently features the club company’s name on it, and might or might not include a shaft company’s name.) TaylorMade’s M.A.S. series of stock shafts for its r7 quad and r5 dual drivers were developed after investigate of golfer types. The Quadra-Action shaft used in MacGregor’s MacTec driver features different levels of flex in three locations on the shaft to optimize downswing performance.

In other cases, companies work specifically with a shaft company to use one of its shafts to match a particular clubhead. Cobra has done this with shaft firms Aldila, Graphite Design and Mitsubishi Rayon on its SZ and Comp drivers, and Sonartec selected the new Fujikura Tour Platform series shaft for its latest SS-2.5/3.5 fairway woods. Even Callaway, which has avoided by name-strain shafts in the past, will go with a special version of the Aldila NVS shaft in its new Huge Bertha Fusion FT-3 driver.

So what does it all mean? Basically, companies are trying to fit a range that encompasses most golfers. “We place as much thought into shafts as we do into heads,” says Bob Thurman, director of investigate and development at Wilson Staff. “We must have gone through about 60 design iterations with UST to develop the right shaft for our newest driver. We design our shafts for the 8- to 24-handicap range, which we feel is the broadest group of golfers we can fit with our stock shaft.”

Q: So only excellent players should get a custom (non-stock) shaft, right?
A: Danger, Will Robinson. This is a hard question to answer. It depends on a number of variables that range from how much time you have at your disposal to what type of person you are. Some in the industry believe that stock shafts are inconsistent because they are made in mass quantities to fit a general player profile. Others believe stock shafts are superior because they are designed to specific performance characteristics matched to a certain type of head design. No one is going to dispute the fundamental importance of getting fit to your clubs. How specific that administer should get is up to you. But Rick DeMane of DeMane Golf, a chief clubfitter in Greenwich, Conn., says more options mean a truer fit, especially when it comes to the driver. “There is a sufficient range of flex, bend profile, weight and torque in today’s custom graphite shafts that it is safe to say there is a custom shaft out there that will outperform the stock shaft.”

Nevertheless, it’s a small unfair to talk about only the shaft. Does a terrible shaft unduly influence the swing? Or will a terrible swing be a terrible swing regardless of the shaft? For instance, you might swing the clubhead at 95 miles per hour but rarely get the shaft over your head on the backswing, but a John Daly-type might go way past parallel. In small, some public are Sergio Garcia and some are Ernie Els. Their speeds might be similar, but the way they initiate the downswing or load the shaft isn’t. So they probably need a different type of shaft that flexes another way, and subsequently feels different, too. But further than that, modern shaft technology is translating that sensation into performance differences tailored to the individual player.

“Future shaft technology may be better able to translate precise differences in the bending action of one shaft versus another so that a golfer could achieve more of his optimal launch angle from the shaft,” says fitting expert Tom Wishon, president of Wishon Golf and author of the book The Search for the Perfect Club. “That way, a player might be able to use less loft on the head to get more ball speed for the same overall launch angle.”

STEEL

Although developers of steel shafts have focused on making them lighter, two top shaft brands are addressing the needs of the better player. TRUE TEMPER Dynamic Gold SL, $. lightweight iron shaft with stable tip for augmented speed and control. ROYAL PRECISION Rifle Project X, $. Tour-tested iron shaft that features consistent length on the final step down through the set. M.I.

Q: How do I find that shaft?
A: First, get with a reputable fitter and expect to spend some time once you get there. At a place like Hot Stix Golf in Scottsdale, getting fit for an entire set of clubs can take several hours, but local fitters probably can accomplish a driver fitting in small more than an hour. What you can expect is a trial-and-blunder administer in which a fitter looks to find the right combination of weight, length, flex and tip stiffness that matches the feel you need with the performance improvement you desire.

Note: It’s a excellent thought to come in with an thought of how you’d like to get better. It’s also a excellent thought to come in set to hit a honest amount of shots and to spend a small cash, but generally less than the cost of a new driver. A shaft upgrade on a driver can cost anywhere from $25 to $300 just for the shaft. The installation charge will be $25 to $50.

You can find a excellent fitter by visiting the Qualified Clubmakers’ Society website at proclubmakers.org, or by visiting the Launch Monitor Locator at golfdigest.com.

Also, take the advice of Skip Pankewich, senior design engineer for UST: “A strong player who generates a lot of ball speed wants to launch the drive at a high launch angle with small spin. Such a player might need a stiffer shaft to produce lower backspin so the ball doesn’t balloon up into the air and lose space. This player wants to see the ball reach its apex, then plateau out and glide down range before diminishing to the ground,” he says. “Slower swingers could use more flexible shafts [and higher lofted drivers] to produce backspin that will keep the ball in the air longer for more space.”

In general, tour players who generate ball speed of more than 170 miles per hour (115- to 120-mph swing speed) can optimize space with a launch angle of 12 or 13 degrees and a backspin rate of approximately 2,500 revolutions per minute. Golfers with ball speed in the 135-mph range (90- to 95-mph swing speed) would benefit from a higher launch angle of 14 or 15 degrees and a spin rate of more than 3,000 rpm.

Q: So how do I know I don’t have the right shaft?
A: Rene Cleaver, PCS Clubmaker of the Year, has these basic guidelines for evaluating the proper shaft specifications for you:

Finally, bend point (This is a technological term, but it refers to how tip-flexible a shaft will feel and perform). “When a shaft’s bend point is too high for a particular player, the golfer will feel an unnatural sensation of tip-flexibility, or head-heaviness,” Cleaver says. “In addition, some high-swing-speed players will see a lower ball flight. If the bend point is too low, some high-swing-speed players might find a higher ball flight. For most golfers, though, a flexible tip is a excellent business, increasing launch angle.”

GRAPHITE

Graphite continues to offer more design options than steel. FUJIKURA ZCom, $$$$. Series emphasizes three flex zones to fit a range of swing types and provide the same flex performance regardless of how the shaft is bored into the clubhead. HARRISON SPORTS Striper Tour, $$. Three weights with a flex profile designed for high launch, low spin rate. MITSUBISHI RAYON Diamana, $$$$. Six weight ranges from 53 to 103 grams are designed for stability. GRAPHITE DESIGN Tour AD I-65, $$$$. Low-torque design combines light weight with a mid to high kick point for players with quicker tempo. MCC MFS Matrix, $$$. Varying flex and trajectory profiles are designed to improve energy transfer; based on tour prototype. ROYAL PRECISION Saber Tour Vector, $$. Tungsten microfibers are woven into the tip for better stability. UST IROD Driver, $$. Based on IROD hybrid design with emphasis on high launch and low torque. M.I.

Q: Why should I get excited about today’s graphite shafts?
A: Simple: The design capabilities of graphite materials are finally being optimized. The latest designs are by thinner and lighter yet stronger sheets of graphite. That means a administer that used 10 plies of graphite 0.1 millimeters thick can now use 20 sheets that are .05 millimeters thick. Wrapping the sheets in innumerable patterns produces the subtle differences in the way a shaft bends in the downswing.

“The benefits of this administer include the less likelihood of breakage, and because of the added material, the shaft designers can be more subtle and use more finesse in designing shafts,” says Benoit Vincent, chief technological officer for TaylorMade. “These stronger, lighter shafts have more fiber than resin, which translates to better feel.”

Q: Torque used to be all the rage. It’s subdue referred to in a lot of shaft literature. What exactly is it, and what does it do?
A: First of all, torque is a bit of a misnomer. What you’re really talking about is torsional stiffness, or more specifically, the degree of force required to twist the shaft. It is a specific measurement, of course. But the thought of getting a low-torque shaft is passÈ. Here’s what happened. Early graphite shafts used to be inconsistent because of the way they were made. By other materials to decrease the torque became a necessity, especially for better players. Now, torque is mainly about feel. In fact, tour players have had success in contemporary years with the Fujikura SIX shaft, which has nearly 5 degrees of torque. As a means of comparison, Fujikura’s Speeder shafts have a torque rating of 2.5 degrees, nearly 2 degrees less than that of the SIX. A higher torque number means a shaft might feel softer or whippier, depending on the swing speed of a particular player. But it isn’t a performance come forth.

“The shaft manufacturers and golfers have found that when torque is less than 3 degrees in woods, it makes the shaft feel too stiff and boardy, regardless of flex,” says Dodds of the PCS. “For slower swingers, it can make it hard to get the ball in the air. It used to be that torque had to be less than 3 degrees in premium shafts. But now many of the best shafts fall in the 3- to 4-degree of torque area, so public don’t talk about torque because today’s premium shafts have sufficient torque in them.

“Manufacturing methods and technology also have a lot to do with torque. In the past companies would screw that torque down less than 3 degrees because their shafts were inconsistent,” Dodds says. “Public would hit those older graphite shafts all nearly the ball park, so they added more torque to try to straighten out the shots. They were trying to compensate for inconsistent shafts by lowering their torque. Today’s shafts are much better, so you can have accuracy and a fantastic feeling shaft without lowering the torque too much.”

MULTI

Combining the assets of different materials in a single shaft isn’t entirely new (boron in the tip of graphite shafts, graphite-tipped sections of steel shafts), but it’s now getting more precise. NIPPON SHAFT N.S. Pro 750GH, $$. 75-gram steel shaft utilizes graphite filament wound over the grip section to underline the thin steel tubing. AEROTECH SteelFiber i95, $. Company says 59 miles of ultrathin steel fiber (one-tenth the diameter of a human hair) are applied to the outside of the graphite core to extend the shaft’s center of gravity toward the perimeter. M.I.

Q: Is it all about driver shafts? What’s going on with iron shafts? A: It’s all about getting lighter. There are new graphite shafts that incorporate the feel of steel by having balance points that better match those of steel shafts while providing a 10- to 15-percent weight reduction over ordinary steel. One such new graphite iron shaft is the Aldila NV, which builds on the thought of a consistently progressive tip-flexibility.

Of course, there are new steels that accomplish the same weights as some graphite shafts. “Twenty years ago 110 grams was considered lightweight in steel,” says Graeme Horwood, vice president of commerce at Right Temper Sports. “Now it’s 90 and going lower.

“Until now, most super-lightweight steel shafts have been designed for the higher-handicap player and the game-improvement market,” Horwood says. “Such shafts have more flexible tips to help get the ball in the air. But we’re developing shafts now that produce the more penetrating ball flight that better players prefer.”

Lighter weight can help boost clubhead speed, but heavier shafts might improve control. Royal Precision’s 115- to 130-gram Rifle Project X shafts utilize a consistent tapering of the length of the final step (the periodic narrowing or bumps on a steel shaft as you go toward the tip) to provide a consistent feel through the set, all the while construction longer middle steps to accomplish the ideal flex profile.

How I added 15 yards of carry

Subdue unsure whether a custom shaft is the right go for you? Well, we were, too, so we place together a small experiment. Could we tell the difference if we took three identical clubheads and en suite them with three different shafts: the stock version, a well loved shaft but not quite the right fit and the quintessential perfect fit. The result was an education.

A excellent shaft fitting is a bit like speed dating, only much more of a life-changing experience. How much? Place it this way: I don’t care if Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and a plateful of a million dollars are sitting across the table from you. The right shaft is a larger, better deal. Here’s what happens when you get a excellent fitting: A magic wizard, if not known as a fitter, watches as you hit balls into a net, alternating his stare between a collection of pre-shafted clubheads, your swing and a computer screen that spits out the relevant launch conditions for each hit. Part artist, part technician, he makes recommendations and offers tweaks. It’s best to go into this experience in a disorder of complete trust, something we used to reserve for doctors and public servants. Like your mother, a excellent fitter knows what’s best for you. So what happened in my complete disorder of blissful trust? Initially, it was a nearly overwhelming exercise in apathy. Of the three shafts we used in our experiment, all three were pretty close fits to my needs. My 12-handicap swing is not consistent enough to make tiny performance differences stand apart, so I had no thought which shaft was held to be the ideal fit. I didn’t look at any numbers from the launch monitor because I thought the difference should be obvious. I was getting apprehensive that I was about to bring down the entire shaft-fitting industry. Concerned but undeterred, my fitter suggested I take the three drivers out to the range and the golf course to see if I could see anything different. I took my notepad and jotted down how many out of 10 hits felt solid. (Frankly, it was the only word that made significance, and it was the word I kept hearing from tour players, too.) Alternating drivers every three swings, here’s the “solid hits” leader board: Driver A: 3 (red line in chart) Driver B: 4 (blue line) Driver C: 9 (orange line) I went back to the fitter, hoping that Driver C was the one fit to my standards. Excellent news. How excellent? How about an extra 15 yards of carry, according to launch-monitor data (see chart). Whole yardage differences amounted to about only three yards, but I’ll take the longer carry because I haven’t figured out how to skip a driver all the way across a lake. Does fitting matter that much? Hard to say. The driver works better, ball flight is more consistent, and every hit feels pretty darn solid. Didn’t hurt that I broke 80 the first time out, either.