Perusing through my RSS reader I came across this article about steel shafts.
Did you know that 85% of the PGA Tour have shafts who’s technology hasn’t really advanced in 28 years? Seems pretty crazy to me! Most use the True Temper Dynamic Gold. Graeme Horwood the VP of engineering and R&D at True Temper says that really the only innovation left is to go lighter which means experimenting with metals other than steel.
They’ve produced lighter steel shafts (80 grams or less) but the problem is there’s less vibration-dampening in lightweight steel. Because of this, Ping and Nippon have come up with this new idea.
I don’t know if this is a new technology or just one that I’ve missed, but Ping and Nippon have developed the idea of steel shafts with ascending weight. Ascending weight meaning from the butt of the club to the head of the club the shaft gets heaver the closer you get to the head. Essentially they are long-iron shafts that are build light for maximizing speed and bridging the temp gap between hybrids and long irons. the shafts grow progressively heavier in the short irons for control.
They had a single-digit handicapper test 17 steel shafts with different weight displacements with the same 6-iron head. Here’s the results.
Finding what works
The circles here represent how far, straight and tightly grouped the shots were for five of the shafts. Although all were labeled stiff flex, each shaft had a different flex profile, says Jeff Sheets, vice president of research and development for Golfsmith. Using a clamp and a frequency analyzer, Sheets measured the flex of each shaft in four sections: the butt (under the grip), upper (just below the grip), middle and tip to show why each performed differently. He assigned a number to the relative flex of each section (3=stiff, 2=mid, 1=soft). Our golfer found his ideal flex profile. A local fitter can run the same test for you.
Isn’t Technology grand?! 🙂
Leave your comments, I love to hear em! 🙂
Dave
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