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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2003 (Part 10)

Golf Equipment Chronicles: Speeder 757 & Rifle Spinners

By Leith Anderson

The Search for the Magic Driver took an accidental twist this month, but with great results. No matter how much you try to figure a problem out logically, a little serendipity helps. My attitude about Fujikura Speeders has definitely improved.

I continued to find out more about Rifle Shafts, adding some insight to the ‘Great Dave Pelz Wedge Mystery’. I was surprised to learn what ‘Tour Flighted’ really means in the Rifle world.

A constant theme has been inconsistencies in golf shafts, but we recently started measuring driver heads and found that they can be just as inconsistent. You should get the loft of your driver measured when you check the shaft flex. It really worked for me since I had the chance to recycle a great 975 LFE head that I would have sold on eBay for a song. The 8.5¡ head turned out to be almost 10¡ so now I have a great driver and look like a low-loft stud. The launch monitor is important to verify launch angle.

Wedges have become my new obsession. Maybe it’s time to start the search for the magic wedge(s)? I finally went back to a couple of old reliable Ping I3’s and had a good weekend at the Palo Alto Directors’ Cup. I continue to question wedge shafts. I’ve gone from heavy steel to graphite and now back to lighter steel. The conventional wisdom says heavy is best but I’ve had great results with graphite in my wedges. Since the Rifle Spinner issue came up, I’ve been more interested in trajectory. Details follow.

Finally, I thought I was going to do a piece on ‘ball fitting’ this month, utilizing our Golf Achiever launch monitor. Alas, not every good idea works out. In this case, after extensive testing, we felt like the GA was simply not accurate enough or sensitive enough to give reliable information regarding spin rate. It would have been so simple. Get six guys. Let them all hit their favorite balls and some they’ve been thinking about putting in play. Publish the results. Nice, easy article. That’s what we did and we couldn’t find enough difference in the performance of any of the balls to talk about. The next step is to try the experiment on the Swing Dynamics launch monitor. I have discussed the technical differences between the two devices in the past. If you want to catch up on any previous columns and can’t find a back issue of Golf Today, you can always visit our website at http://www.calgolftech.com and download previous articles.

The Palo Alto Director’s Cup
With the tournament season starting, I wanted to get this story up front because some readers are going to think I’m nothing but a hack after talking about my mistakes in the last couple of tournaments. I was so afraid to report poor performance again that I resolved to practice and went every morning the week before the tournament to the Pin High range at Route 237 and First Street in north San Jose. This is my favorite place to practice because it has a nice little wedge area and if you get there at the right time of day you can hit a couple of hundred wedge shots to targets that you can see without anyone around. Plus, when you’ve hit enough wedges, you can finish the bucket hitting irons off grass. I think hitting irons off mats is good exercise, but not good practice. When players come into the shop and ask how they should practice, we always recommend hitting hundreds of wedges rather then wearing yourself out with full swing practice. So I took my own advice. I had an ulterior motive because I wanted to see if I could tell the difference in trajectory between ‘Tour Flighted’ and regular Rifle shafts. I was also considering going back to steel from graphite in my wedges and wanted to set up some tests to see if I could find the difference in performance.

Tour Flighted Rifles vs. Regular Rifles
In March, I attended a technical workshop in Indianapolis to pass the certification for the Golf Lab to become a Certified Rifle Center. The course was fascinating for many reasons, but the most interesting and relevant to shaft fitting was the secret handshake that leads to understanding Rifle products. It turns out that all Rifle shafts, regular, flighted, parallel or taper tip are exactly the same form when they are manufactured. They all start life as a 44’ blank with a 10 inch parallel tip section. The certification course was all about ‘understanding the tube’. The only difference in the tubes is the initial frequency which is Royal Precision’s way to measure flex. They come in frequencies ranging from 2.5 to 8.0 although the stocking range is 3.5 to 7.5.

A Certified Rifle Center clubmaker will not use sets that come pre-trimmed from the Royal Precision factory but rather will use 44’ blanks. When you think of a blank and how it will perform, you need to understand that the more of the parallel tip section that is left, the more flexible the tip and the higher the ball flight. Conversely, the more of the parallel tip section that is trimmed away, the stiffer the shaft and the lower the ball flight.

A clubmaker who is trying to change the standard Rifle ball flight but still hit a target frequency will use blanks that are softer for the short irons and trim most of the parallel tip section away, thus creating a higher overall bend point and lower trajectory while maintaining flex. For long irons, the clubmaker will take blanks that are stiffer than the target frequency and trim less of the tip section to promote higher ball flight. By using a digital frequency meter and trimming carefully, it’s possible to customize trajectory as well as the flex.

The surprise to me was to finally understand what Royal Precision means by Tour Flighted. Tour Flighted Rifles are exactly what I just described. Softer shafts in the short irons with most of the parallel tip section trimmed away. The result is a shaft with a higher bend point promoting lower ball flight. Just the opposite with the long irons. For Tour Flighted Rifles, the goal is to produce a set of clubs where the apex of each shot is the same height. I’m reprinting the diagram from the RP catalog to illustrate the point.

Tour Flighted Rifles?
For an average amateur player, Tour Flighted Rifles might not be a good idea. The problem most amateurs have is they don’t get the ball high enough, including with the short irons. Consequently, Tour Flighted Rifles, with the objective of keeping the ball flight down in the short irons is the wrong way to go. A better plan would be to make the long irons Tour Flighted but build out the short irons to normal trajectories. This is the plan we’ve followed at the Golf Lab with good success. On the other hand, if you want your ball flight down, Tour Flighted will be correct.

Followup on the ‘Great Dave Pelz Wedge Mystery’
Now that we ‘understand the tube’ we can guess what’s going on with the Dave Pelz wedges, manufactured by Orlimar. It doesn’t look to me like either Dave Pelz or Jesse Ortiz at Orlimar understands the tube.

If you take a Rifle blank measured at a 4.5 flex and trim away the parallel tip section, you’re going to end up with a pipe. We’ve been complaining that the Pelz wedges we’ve measured are testing out north of 7.0 on the PCS Equalizer system. This appears to be contrary to what Dave Pelz advocates in his writings that encourage softer flexes in the scoring clubs to promote feel.

I did an experiment during my practice sessions. I started with 3.5 blanks and trimmed close to the end of the parallel tip section for my new Ping wedges. When I measured them on the PCS Equalizer system, they came out to 6.0.

The ‘Dirty Little Secret’
The CRC class included two veteran PCS members and was lead by Howard Miller, the president of Swing Dynamics and the primary force behind the rejuvenation of the Certified Rifle Center program. We did some experiments to figure out why this flex question was not making sense.

A couple of months ago I wrote an article for Golf Today about the Professional Clubmakers’ Society Equalizer System optimistically titled ‘All You Need to Know about Flex’. That article describes the development of the PCS ‘standard’ for measuring flex. The Equalizer system and nomenclature was based on the Rifle ‘Frequency Coefficient Matched’ or FCM method. Both systems express flex in numeric values: 2.5 to 8.0. It turns out, that’s where the similarity ends. The PCS system and the Rifle system simply don’t agree on what constitutes any specific flex. The simple fact is that if you have a shaft measured on the Rifle system at 5.5 (the Rifle midpoint of Stiff) the very same shaft will measure 7.0 on the PCS Equalizer system (a PCS ‘X’ flex). That’s the source of the problem: we’re talking about apples and oranges.

Over the last several months, as the PCS has been trying to promote the adoption of its Equalizer system by encouraging shaft manufacturers to adopt it as a standard, there has been a polite silence about what was really being said. The PCS members advocating the Equalizer felt a little self-conscious because they were using the Royal Precision format (slope chart and nomenclature) but coming out with different results. The simple fact is that the two systems give two different interpretations of flex. The PCS has certainly not wanted to start an argument about flex values with its patron, Royal Precision. In the old days we used to call this a ‘crazy aunt in the attic’ problem.

I know that the next question has to be ‘who is right?’ The truth is that both flex measurement systems can’t be right. Ultimately, you have to make a choice. I think the PCS Equalizer interpretation is more accurate and here’s the reason. Over the last couple of years we have reshafted hundreds of sets of irons. We frequently keep the shafts we pull, hoping to recycle them sometime in the future and earn a little bonus. Our shelves are full of Rifle 7.0, 6.5, 6.0, 5.5 and 5.0 pullouts. Keep in mind, someone came in with a valuable set of clubs and paid us to reshaft because they couldn’t hit what they had. We have never resold a set of the Rifle pullouts stiffer than 5.0.

When we replaced the shafts, we frequently replaced them with Rifles, with flex measured on the PCS Equalizer standard. This means we use 4.5 to get 6.0. We have had nothing but satisfied customers. Our opinion is that the PCS system is an effective flex measurement technique for amateur golfers. We trust the PCS system because our customers have never returned a set of Rifles that they couldn’t hit. Other clubmakers have surely come to a different conclusion, but the PCS Equalizer system is the one we trust.

I said amateur golfers for a reason. In the certification class we learned that the Royal Precision method was developed by Dr. Joe Braley (a veterinarian) and his son Kim working with PGA Tour Pros. It is my personal opinion that they developed a system that may work for Tour players but is too harsh for amateurs. I think that’s why our shelves are full of Rifle pullouts. In the last few months Royal Precision has softened up their flex ‘interpretations’ but according to our experimentation, they’re still a flex and a half too stiff. That’s the bottom line.

This brings the discussion full circle to what’s going on with Pelz and Orlimar. I think that they have a good idea but they’re using the Royal Precision interpretation of flex. I think that the true Rifle Spinner shaft should be fashioned out of a raw blank that measures at 2.5 or 3.5 on the Rifle FCM system. Using those blanks would result in a shaft that flexes at a PCS measurement where Dave Pelz ought to be.

Kind of presumptuous, don’t you think, to say that Dave Pelz didn’t get it right? When you put something like that in print in a magazine with the circulation of Golf Today, it might draw a rebuttal. Let’s see . . .

The Directors’ Cup and the Speeder 757
Some products offend you because they are horribly expensive and there’s no obvious reason why. I usually abhor name brands. I don’t like the little Polo pony. I don’t wear manufacturer’s logos (except for my friend John Norris’ MacGregor). The Fujikura Speeder has been in that same class for me. Speeders seemed too expensive with no obvious reason why.

And then I tried one. Actually, it was a little bit of a mistake and that was the serendipity. Truth is we made a Speeder 757-powered 975 LFE for one of our better amateur players and he didn’t like the custom powder coat color on the head. OOPS!! A $600 driver sitting in the return bin.

We decided to make it earn its keep by putting it to work as a demo. When a good amateur came in, we let him hit his club and then offered a go at the LFE with the Speeder for comparison. Strange things started to happen. The Golf Achiever launch monitor traces a shot path. The patterns started looking straighter. The GA also calculates sidespin which is an indicator of accuracy. The numbers with the Speeder started to come in lower.

So I decided to try it myself. One trip to the range and I was perplexed. It felt ‘solid’ (I say that in quotes because it’s such a clichŽ). To make a long story a little shorter, it ended up in my bag for the Directors’ Cup tournament at Palo Alto Muni the weekend of April 5th and 6th. It was the first ‘Major’ on the Palo Alto calendar.

Saturday was ‘one of those days’. I drove the ball well considering it was cool and a little windy. For once, I was surprised by the distance being longer, rather than shorter. I blamed my putting for the 82 I posted. Two putts over six feet. The rest tap-ins. No birdies, no miracles.

Sunday was a different story. Same solid driving and I made a couple of good iron shots for birdies and a couple of fabulous putts and posted a 74 which was good for a tie for low gross and low net at the same time. Here’s the bottom line: I never had a better tournament off the tee. Period. The ball just drilled through the wind. I continued to be pleasantly surprised when I got to the ball, rather than mildly disappointed. Conditions were cool, windy and damp. Granted, it was the first time out with the club and that makes it a short honeymoon, but I’m very impressed with the performance.

BTW: The playoffs didn’t go well. Carl Johnson smoked me with a birdie on the tough second and I scraped it into the hole in six to lose the low net to Pete Bahnmueller. But, I was in the game on Sunday afternoon and in the playoff for the first time this year.

How about that Speeder? I’m still not sure since it was the first tournament but for now it’s in the bag. I’m going to try the 661 and the other ‘exotics’ over the next few weeks, maybe in my old favorite JNP head. For now, I’m reserving my opinion about whether they’re worth it, but if I have another tournament like the Directors’ Cup, it’s going to be hard to stay skeptical about Speeders.

The Wedge Game
I mentioned that during the practice sessions leading up to the Directors’ Cup I was trying out different wedge shafts. I was interested to try out my new theory about trimming Rifle shafts to get a ‘true spinner’. At the same time I was interested in seeing if there was any difference between graphite and steel in wedge shafts.

I compared the Spinner shafts that I made with some regular Rifles in an identical backup set of I3 wedges. I was looking for a difference in trajectory. I think I saw the spinners hold a lower trajectory but it took a little too much imagination to be definitive. I’ve got another step to take and that’s to dial down the flex one more notch, to an even softer Rifle blank. I wouldn’t say I’m there yet, but I think that there really is such a thing as a ‘True Spinner’.

In practice, identical wedges with graphite and steel provided an interesting comparison. I got the feeling that for short, feel shots, graphite is better. I think that this is because the lower overall weight is simply easier to handle for the twenty yards and under range. On the other hand, for longer shots, I seemed to miss long with graphite. So for distance control, I decided to put the steel shafted wedges in my bag for the Directors’ Cup.

In the tournament I hit several nearly perfect wedge shots. The Rifle Spinner shafts gave good feel flexed at 6.0. However, I’m still convinced that I should try a softer version. I chunked a couple of short wedges, including the playoff. Hence, the jury’s still out on the graphite versus steel debate.

One other recommendation I would make is to have a close look at the soles of your wedges. When we were at the AT&T, we had the chance to peek into quite a few bags. Wedges usually had some kind of custom grind. You can just about bet that the heel is going to be ground down. I like the idea of putting sharper edge and a little front to back camber on the sole to help pick a chip off of short grass. I’ll save the detail for a future article, but for now, if you’re having trouble getting your wedges close to the hole, think about putting a little sandpaper to work.

Lots to think about for next month. Maybe we’ll meet down at the Pin High.

Leith Anderson is a partner in the Golf Lab in Palo Alto. He will answer all questions related to clubmaking and clubfitting personally. Contact Leith Anderson by email: Leith@calgolftech.com. Cell phone 650-743-2816.