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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2003 (Part 16)

Back to Bobby Jones: Customizing Shafts for Specific Clubs & New Drivers

As 2004 gets closer, the excitement around new club designs is building up. The industry is becoming much more sophisticated in its product development and rollouts. They start the “buzz” and then they beat the drums. It reminds me of my old days selling software.

The culmination of the marketing is aimed at the “Big Show” - the Orlando PGA Merchandise Show at the end of January 2004. All manufacturers have high hopes you will buy their new designs. They’re trying to follow up the blockbusters of 2003 - hundred million dollar hits like the Callaway Two Ball and Titleist 983 Series. But behind the excitement, it’s disappointing when you realize they expect their customers to buy (almost) exactly the same thing.

Think about it. Why are all drivers 45"? Do they think that a player who stands 5'5" tall should naturally play the same length as a player who is 6'5"? Why 45" when most of the PGA Tour is playing shorter drivers? Is the same swingweight right for all players? Standard irons are based on a 38" five iron length. Is it natural for everyone to play the same length? If you special order, you can add or subtract an inch or so. More than that and you’re likely to end up with a crazy swingweight. You can order lies bent up or down a couple of degrees. This won’t be a problem if you’re 5'10" tall and swing a driver at 95 MPH. If you are a little taller or a little shorter, a little stronger or a little weaker, you’re might fall outside the range where “average” works for you.

If you’re like me, you want to discover some new idea or breakthrough technology that will actually make a difference in your game. I’ve been looking at the preview offerings from all of the major OEMs and component companies wondering whether it will be a new set of irons, driver, fairway woods, putter or wedges. I’m hoping that I will find some new clubs that will make a difference in my game.

And that made me think about Bobby Jones and my five iron.

Every Club Should Be a “Go To” Club

If a human being could love an inanimate object, I’d love my five iron. It’s a miracle club. In several tournaments at Shoreline and Palo Alto the blue tees require mid irons on the par threes. There is frequently water short and you can’t miss left, right or long. The wind blows hard enough to scare you. I can remember at least a dozen shots that were make or break that turned out to be 5 irons. The club never let me down. The shots were so straight and penetrating that they surprised me. There were five or six knock downs into the wind that I thought would hit the pin. Two or three went from knee shakers to birdies. Not only tee balls, the club is a hammer out of the rough. I’ve never hit longer and more solid recovery shots to lay up on par 5’s. You can tell I really like that 5 iron. By the way, it’s a Bridgestone “Joe Model” oversize and a little offset with a Fujikura VP 90 graphite shaft flexed at PCS 6.0.

Here’s the point: if I were to go out and buy a new set of irons, I’d be nuts not to keep that 5 iron in the bag. It’s going to look pretty funny to see that old club sitting in my Hoofer with a bunch of bright, shiny new forged blades.

Back to Bobby Jones. In Jones’ day, there was no such thing as matched sets of golf clubs. Bobby Jones searched out his clubs, one by one. He tried hundreds, looking for the one that worked better than all others for each required use. He haunted clubmakers. In the process, he developed a touch that was so sensitive that his “gamers” matched almost perfectly. (The documented comment from Jones after he learned the result of the testing was “I never liked that 8 iron”.)

Why isn’t every club in your bag unique, chosen for a specific purpose and use? I bet you’re almost half way there. Your driver, putter and wedges probably were chosen that way. What about the rest of your bag?

The Myth of Matched Sets
You’d be correct to detect a little cynicism trying to understand why we all started playing “matched sets” back in the fifties. The answer is simple: It was easier and more economical for a manufacturer to sell a complete set of clubs instead of one club at a time. We bought the pitch. In an efficiency-seeking culture, it’s a lot easier to buy a set of clubs all at once and be done with the aggravation. Back then, there weren’t many good sources for custom clubs. It was all Wilson, Hogan and MacGregor in “players’” bags. Golfsmith was a gleam in Carl Paul’s eye in 1967. No one gave any thought to whether a club “fit” or not. It was the player’s responsibility to fit the clubs, not vice versa.

Let’s explore a few examples of why a matched set might not be the best setup for your bag.

You’ve already bought a few drivers searching for the “Magic” Why not spend a proportional amount of effort doing the same for the other clubs in your bag?

Think about your fairway woods. Do you hit a 3 wood off the tee on certain holes for position or to stay in play? If so, it is a good idea to choose a 3 wood with a deep face to help you be consistent off a tee. But that same deep faced 3 wood isn’t going to be quite as reliable off of a tight fairway lie. If you’re playing from a tight fairway lie, you’re going to need a shallow faced wood for consistency. Same out of the rough. The “tight lies” profile will pop up and cause catastrophes. If the rough is deep and you’re there a lot, you might find a specialized club like the “Knife” works wonders. We’re starting to see 7 metals on Tour. If you choose clubs for a specific purpose, your fairway metals certainly won’t be a matched set.

Think about your long irons. Are you sure that there is a significant difference in carry distance between your 3, 4 and 5 irons? Most amateurs we test on our Achiever launch monitor show less than 5 yards difference in carry at the long end of their irons. That is the reason that most manufacturers are hoping that some form of “combo” set will lead the sales parade in 2004. Ping is making a statement with its radical redesign of its 2004 irons. They’ve made the 2-5 irons look like an iron-hybrid combo. One and two irons are already obsolete. I think it’s about time for most amateurs to leave the 3 iron in the garage. A good work around is to slightly alter the loft of your 4 iron to open up room in your bag for another club. Here’s how you do it:

Traditional “standard” lofts start with a 48¡ pitching wedge and decrease by 4¡ until you get to a 28¡ 5 iron. Then, the 4 iron goes down 3¡ to 25¡ and the 3 iron 3¡ more to 22¡. I think you’re better off to take your 4 iron down 4¡ to 24¡ (call it a weak 3) and leave your 3 iron at home. Fair warning: if you have a set of clubs you bought in the last three or four years, you need to have the lofts measured. You need to find out if they’ve been jacked up to trick you into thinking you’re hitting the ball farther. It’s a good idea to spend half an hour with your clubmaker to figure out the right lofts for your irons and set your gaps.

How about long approaches? Most amateurs won’t hit the green 5 out of 10 times with a 3 iron. Even the pros are swapping their 3 irons for a 22¡ utility wood. The shot comes in high and doesn’t bounce over the hard greens they play on tour. This might be the most important “new” club for 2003. If you haven’t been testing utility woods in the off season, you should find a shop with a rack full of demos and open the way for dramatic improvements in your long game in 2004. Start with a 22¡ or 23¡ hybrid. That’s about the same loft as your 3 iron but it should go a little higher and a little farther.

And finally, have a look at your wedges. The current “conventional wisdom” calls for a 48¡ pitching wedge, 52¡ gap wedge, 56¡ sand wedge and 60¡ lob wedge. For most amateurs, the 60¡ wedge is a tricky and dangerous club. There’s nothing that says you can’t do a great job with a 54¡ sand wedge for longer bunker shots. If you’re a strong player, you might find you get better “gaps” at the short end with a 50¡ pitching wedge (adjusting your other irons weaker) and filling in with a 54¡, 58¡ and 62¡ (following Dave Pelz). The point is, you should be spending your time thinking about the courses you play and be very careful to choose the right spread of lofts and even more important, bounce angles. If you’re a serious player, you should probably have five or six wedges in your rotation. Choose the right combination for the course you’re going to play.

The Myth of Matching Shafts
If you’re going to customize your set makeup, you might as well go all the way and customize your shafts. There’s no good reason all your shafts have to be the same.

Specifications on driver shafts are pretty standard. The average weight is 65 to 75 grams. If you’re crazy for distance, you might drop down to the ultra light range (55 grams) and if you’re strong as a horse, you’re going to be interested in driver shafts that weigh 80 grams and more. The trick is to get the right flex. If you want to read more about flex, go to the Golf Lab website: www.calgolftech.com, and have a look at the archived articles under “What’s New”. Driver shafts have been a subject in the “Search for the Magic Driver” many times.

Should your fairway metal shafts match your driver? I don’t think so. Most PGA Tour Professionals use heavier shafts in their fairway woods. If you’re playing a Fujikura Vista Pro 70 in your driver, you will probably do well with a VP 80 in your fairway metals. Or, you might want to try a lightweight Nippon Steel shaft at 105 grams. Lightweight steel shafts give the feel of steel with the performance of graphite. We think that heavy weight steel shafts like True Temper S-300 and X-100 are too heavy for any but the strongest players, especially in fairway woods. Fairway metal shafts are one place where you can actually influence ball flight with a shaft. If you have a problem getting the ball in the air, you should look for a softer tip. If you hit the ball high, you might do well with a heavier weight Fuji Vista Tour or similar.

What about matching iron shafts? If you play Rifle Tour Flighted Rifles (TFR’s), they’re a “set” of shafts made from blanks of different frequencies. The mid irons are the target frequency. The short irons are softer, trimmed more aggressively to keep the ball flight down. The long irons are a stiffer frequency, trimmed less to kick the ball higher in the air. TFR’s are three different shafts married into a “set”. TFR’s do not “match” and that’s the way the system was designed.

Do you use an iron off the tee? If so, think about putting a nice strong graphite shaft in that club. Make it a little more flexible than the shafts in the rest of your irons. You’ll swing smooth and hit it a long way. Many good players are doing that. The point is there’s no reason the shafts in your irons have to match, on either end.

If you believe in Dave Pelz and his theories about the scoring clubs, you’re going to want to change the shafts in your wedges. Dave’s theory is that “flex=feel” and he advocates using soft Rifle “Spinner” shafts in your wedges. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been able to find a company that can actually build what he advocates, but that’s another story. We think that your scoring clubs should have soft Rifle shafts to give you feel and touch around the greens. “Spinner” means you start with a softer blank and trim away more of the 11" parallel tip section to keep the ball flight down. You’re going to have to find a clubmaker who is trained and certified by Royal Precision if you want authentic Spinners. Look for a Certified Rifle Center (CRC).

What will work for you? There’s only one way to find out. Buy yourself some wedge heads that you like and build out some clubs that you can try yourself at the range and on the course. There’s too much baloney circulating when guys making recommendations are talking about things they haven’t tried. And they’re talking to you, whom they’ve never seen play. Where else would such an opinion be valued except about golf clubs? The bottom line is if you really want to know anything for sure, you have to try for yourself. That goes double for golf.

Building a Mixed Set that Fits
All of this detail might sound a little daunting. If so, just go back to the golf club store and pick up a box of “matched” golf clubs.

If you want to find out for yourself what really works, it’s not that hard. You don’t need a full set. Better, pick a club as your test club. A six iron is a good default choice. You can buy a couple of quality heads open stock from a company like KZG. Then, make sure you have the correct length and lie. You do that “dynamically” by testing with impact tape on the face and sole of the club. Once you know your physical specifications, you can experiment with swingweight and different shafts.

In comparing clubs, you can go to the range and course to test the performance, but you will never know for sure which club works best for you unless you hit them side by side and record the results with the help of a launch monitor.

The whole purpose of this drill is to convince yourself once and for all that you have a set of clubs that fits you. Then, forget looking at new golf clubs. Forget thinking that clubs will make your game. Put what you’ve got in your bag and plan on taking a few lessons and practicing. The only reason to spend a lot of time obsessing about golf clubs is to solve the problem once and for all so you can forget your clubs and go play.

Update on Search for the Magic Irons
Last month we finished the story on a high point about the Nippon shafts in a set of Montech forged heads. I said I’d play them the next weekend and report back. The test came out good, and then not so good.

On that Friday we had a small reunion on Stanford Homecoming weekend. The Captain of the Stanford golf team in the late ‘60s was Rich Harris, now a Bay Area lawyer and dedicated amateur. He put together a few foursomes on Homecoming Friday. I played the Nippon shafts and shot one of the smoothest, most effortless 73’s that I have in a long time. I took a few holes to warm up but then hit almost every green from number 6 in. The back nine was a smooth 2 under 34. I don’t do that too often. I started to think about changing from graphite to steel.

I felt so good that I came back to the shop thinking about how to take another step up. We had just received the “drop in” Balance-Certified weights that don’t require you to remove grips, cut off shaft length, epoxy the adapter and regrip. I thought I’d just drop in the counter weights and surely shoot four under on Saturday.

Alas, it was not to be. I dropped in the weights and proceeded to shoot a messy 80 the next day. Somehow, the balance was not right. I’ve been totally in favor of backweighting and was ready for another breakthrough but it didn’t happen. Not only that, I was so depressed that I just put the clubs in the corner until I would have enough time to experiment with the amount of weight that goes under the grip. I still haven’t been back to that project. I think I’ll take the weights out and play the clubs again this weekend to get the Magic back and then revisit the whole backweighting issue.

In any event, the conclusion from the Nippon Shaft experiment is that performance appears to be mostly a question of weight and flex. The Nippon shafts performed at least equal to graphite. If you like graphite performance, but the feel of steel, then Nippon shafts could be right for you.

The Apache Golf Company
I’ve got a new product tip this month from one of our old friends. When I started building clubs seriously a few years ago, I was introduced to Apache through the Professional Clubmakers’ Society. Apache is a boutique shaft company that got its start almost exclusively in the custom clubmaker distribution channel. They sell quality and consistency at a reasonable price. We have our favorite models. You can’t beat the MFS (Master Fitting System) 30+ and 40+ shafts. The 30+ is great for average amateurs. It is an 85 gram shaft with a fairly soft tip that gets the ball in the air. Despite their very reasonable price point, they test out on our SST PUREing equipment as well as shafts that cost twice the price. The 40+ is a graphite shaft that is stout enough for the strongest players. We build a set for Monster Man at 2" over length that brought his index down and his game to a higher level. I played them myself for over a year and they’re the reason I’ve become such a fan of graphite in irons.

Apache has done well with a couple of driver shafts. Their 65P model is played by K.J. Choi on Tour. (Choi also has a full bag of graphite iron shafts.) We’ve made a few strong players very happy with the 65P. That’s the shaft that is in Reed’s Magic Driver. (BTW: Reed added the Palo Alto Tournament of Champions to his win list this month.) Don Pooley used the 58+ to win the Senior Open a year ago in the duel with Tom Watson. Overall, Apache makes a credible product and struggles to gain Tour acceptance against much bigger companies who are spending more on tee up money than Apache’s total revenue.

Apache re-engineered their heavy weight graphite iron shaft in the last few months. The new model is the MFS 115. The 115 describes shaft weight. Eric Christian sent me a set to try out. He explained that they tried to build a set of shafts that would yield a consistent slope from a standard trimming template.

Here’s what that means. If you take a set of parallel tipped shaft blanks and start with a 3 iron, you should get a linear increase in flex value for each time you trim. For example, if I’m trying to build out a set of PCS 5.5 (stiff) shafts, I’m going to start my 39" 3 iron at 299 CPM. Each successive club will be 4 to 5 cycles higher as they get shorter (4.3 cycles per half inch, rounded off). That would give a perfect Brunswick-style slope.

The problem is that it never works that way. Clubmakers who want a perfect slope usually have to trim a little, test, trim a little more and test again. The trimming is never perfect between clubs. Average graphite shafts are simply too erratic.

Except the MFS 115’s. Bob and I built out two sets and found that you could just about set the shafts in a jig and cut them all at once at intervals. This is a very unusual set of shafts. We have never seen a set of graphite shafts that yielded consistent frequencies from standard trimming. The closest we have come is with Rifles, which were the first shafts engineered to produce a predictable slope.

Taking the MFS 115’s to the Course
I only had one chance to play the Apache MFS 115’s fitted out with a set of PRGR Data heads. It was an early Saturday morning at Shoreline with Reed, Nick and Patrick. They insisted on playing the black tees. I put a new driver in the bag and that proved to be a fatal mistake. Eight bad drives from the long tees left me in positions that were very difficult. However, I had some pretty good iron shots. It is hard to like any results when you’re shooting a grinding 82 and losing money to everyone.

Subsequent testing on the Achiever was inconclusive. There were indications of improved accuracy measured by swing path and face angle, but overall the performance was very close to my other custom sets. Feel, on the other hand, was very solid. I’ll have more information next month. One bright spot was that Patrick, our human Iron Byron, hit the Apache MFS 115’s against his current gamers, a set of Tommy Armour blades fitted with Project X Rifles and picked about 10 extra yards with a 6 iron. We’re going to build a set of graphite irons for Patrick in the next month so that will be an interesting story about whether a dedicated scratch handicap, steel shaft player can be successful with graphite.

New Driver Test
I built two new drivers this month and took them to the course. Bottom line: The “Magic” Titleist LFE with the Speeder 757 is still in the bag for tournaments.

The first disappointment was a Titleist LFE 9.5 degree fitted out with a Fujikura SIX shaft. The SIX has been used with success by Stewart Appleby and Annika Sorenstam to win on Tour. It is one of the expensive International Series by Fujikura which means a Japanese product made in Japan.

This was my driver for the ill-fated Shoreline round. Even with Titleist heads, there is a lot of difference in how they set up. I didn’t look close enough when I built the driver. This one was set up very closed and I couldn’t do anything with it but go left. I dunked one on 12 and hooked it into an unplayable on 13. The head was awful. Back to the parts bin. The shaft, on the other hand, felt pretty good. The driver produced a career best on 8. It will get another try.

The second test was the KZG Gemini driver fitted out with a Nippon 55 gram graphite shaft. The Gemini has been in the news lately because it’s a new technology, a “double face” design. The folks at KZG have submitted it to the USGA for approval and have not got it after long delays. It’s not a CORE argument, rather a question of whether the double face technology is consistent with the spirit of the game. The story continues. Apparently Nicklaus and others have double face designs coming out and the USGA is waiting to issue a ruling that covers all of the companies with like designs. Meantime, KZG is sitting and waiting.

The Gemini comes in 9¡ and 10.5¡ lofts. I chose the 9¡. It was clearly long. On the first hole on a soggy day I was near a distance record. Same on 12. The drive had a disconcerting tendency to go left because it is also set up with a closed face. The shaft was a little on the light side. When I tried to keep it straight, it had a tendency to balloon, but it ballooned long. I’m going to try it next month with a stronger and heavier shaft. Bottom line: promising.

I’ve got some interesting projects still going. I built out a set of Fujikura Pro 90’s and was surprised by a nearly vertical slope. The technical staff at Fujikura didn’t believe the results so they’re getting the set of clubs shipped down to them so they can study the outcome themselves. That will be interesting. That’s all for now.

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.