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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2004 (Part 2)

The New Quest for the Magic Driver

Just when I thought I was set up for life with drivers I ran into Eric Jones and the whole quest started all over again. It’s all about distance. The Long Drivers of America (LDA) estimates each additional inch of club length delivers 10-15 extra yards of distance. I think it’s a little less for most amateurs but last month I made a pledge to “go long.”

Eric Jones is the former Stanford player who walked on and won the Remax World Long Drive Championship, Senior Division. (If you saw the telecast on Christmas Eve, he’s the guy who proposed to his girlfriend after he won.) In addition to the $23,000 check for winning, Eric also won a 5 year exemption into the World Finals so he’s got his next few years lined up. Then, if everything goes right, he’ll take a crack at the Senior Tour. His winning margin was 29 inches so Eric is focused on trying anything that might stretch that margin. He’s resolved to try every head and every shaft to find the setup that performs the best. He’s turned down exclusive endorsement deals just so he could continue to search for his own Magic (Long) Driver. He also knows that there’s no way to test clubs outdoors and choose the one that performs the best. We’re spending a lot of time on the Achiever launch monitor, despite its flaws. I’ve been able to apply a lot of that experience to myself.

The transformation has started. I’ve been out twice with my new long drivers. One experience was absolutely fabulous. As usual, this will be a long and slightly convoluted story.

The weather in the Bay Area has been a little drippy. I took myself out of competition for a couple of months because of a messy root canal and cracking my head open at Thanksgiving. The golf has been mostly social with the usual crowd so we all know each other’s games. It’s a lot of fun surprising your friends when you bring a new club to the course and it works better.

My first experience wasn’t quite perfect. I built a 48" driver with the Harrison 50 Lite shaft and the SMT HP 420 9¡ (Horsepower) head. The venue was Poppy Hills at the beginning of December. We played the white tees because the course was wet and we didn’t feel like suffering too much. The group included Heather, Jon Norris (Norcal MacGregor rep) and CB Maxwell (Balance-Certified sales and marketing executive).

The shaft choice was simple. The Harrison 50 Lite is the shaft that Eric used to win the Senior Championship and isn’t too expensive. In fact, it’s not really a long drive shaft if you ask the folks at Harrison. It’s more a nice light shaft that’s made mainly for the consumer market. But Eric won with it and that was good enough for me. The raw specs are that it’s a 50" length and 50 grams. I chose the SMT HP 420 because it looks like a normal driver head. It was designed by Pat Dempsey (hence the “Horsepower” logo and $10 bucks extra royalty). I went with the 9¡ head thinking that it might be a little too much loft.

We had a little trouble PUREing the shafts. Harrison shafts are usually very stiff and most have two pronounced spines. They have good positions and bad positions and it’s not uncommon to run them through the SST PUREing process two or three times to figure out the best position. In the process, we decided to do some testing that we don’t think has ever been done before. If you work at it, the Harrison shafts PURE up OK.

When I finish a new club late at night with a game the next day I like to take my first swing on the course. It’s pretty dangerous but I’m superstitious when it comes to golf. The risk and reward is interesting. My first drive was on the third at Poppy and I striped it down the middle. That was a good omen. If you miss that first shot, the club will never be OK. Maybe that’s a little too much superstition but that’s how I feel about it. There’s nothing better than a club that delivers on that first shot. The next four drives were near perfect. On the eighth, I was feeling a little more confident so leaned on it a little bit and snapped it left into the trees. I shouted the polite little curse I learned from Jeff Mitchell, the coach at Stanford, “SPIT IT OUT!!” Sure enough, out it came into the middle of the fairway. I highly recommend that imprecation when your ball is headed for the woods.

The fun continued around the back nine with every drive in the fairway until I got to the fourteenth. Distances were equal to dry summer conditions despite the very wet golf course. The 14th hole usually calls for a three wood off the tee but we were loose and I thought I’d try to curve it left around the dogleg. I must have leaned on it too hard because I snapped the shaft in the middle of my downswing. So much for that Magic Driver. After they stopped laughing, my partners offered me choice of their drivers to finish the round. That was a letdown, to say the least. When I called my Harrison rep the next week he said “That never happened before.” I’m very relieved knowing that was the only defective shaft that Harrison ever made. Now it’s no longer so the golf world is safe.

The next outing was the first weekend in January. Palo Alto was under water so we trekked over to Monarch Bay. The group included Heather, Chuckie and the Irishman. My new equipment included two new heads shafted up with the Harrison 50 Lite shafts. Despite my experience at Poppy, I thought I might as well use up my supply. As usual, I hadn’t tested them before going to the course. Monarch Bay has a driving range and there was a frost delay so we had a chance to do a little practice.

My first experiments with long drivers were with the Accuflex Vizion shaft. That’s a filament wound shaft that weighs 55 grams. The buzz that I’ve picked up about long drive shafts is that filament wound shafts lack backbone. That’s certainly not universally true because the Accuflex line has been very successful in long drive competitions. However, the Vizion definitely hits the ball higher. I ended up using a 7.5¡ Alpha Reaction V2 head in the best performing setup. In the past, I’ve commented that the setup was terrific with a following wind but not great into the wind.

I brought two new drivers to the course. The first was the Harrison 50 Lite set up with the SMT HP 420 head, this time in 8¡. I also had an SMT Deep Bore 455 in 8¡. The Horsepower had a Harrison R/F flex and the 455 an F/S. Harrison shafts are notoriously stiff. I tipped the R/F 50 Lite about an inch and left the F/S untipped. The 455 was a little stiffer. I have certainly not had enough experience to know which flexes work for me in long drivers. I can say that the PCS Equalizer System that I rely on for standard length drivers is of little use with over length clubs. If you’re interested in playing over length, you’re going to have to do a lot of testing to find out what works for you.

It was chilly, windy and wet. The SMT HP got the nod for the first nine holes. Nine near perfect drives. Distances were again equal to summer dry conditions despite the wet fairways that yielded little role. The trajectory seemed a little too low. The 8¡ head would have been just fine on the Vizion shaft but the boron reinforced tip on the Harrison kept the ball flight down.

With nothing to lose, I switched to the SMT 455 Deep Bore 8¡ for the back nine. I blistered one on eleven that got me to 100 yards from the green. We figured that was about 270 into the wind with no roll. The rest of the back nine was just like the front. Every drive near perfect and in the fairway. I had one record length on the 13th and my best ever on 15. I still think that the trajectory is too low so will switch to a 9¡ head. Once again, my experience points out that you can’t possibly know what shaft and head setup is going to give you the right trajectory. You’re going to have to do some experimentation and working with a clubmaker who will swap out heads and shafts until you get it right is the only way to go. Otherwise you’re going to own a closet full of clubs.

Even though I’ve only got two rounds in, I’ve only had one catastrophic miss and that didn’t turn out too bad. I’m wondering when the spell will end. There is one undeniable conclusion: If you want to hit the ball longer and don’t want to lift weights the long driver is the way to go.

Follow up Testing with Eric Jones
The first round of testing and tweaking Eric Jones’ equipment established that shaft orientation definitely improves feel and tightens up shot dispersion. But he was more interested in gaining a little extra distance. The conventional wisdom among clubmakers is that the location of the spine in a shaft can influence and improve performance of the club.

This debate goes back years on various online forums. The SST PUREª system requires the placement of the spine at the leading edge of the shaft or 9 o’clock. Many clubmakers advocate placing the spine at the 3 o’clock position -- their theory being that the shaft “kicks” more and consequently adds distance. Finally, some clubmakers like the placement of the spine at 12 o’clock to fight “toe droop.”

So we set up an experiment. I marked a 52" shaft (Harrison Striper, 2 spines, very erratic at logo up) with the 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock spine positions. Eric was eager to try the 3 o’clock position to gain a few more yards. We tested the shaft recording the results on our Golf Achiever. The results were surprising:

The 3 o’clock position did indeed produce a slightly faster swing speed (2 MPH). However, dispersion was terrible and Eric reported that he felt the shaft did not feel stable. We reversed the spine location and the shot pattern tightened up and the feel improved.

Much more experimentation will have to be completed before we have a “scientific” finding, however for what it’s worth, after this testing; Eric is only interested in drivers with the spine at 9 o’clock. (Yes, we will try 12 o’clock in the future and yes we will try other shafts in various positions to see if they hold up better.)

In shaft tuning, it’s important to distinguish “spine” from “FLO.” FLO stands for “flat line oscillation.” That’s the shaft orientation where with the head in playing position the shaft will oscillate in the flattest plane. Clubmakers usually believe that a shaft that exhibits a good “FLO” will be more solid and help a player hit the ball a little more toward the center of the clubface.

The essence of the SST PUREª system is that it requires the location of the spine within about 30 degrees of 9 o’clock. The process locates the spine precisely with sensitive instrumentation. Then, the shaft is flexed and released in the playing position and a pair of accelerometers attached to a tip weight record the movement of the tip as is oscillates. The system is capable of measuring the vertical deviation and finds the flattest FLO line so you don’t have to go blind looking for the flat line produced by a laser on the wall.

There may be several FLO lines in any shaft. It is possible and even likely that one or more of the FLO lines will be tighter than the FLO produced with the spine close to the 9 o’clock position. This is the reason that PUREd shafts sometimes exhibit a slight wobble when tested in the marked position with the head dry fitted. The goal of PUREing is not the flattest FLO but the flattest FLO with the shaft in its most stable position.

My conclusion is that the evidence suggests that the shaft is more stable the spine is located close to 9 o’clock. This conclusion is contrary to the belief and practice of many clubmakers.

Finally, our procedure is to set the flex first to the desired frequency, butt trim to length and then PURE our shafts. That procedure eliminates any problem with possible movement of the spine caused by trimming. From time to time, the PUREd shaft will gain or lose a cycle or two simply because of the orientation before and after. I feel that a cycle or two is a very small deviation, can’t be felt and won’t affect performance.

Finding the precise location of the spine, in my opinion, requires instrumentation. The tolerances are very small. If you use the standard spine finder, the “speed bump” only locates the spine within about twenty degrees and I don’t think that’s close enough. In double spine shafts, it can be impossible to detect the dominant spine. The reason that I acquired an SST license was that I was totally frustrated with the systems that I devised to test shafts and I felt that I was wasting a lot of time without being absolutely sure of my results.

I think that at a minimum a clubmaker who wants to do a quality job of orienting shafts to affect performance will do a better job with some kind of instrumentation. The SST PUREª system is costly. However, clubmakers can start out with a Flexmaster, Neufinder, Apache Multimatch or some other instrumented method to measure the load on the shaft and precisely locate the spine.

Conclusions
After a few weeks of thinking through long driver questions, here are my conclusions. Some are a little more certain than others.

Club length. This is a pretty easy choice. If you’re going for maximum distance, I recommend the USGA maximum 48" club length, measured in the traditional way. This means with the club in playing position and set at a 60¡ angle. To measure club length, you slide a ruler under the heel of the club. The LDA, on the other hand, measures clubs standing in a vertical position. In another year, the USGA and the LDA are going to converge. It turns out that an LDA 50” driver is the same, for all practical purposes, as the USGA 48".

It might be that 48" is to long for you. No problem, you can always cut the shaft off from the butt, a little at a time until you find the length that works. At the beginning of my quest, I was a little worried that 48" was too long. I tried 47" and 47.5" lengths. I found that I could handle the maximum length.

Shaft flex. There is very little knowledge of shaft flex for long drivers. It is clear to me that I can handle a shaft that measures much stiffer than I would have imagined. The PCS Equalizer System that is so effective with standard length clubs, is little help when shafts get over 46". Unfortunately, the only way you’re going to find out what works is through experimentation. It’s not too difficult if you have a launch monitor to work with. In testing with Eric Jones, we are finding certain shafts clearly perform better than others. We are finding swing speed differential of up to 5 MPH between different shafts of the same length. The trick is finding the shaft that fits your tempo. With the LDA increasingly interested in utilizing launch monitor technology, we are certain to learn more about this fitting parameter in the near future from the long drivers themselves.

Loft. This is sounding a little like a broken record, but once again the only answer is going to come from experimentation. When I used the Accuflex Vizion shaft, I found that a 7.5¡ head was about right. Later, when I was using the Harrison Lite 50, an 8¡ head didn’t have enough loft. If you can afford the investment, it would be a good idea to buy two or three heads of different lofts so you can figure out which one does the best job for you. Professionals will bring several drivers to the tee and make a last minute choice. Eric Jones switched from a 6¡ driver to a 5¡ driver on his very last shot and won the World Championship. Professionals use very low loft drivers, tee them very high and hit up and out on the ball. They will launch the ball at 10 or 11 degrees. Amateurs need to get the launch angle up to 12 or 13 degrees so you’ll have to find the head that will do that. I think I will eventually use a 9¡ head most of the time which is about a degree less than I would play in a conventional length driver.

Overall Weight. When drivers get long, overall weight becomes a very significant factor. You just can’t take a standard driver shaft and play it untrimmed. I set up a Fujikura Speeder as a test and it came out to a swingweight in the low G range. That’s just too heavy. Eric Jones is convinced the lighter the better. That goes for shafts, heads and grips. He’s going to a lot of trouble to get Jimmy Yeh at Alpha Reaction to get him heads as light as possible. For the record, most titanium driver heads weigh around 198 grams. Eric is trying to get his head weight down to 190 grams. For amateurs, that makes the LaJolla heads an interesting choice because they arrive in the US at 190 to 192 grams. LaJolla isn’t in the long driver business but their heads could be a good choice if you can play a 9 or 10 degree head. Same thing goes for grips. We’re cutting a couple of inches off of Eric’s grips. Eric is even considering eliminating the ferrule to save a few grams.

Counter weights. Our early experiments with the Balance-Certified counter weight system seemed to slow down swingspeed for Eric. Also, adding weight to the club is against Eric’s “lighter the better” beliefs. However, we have tested several players with long drivers who have experienced an increase in swingspeed with counterweights. It would make sense to plan on trying backweighting to make it a little easier to get the long club around.

Head Style. Long Drivers are the ultimate component golf club. With the exception of Cobra, most long drive heads are from component companies. SMT, Alpha Reaction and Bang lead the pack. SMT has several new designs about to be released. The current top models are the SMT 455 Deep Bore, SMT HP 420, Bangomatic, and the Alpha Reaction C830 II. There are others to choose from, but these are the models that I am using.

Magic Irons Update
I’ve got a new theory forming about fitting irons that was inspired by some personal frustration. In the last few months I’ve built myself several different sets of irons, all with exotic heads and shafts. Many of the sets got one trip to the course and the parts went back into the bin. It’s obvious that you just can’t predict whether a set of irons is going to work for you until you build it (or buy it) and try it.

It happened again this month. I built a set of Apache 115’s with PRGR Data heads. They were light at first, and then I added weight. They didn’t make it either way. I can’t say they were bad, just not better. Same with a set of Bailiwick heads that went on Project X shafts. Again, not better. This month I put some of my favorite Bridgestone Joe Model heads on the Apache shafts. That’s the set I played at Poppy Hills. OK, but I have two or three sets I like better. Then I took those PRGR heads and put them on the Project X shafts. That set got the nod at Monarch Bay and were good enough to get another chance. You get the idea; nothing has been able to knock the Bridgestone Joe Models on Vista Pro 90 shafts out of the bag. If I were buying the clubs I’m playing with, I’d be broke. But I still believe there’s such a thing as the Magic Irons and I’ll keep trying to find them.

The conventional wisdom among clubmakers is that the shaft is the “engine” of the club and the head is just along for the ride. The more I’ve experimented with different combinations, the more I’m inclined to question this belief. If you’re interested in this argument, there are endless threads on the Golf Equipment Aficionados (GEA) forum on Delphi that discuss cast v. forged, blade v. cavity, compact v. midsize almost endlessly. It doesn’t look to me like anyone ever changes his mind due to the debate. Dana Upshaw, a well-known clubmaker, likes to say the shaft is the “transmission” not the engine. It is interesting that I have never seen a protocol for testing the performance of the head.

We have been fitting irons by comparing the actual performance of clubs, measured on our launch monitor. It’s a very successful method. Our fitting system uses identical forged cavity back clubheads. We focus on finding the right shaft by testing performance and then fine tuning the other parameters like club length, lie angle, loft progression and grip. In fitting heads, we pay attention to forgiveness and feel.

Unfortunately, most head styles today are fitted psychologically, not physically. A player is influenced by his memory, experience, advertising, dreams and hallucinations and determines that he is a Titleist, Hogan, Ping, Taylor Made or Callaway player. Most players make no attempt to confirm their belief about what is right for them, based on actual performance comparisons. Players could make sure they are playing the head that gives them the best performance, there’s just no good way to do it. That means that after you find the right shaft, you would test different heads on that same shaft to see which one works the best. It’s a lot of work, but might well be worth it. Bob is skeptical but I’m intrigued by the possible discoveries. Dana Upshaw reports significant performance differences in iron heads when mounted on the same shaft. He’s the only clubmaker I’ve heard of that tries to fit clubheads by measuring performance. The goal is to know the exact (and best) performance you can expect from any set of clubs.

I’ll give it a try and report on how it came out next month.

Also next month, I’ll do an in depth review of utility and hybrid clubs. I am convinced that the biggest breakthrough in performance improvement for most golfers can come by replacing their long irons with utility clubs. I’m in the process of doing that for myself. Stay tuned.

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.