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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2004 (Part 4)

Copyright 2004 by Leith Anderson
All rights reserved
Originally appeared in April 2004 issue of Golf Today

Golf Equipment Chronicles: Lowbrow versus Highbrow
Confessions of a Golf Snob

It’s been a hectic Spring with trips to Orlando for the PGA Show and then to Louisville for the Professional Clubmakers’ EXPO. But now the weather is beautiful and the tournament season is starting. My first tournament of the year was the NCGA Four Man Qualifier which took place at Shoreline Golf Links on March 13 and 14. If you play golf in Northern California and want to improve, there’s no better way than to join one of the local clubs that are associated with every municipal course. You get the advantage of preferred tee times on weekends. You will be playing with golfers of similar ability and experience that are trying to do the same thing you are – getting better under pressure. There’s just no better test than tournament golf.

And if you’re looking for a great club to join, you can’t beat Shoreline. The course is owned by the City of Mountain View and they’ve been taking their stewardship very seriously lately. The course has undergone a series of projects that cured most of the problems left over from a troubled construction period. They booted the manager who drove the course into the ground a couple of years ago and it’s been improving ever since. If you play from the blue tees Shoreline is a good test. If you play from the blacks, it’s all the golf course you need. The club has a high percentage of good players and is very friendly.

Since I haven’t been playing too much in the rainy season, my expectations were low. I planned to kill two birds with one stone and try out some new clubs. Playing a new set of clubs in a tournament sharpens your perception about how they’re working. You concentrate on every shot so the clubs either gain your confidence quickly or they’re out of the bag in a day. I’ve taken new clubs to a tournament that didn’t perform. It sounds a little harsh, but sometimes one round is enough. Back to the parts bin. Luckily, I had the same bag on Sunday that I started with on Saturday.

Confessions of a Golf Snob
There’s a little background to the story. I’ve always been a sucker for Big Name Brand golf clubs. When I was a caddy at the Hinsdale Golf Club (IL) in the fifties, I loved carrying the Hogans and MacGregors. That experience is probably why I’ve accumulated a hundred sets of classic forged irons. Back then, I was playing a second hand set of Walter Hagan blades, the “value” end of the Wilson line. Hinsdale was a rich club and a lot of the members had custom made Kenneth Smith clubs. They were the ultimate. As time went on, I eventually got a set of Wilson Staffs and played them for fifteen years. Those were the days when players didn’t change their clubs every season or two. I wonder if those days might not return.

With that experience it’s no surprise that I’d end up like most golfers who have played pretty well at times. I believed that forged blades are the ultimate player’s irons. In later years I’ve accepted cavity backs and progressive sets – as long as they’re forged. I always liked blades with the “thin top line”. I played a set of MacGregor 985’s with that very straight leading edge for a few years. You can shave with those. Recently, I became enlightened about shafts, but for thirty years I never played a set of clubs that didn’t have True Temper S-300’s or X-100’s. When I hit a bad shot, I never blamed my clubs. That’s a profile of a golf snob with highbrow tastes.

I never imagined that I would ever play anything but forged irons. For one thing, cast irons just aren’t expensive enough. I judged quality exclusively by price. It stood to reason that the best should be the most expensive. Except for Pings, cast irons were much cheaper. Plus, low-handicappers always like to talk about the forged feel, “smooth as butta” and all that. I tried Pings off and on, but until the last two months, I’ve never played a cast iron.

A simple experiment caused a change of heart. I’ve introduced my friend Heather in the Chronicles before. She’s a player; two-time San Francisco Women’s Amateur Champion and a professional for a while. Her career was cut short by an injury. She still loves to play and we play a lot together. Last year, I built her a set of - you guessed it - forged cavity back blades. They had Apache 40+ shafts – you guessed it – the most expensive option in the Apache line. She played well with them and her handicap edged down. But there were clues that everything was not right.

One day on the eighteenth hole at Paly, Heather hit a five iron into the green and remarked:. “I have to hit this club harder than my old Pings”. That got me thinking about whether we had built out the right set. I was also concerned about trajectory. Heather’s ball flight was always left to right and her trajectory was low. Neither of these problems was unusual, particularly for a player with a moderate swing speed.

Five Sets in Eight Weeks
This Spring, I was ready to try an experiment. The first thing I wanted to test was whether we could change Heather’s ball flight by changing shafts. The Apache 40+ shafts are 90 grams and very stout. The come in twelve sub flexes. Even in “A” flex they are tip stiff and pretty low torque. I thought we should change to the slightly lighter (80 grams) and possibly friendlier 30+ shafts. Eventually we will try every shaft that has a chance to fit Heather’s swing to find the perfect fit, but Apache is where we started.

I was also interested in testing different head shapes. I didn’t focus only on forged heads, mainly because of the cost of building five or six sets of clubs. Using only forged heads would have added hundreds of dollars to the project. To start, I had a set of Raven VCT’s that I’ve always liked. We built out a set of irons with the Raven heads and the Apache shafts. Flex was a perfect PCS 4. 0, just south of men’s regular flex. Heather swings at a little under 90 MPH with a driver and 75 MPH with a 5 iron. The results were positive and immediate. Heather loved the feel of the softer graphite and the ball flew higher. But there was no great increase in distance. We had that disappointing experience where you hit a shot that looks great and then it falls short of the green. No magic.

We were satisfied with the shafts but were disappointed with the overall performance. Changing one variable at a time, we decided to try a different head. Infiniti makes a very nice cast head that is soft enough to bend. It’s their model 302. The head is definitely “game improvement” with a significant offset. The shape is reminiscent of Pings – which were Heather’s first and only clubs until last year. Were we in for a surprise!!. The ball flew higher, dropped right to left and gained about half a club in distance. Heather didn’t know what to like best. After playing most of her career with a fade, she was well trained to aim left. Alignment was the toughest problem. She simply couldn’t imagine that her ball flight changed from fade to draw when the only thing that changed was her clubs. Her scores came down steadily. As a bonus, the gap wedge turned out to be an automatic up and in around the green. This setup was magic.

I was perplexed because the components were not Big Name Brands and they were not the most expensive. I was so mystified by the results that I built myself an identical set of Infiniti 302’s (to my specs) and shafted them up with Apache 30+ just to see what was going on. I played a couple of rounds with the set but eventually concluded that there was a little too much offset in the heads to suit my game. On the other hand, the 30+ shafts were very solid – a total surprise – despite their light weight. My ball flight was higher and the ball flew with a lot of force and no sign of ballooning.

We built two more sets. We tried the same Infiniti heads in SK Fiber Tri Tec shafts. We’ve had pretty good luck with the Tri Tec shafts with other players. The unique feature of the Tri Tec shafts is they are “constant weight”. That’s the feature where each club in the set gets a little heavier from long irons to wedges. The theory is that as the clubs get shorter, the heavier weight of the shorter shafts maintains the same shaft weight through the set. That’s the feature that has kept PGA Touring pros playing True Temper Dynamic taper tip shafts for fifty years. Alas, the Infiniti heads mounted on the Tri Tec shafts couldn’t top the Infiniti 302’s with the Apache 30+ shafts.

We must have been driven by subconscious desire to revert to the most expensive when we built out the last set of the series. This time, we chose the new KZG MC II cast cavity back heads and mounted them on the tried and true Apache 30+ shafts. No great luck with this setup. It performed well, but there was no magic.

Conclusions from the Experiments
Don’t fall prey to the belief that the most expensive is the best. Rather, look for the component or club that fits your swing. Be prepared to try a lot of different clubs, preferably testing with a launch monitor to confirm and record your perception of performance. Relying on feel is unreliable.

Heads matter. For most golfers, choosing their clubs is about half psychological fantasy and half beauty contest. You can’t possibly tell how a certain head will work for you until you play it. Just because you “like its looks” doesn’t mean it will be the best performer. It’s dangerous to just keep playing with the same equipment because you’re in the habit and love the Big Name Brand.

Cast might be better than forged. For traditional golf snobs, that statement is anathema. The debate over the feel of “cast versus forged” is easily won by asking which irons are most dependent on “feel”. The answer is wedges. Cleveland and Vokey are the most popular on the PGA Tour. They are cast. Pros can’t really tell the difference, and if they can they don’t seem to care. An advantage of casting is that designers can create more intricate shapes by casting. They have more control over placement of the weight. With the advent of softer metals in cast heads, it’s not clear that forged heads will feel better, even to a player who thinks he can feel the difference. .

My New Lowbrow Set
In the last few of years I’ve owned and played just about every Big Name Brand club you can name plus a lot you can’t. My favorite clubs are the ones I played with on the few occasions where I won something. Funny how you give your golf clubs credit for winning. One of those rounds was a 71 at Shoreline last summer that helped me and my partner through regional qualifying for the NCGA Four Ball Championship. That earned us two rounds at Spyglass. I’d say my “gamers” are the Bridgestone Joe Blades with the Fujikura Vista Pro 90 shafts flexed to a PCS 6. 0. Since it’s early in the season, I thought I’d try to knock them out of the bag with a set of clubs made from open stock components and less expensive shafts. Definitely lowbrow. No Big Name Brands, no pedigree.

Infiniti caught my eye because of the great results with Heather’s set. Infiniti designer Adam Walker brought out a new set of irons for 2004, the 422’s. This is an interesting set of heads. They have a slightly oversize, oval shape with a slightly thickened top line. They don’t have much offset. The best part of the 422’s is the way Adam shaped the sole. It’s got a radius that makes the sole a little round instead of a straight leading edge. I prefer that shape because I find myself in the rough frequently and the radius helps you dig a ball out of a bird’s nest lie. In the last two months, I think I’ve seen every cast head in the market and if I liked another one better, I’d have used it.

For shafts, I chose the SK Fiber Tour Trac. These are interesting shafts because they come in 80, 90, 95 and 100 gram weights. My current favorite graphite shafts, the Fujikura VP 90’s are constant weight. Theoretically, the three iron shaft would be the same as the pitching wedge. It doesn’t usually work out that way, but that’s the idea.

I think that the concept of progressive weight shafts is good, mainly because so many pros believe in it. My plan was to use the 100 gram shafts in the short irons, the 95 gram shafts in the mid irons and the 90 gram shafts in the long irons. I built the set out flexed at a PCS 5. 5. I have begun to soften up the flexes in my irons looking for a little more feel. For any clubmakers who would like to see the complete specifications of the lowbrow set, log on to the Golf Lab website:. www. calgolftech.com. I’ll post them with the text of the April article.

The Lowbrows went to the first tournament of the year. Since I only finished it on Friday night, I didn’t have a chance to hit a single practice shot before teeing it up in the tournament on Saturday morning. As a general rule, I wouldn’t recommend that procedure.

For good measure, I put a new driver in the bag. (The Search for the Magic Driver continues. ). I’d pledged to use the long drivers in competition this year and planned to take a 47. 5” driver to the course but a better option came along. Elliot Gates and his brother Byron founded a new company Q_Composits to bring Loomis graphite shafts back into the market. It turns out that Elliot and Byron are inventors as well. They invented and started the patent process on a driver head – the “Power Claw”. The name comes from the unusual hosel configuration. It’s cut at an angle and shaped to resemble a claw. The idea is that as the shaft “droops” at impact. Relieving the top of the shaft cuts down the distortion and theoretically results in straighter shots. The driver they sent me was shafted up with a new Loomis shaft that flexed out about where I’m accustomed to fitting myself. The Loomis shaft was very cool. No graphics or markings of any kind on the shaft, just a silvery grey finish. It looks like I could have laid it up in my garage. It will confound golf snobs.

Performance Under Pressure
So I teed it up on Saturday the 13th. I’ll spare the detail but comment on the results and surprises.

I should probably have stuck with my original plan to play the long driver. I hit some nice drives with the Power Claw. It was very solid. But I didn’t have a great tournament off the tee. I think that the main problem was that the driver loft was too low at nine degrees. I’ve gotten used to hitting the ball higher. I’d like to try again with a higher loft. I think it would go straighter and longer. Overall it was OK, just not great.

The Lowbrows were surprising. First and most important, they were a good half a club longer - at least. Several times during the tournament I had known yardages and pulled the club I would have pulled from my other sets. In every case, I flew past the hole. A couple of times, the distance was extraordinary. On the eighteenth hole I had about one ninety five to the hole from a difficult lie. Normally, that would have called for stepping on a four iron. But I didn’t want to risk the OB so I pulled the five. I hit it square and it flew to the back of the green, well over 200 yards. I don’t hit that club that far. On Sunday I hit a “safe” three iron lay-up on number one to stay short of the lake. Good thing it was straight because I found my ball forty yards beyond my target.

I’ll have to play a few more rounds with this set before I will know if the extra distance is consistent. I’m a little worried that distance control could be an issue. I might build the next set a little stiffer.

The bottom line is I hit fourteen greens on Saturday and fifteen on Sunday. That’s a higher total than I’m used to, but it’s a little misleading. Most of the time, I wasn’t that close to the hole. I had a lot of thirty and forty foot putts. I expected my short game to be rusty, and it was. I had a handful of three putts and chunked a couple of chips. Scores:. 75 from the Blues on Saturday and 76 from the whites on Sunday. A little bad luck on Sunday got me four over after five. After that, I played even which I’ve always been proud of when I’ve been able to do it. For the weekend, I managed to play to my handicap, posted a net 142 and squeaked into the money in my flight.

I plan on continuing to test the Infiniti 422 heads on different shafts. As of now, I don’t know whether the heads or shafts contributed most to performance. I think the first set I’ll build out will be with my standby Vista Pro 90’s. I’m also interested to try the SK Fibers in a little stiffer flex. I’m going to try a trick that we use with Rifles. Rather than use Tour Trac 100 SX flex, I’m thinking I’ll back off to the 95 gram shafts. That will permit using a range of flexes so I can take a softer shaft and trim more off the tip. If the SK Fiber shafts work like Rifles, I might be able to bring the ball flight down a little with the short irons. On the course I had the feeling that the ball might be going a little too high.

All of this tweaking is made much more economical by using cast iron heads that are inexpensive when compared to The Big Name Brands (cast or forged) or component forged heads. It’s hard for a guy who was brought up a golf snob to start playing lowbrows, but hey, “Whatever works. ”

Follow-up on the Utility Club Project
You might have noticed that I didn’t have anything to say about the utility club project that I wrote about last month. Well, I had a little problem and got sidetracked. Last month I chose the Mizuno Fli-Hi in 21* loft as best for me. The Fli-Hi was shafted up with an Apache prototype 40+ that was flexed a bit too stiff at PCS Equalizer 6. 0. I hit it great indoors and the numbers on the Achiever launch monitor were the best.

On the course, it didn’t perform. (Notice I never say that I didn’t perform. ). I must have hit it six or seven times and didn’t get a good shot out of it. It was just plain embarrassing.

Here’s what I think went wrong:. The Hosel on the Fli-Hi is the same as standard irons:. 370. That’s pretty stout. I mentioned that the various manufacturers were about evenly split on whether best shaft for a utility club was a . 370 iron shaft or a . 335 fairway wood shaft. As a data point, Sonartec has chosen the UST Irod shaft with a . 355 tip for its new MD utility club.

I think the . 335 size is the best. I think that the utility clubs are called “hybrids” for a reason. They are half woods and half irons. The half that’s woods should be the shaft. I planned to pull the stout Apache shaft out of the Fli-Hi and replace it with a 30 + in yet another experiment. I’ll go with the . 335 shaft and shim the hosel to accommodate the switch. Using a hosel shim is a great way to make a . 355 shaft fit into a hosel that was designed for an iron.

After the disappointment with the Fli-Hi, I started thinking I should try a couple of the new utility heads so I bought a new 2004 Fli-Hi off eBay. Next month I’ll hit this subject again and by then should have one in the bag permanently.

Eric Jones, Remax World Long Drive Champion, Senior Division
If you’re thinking about getting some extra distance, and have already bought half a dozen drivers with no results, you can always work on changing your swing. That’s hard work, but maybe not as hard as you think. Eric has been teaching one day a week at the Golf Lab. He’s bought his own video system so you can see your swing. He matches that up with the Achiever launch monitor to prove that his suggestions produce results.

Last week he worked with two teenagers who are trying to move up in the rankings on their high school golf teams. Within an hour, he had swingspeed up ten MPH for one and fifteen MPH for the other. The dispersion patterns were better. It’s hard work, but you should think about doing it. If you want to book an hour with Eric, your with a World Champion is only going to cost $100. Call the Golf Lab to set up a time.

That’s a wrap for April. Next month I’ll come back to the utility club question. I’ll have plenty of news about new shafts for the long drivers and I’m planning to take a hard look at the new custom wedges that are popping up all over.

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.