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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2004 (Part 5)

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

A New Dimension in Drivers and More on the Lowbrow Saga

The summer tournament season is almost here. I’ve got a few more adjustments to make in my bag before it gets a lot tougher to justify experimenting. The main problem that’s been bothering me is finding a driver that I can stick with this year. I want more distance, plain and simple. I’ve been working with the long drivers, inspired by Eric Jones, the current Remax Senior Long Drive Champion. Alas, the long driver experiment has cost me money in two early season tournaments. That got me looking in a different direction.

But before I get started on that problem, here’s a question that keeps coming up in our fitting sessions. “How far should I hit the ball?”

Unfortunately, a lot of amateur golfers set themselves up for disappointment. Perhaps this happens because we’re all watching tournaments on television where 300 yard drives are routine. 200 yards ought to be more than a 7 iron. And so it goes. You feel like a wimp if you can’t blast the ball professional distances.

There’s a lot of published misinformation that leads to unrealistic expectations. The “Smash Factor” is a ratio of ball speed divided by club head speed. A ball speed of 150 MPH divided by a club head speed of 100 miles per hour would equal a Smash Factor of 1.5. I’ve seen discussions of Smash Factor published in magazines and referenced on television that suggests a ratio of 1.5 and even higher is common. I don’t think so.

We’ve tested hundreds of players on our Achiever launch monitor. We think it does a good job with ball speed and swing speed. We have never seen a player get close to a Smash Factor of 1.5. In fact, most good players that we test come out to an average of 1.35. Our conclusion is that very few 100 MPH swings will produce ball speeds that exceed 135 MPH. All launch monitors are fundamentally computers hooked up to data collection devices. I spent many years selling software and I know that you can get any answer you want if you diddle the dials. When you have your swing tested and the results are too good to be true, they probably are.

Why all this concern about ball speed?.When you’re thinking about distance, ball speed is the most important factor. You need to know how fast the ball going when it leaves the clubface and the launch angle. Then you know the distance. The math was worked out when armies were shooting artillery at each other.

Smash Factor is a little too abstract for most players. I like simple answers. “If I swing at 100 MPH, how far should I hit the ball?”.We use the equation:.Carry distance equals swingspeed in miles per hour times 2.3 yards. Even 2.3 yards of carry distance for each MPH of swingspeed is granting the benefit of the doubt. When we measure swing speeds and carry distances on our Achiever launch monitor, we rarely find a player who exceeds 2.2 yards for each mile an hour of swing speed. Here again, misinformation is common. For some reason, players think that they should hit the ball farther than they can. Carry distance is governed by the laws of physics and you can’t beat that rap.

Bottom line:.If your swingspeed is 100 MPH (a good men’s “stiff” swing speed) you probably won’t carry the ball more than 220 yards and almost certainly won’t carry it over 230. If your swingspeed is 90 MPH (men’s “regular”) you should get a blood test if you regularly carry your drives over 210.

At the Golf Lab our basic fitting methodology is derived from the Professional Clubmakers’ Society Equalizer System. The following chart summarizes our initial guidelines. In the chart, frequency is measured in CPM or “cycles per minute”. Frequency numbers are measured on my Mitchell Digiflex with grip off, 5” clamp at 45 inch shaft length. If you want more information about flex, check out the archived Golf Today articles at www.calgolftech.com.

Driver Swing Speeds, Flex Values, CPM and Maximum Carry Distance:

Swing speed	Alpha Flex	PCS Flex	CPM	Carry
80 MPH	Senior “A”	3.5	227	184
90 MPH	Regular “R”	4.5	237	207
100 MPH	Stiff  “S”	5.5	248	230
110 MPH	X-Stiff.“X”	6.5	258	255
120 MPH	XX-Stiff	7.5	268	276

From our testing, even these carry distances are unlikely. As a personal example, my swingspeed is 113 but the longest carry distance reported by the Achiever is 242. I have found through testing that I like a flex a little softer than the “paper fit” of 260 indicated by the chart.

It is important to emphasize that matching swingspeed to shaft flex is only a guideline. We use it as a starting point and test shafts for every player that are both more flexible and stiffer. It is not uncommon for a player to get the best results from a shaft that is two flexes stiffer or softer than the “standard” recommendation. It is also important to know that just because you play one shaft successfully at a specific flex does not mean that a different shaft of an identical flex will play the same. There is simply no substitute for testing each club with a launch monitor and then making your choice based on the best performance supported by facts.

Exceptions to the Rule
I know my swingspeed and my normal results. I know that most of the time I carry the ball around 240 and that it might run out to 260 or so. That’s what my 113 MPH driver swingspeed gets me, most of the time. A solid strike, a following wind, a firm downhill landing area, and a good bounce (sometimes all at the same time) provide an occasional surprise. I like to think I will hit it 300 yards every time I stick the peg in the ground.

But I had my own Magic experience a couple of weeks ago. I was playing Stanford with two of my teammates from the 60’s (impartial witnesses). On the 18^th hole, from the tips, into the wind, I drove it to the bottom of the hill, 340 yards out. A 90 yard gap wedge up the hill was all that was left. That’s one I will remember forever. I have no idea how it happened. Even bouncing it off a sprinkler wouldn’t fully explain the unusual distance. For once, I had a little taste of the Magic for myself. So when you ask me how far I carry the ball, I’ll probably say 280. After all, I might have done it once. Therein lays the problem. We’ve all done things that exceed our skill and talent.

Long Driver Update
I’ve learned a lot working with Eric Jones. Alas, not enough to put a reliable long driver in my bag, but I’m still hopeful and still working on it. Eric is a student of power. I have watched him work with quite a few players with outstanding results. He always gets an increase in swingspeed, sometimes by as much as 10 MPH in less than an hour. I’m waiting in line for my lesson. You can tune in next month for the results. Meantime, I’ll report some of what we’ve learned by testing Eric’s own swing and tweaking his competition clubs.

With long drivers it’s all about weight. That goes for heads and shafts, and in Eric’s case, even grips.

One of the factoids that most golfers don’t know is that modern golf equipment is built from standard parts. A lot of attention is paid to the size of driver heads, but it’s interesting to note that driver heads have all weighed 200 grams, more or less, for a hundred years. Today, most name brand and component heads weigh 198-201 grams. It’s the same whether the head size is 300 cc or 450 cc. It’s no wonder that the big heads break. The titanium skin is as thin as a balloon. More problematic is that the larger the head, the less likely it is that the manufacturer will be able to move weight around in the head to influence ball flight. For that reason, most manufacturers seem to be focusing on the 360-420 cc size. I think that popular head size will stabilize in this range for the near future.

Eric Jones is an Alpha Reaction staff member. His connections allowed him to order his favorite 5* and 6* heads custom made as light as possible. They came in at 192 and 193 grams.

Most of the light weight long drive shafts weigh about 65 grams at 50”. The heavier weights can easily top 85 grams. After extensive experimentation with the Achiever launch monitor, Eric has proven to himself that lighter is better. The 192 gram heads and 65 gram shaft is about as light as you can get. The last four or five grams are saved by cutting the grip off three inches. The result of all of this work is an increase of about five miles an hour in swing speed. Not bad for just saving a few grams of weight. The next hurdle will be to test various new head and shaft combinations to get the right trajectory. Long drive contests are won with total distance. The ball has to come down hard with a draw to get the big bounce and roll needed to win.

By the way, if you’re looking for more distance and are willing to do it by improving your technique, Eric is teaching on Wednesdays at the Golf Lab. Eric’s fee is $100 for an hour with video and launch monitor support. He’s so confident that he can help every golfer improve their power that he offers a guarantee. If your swing speed doesn’t increase, he waives his fee.

Zone Profiling
One of the new techniques we’re exploring is “zone profiling”. The problem for Eric is how you replace a driver that’s working and winning money if you break it. That’s a much bigger risk for a guy who’s swinging a 52” club at 145 MPH than a typical amateur. But the problem is the same. If you have a club that you like, how do you reproduce it?.The currently accepted method for determining the flex of the club is measuring the “butt frequency”. The butt of the shaft is clamped and the shaft oscillated with a head installed temporarily. You get a flex reading measured in cycles per minute or CPM. That reading tells you the frequency at a point about 14” from the butt. It does not tell you what’s going on in the middle of the shaft and at the tip. Zone profiling is accomplished by taking frequency readings at other points on the shaft. Recording those readings will give us a better chance to replace a broken shaft with another with the same characteristics when necessary. The only thing we don’t know is how to get our equipment into the factory so we can test 100 shafts to find the one that matches perfectly.

Lessons for Amateurs
If you’re thinking long driver, it’s a good idea to go with a lightweight head. You probably won’t have a chance to get one custom made like Eric but you can buy a lightweight head from LaJolla or Maxter. LaJolla’s heads are delivered weighing 192 grams and are weighted at headquarters. Maxter, a European company delivers lightweight heads that are good in overlength drivers.

As for shafts, most of the new shafts are coming in very light weights. Penley, Graffaloy and others have shafts in the sub 60 gram range. I’m determined to find one that works for me so there will be much more on this subject in coming months.

And, if you’ve got a high tolerance for pain, you might try zone profiling your favorite shafts to see if you can discover why they work for you. If you’ve got a shaft that’s “responsive” and that you hit well, zone profiling should give you some insight about why that particular shaft might fit your swing. You might find that a soft butt section and stiff tip gets the best results. Or, vice versa. If you really want to know what works and why, it’s a good idea to have some facts to work with.

This is still an emerging discipline but standardization of the methodology by the Professional Clubmakers’ Society in conjunction with work done by Tom Wishon is on the horizon. I’ll make a full report on state of the art next month.

Nakashima
There was a buzz at the Professional Clubmakers’ Expo in early March. Some of the guys were showing around sample heads from a new company, Nakashima Golf. It was an interesting story:.a well-financed startup with a good looking product that was about to attempt a novel distribution strategy.

Nakashima’s main focus is to build a top quality club for distribution through Golf Course Pro Shops – known as “green grass” accounts. The road to long term success for any golf equipment company starts by getting Tour Pros to play (and hopefully win) with your equipment and then make sure it’s for sale at the Olympic Club and other exclusive private clubs.

But, Nakashima also selected a limited number of qualified independent clubmakers across the country that buy their heads as components and assemble finished clubs after fitting in their custom golf shops. I made a quick call after the PCS EXPO to Scott Son who is handling Nakashima’s sales and marketing to the clubmaker channel. The next day, Scott delivered a box of heads and we spent several hours talking about Nakashima’s vision and opportunities. The story sounded great.

Good stories are a dime a dozen. Great products are very rare. Long time readers know that there area some pretty good golfers who hang around the Golf Lab. The Stallion, Iron Byron, Monster Man, Heather, Chuckie, Bob and I are the principal testers but we also draft any customers who are available. We don’t have an official protocol other than we all know our specs and when a new product shows up we each build out at least one sample, hit it indoors, tweak it, take it to the range, tweak it again and finally get it to the course. That’s what happened with the Nakashimas. Six of the bright red boxes got emptied on the first day.

Iron Byron shafted his up with an Accuflex Icon Tour Prototype and took it to the range at Stanford. He met up with the Stallion who hit it ten or twelve times and showed up at the Golf Lab the next day for his own. Heather tried hers in one of the new Loomis prototype shafts and it held up against her current gamer, the LaJolla 450 10* with the Speeder 651. Chuckie took his to Paly and had his regular group shaking their heads with his increased distance as he set personal best records on several holes.

And I took mine to Stanford and hit the “Miracle Shot” in front of my friends. Needless to say, we were all impressed and all of the “Naks” are still in the bag. That’s quite a record when each of us has four or five drivers to choose from.

The bottom line is that the Naks are at the very top of the list for distance. But there’s more to the story and that’s the interesting part.

The Nakashima Product Story
There are two ways companies manufacture driver heads. Most of them are welded together from four or five parts. Some of them, (Titlest, Alpha Reaction, LaJolla and Nakashima) are made from two parts, a cast body and a forged face plate. The two piece construction is more expensive and is considered to be higher quality. The technology innovation in these high quality driver heads is related to the distribution of weight inside the clubhead. You can do more to redistribute weight with a casting. Titleist tried to produce a draw bias with its JVS and fade bias with its LFE three years ago. I’ve played both Titleist drivers and my experience was that the JVS sure did draw, but so did the LFE.

Nakashima has made their driver look like a combination of the Titleist with its traditional pear shape and the Taylor Made 510 TP with its very deep face height. The fit and finish is also first rate, even including a new design form fitting head cover.

Over the years, we’ve commiserated with our customers who wondered why they driver they ordered after they hit a test club on the range didn’t perform as well as the demo they remembered. The fact is that no two golf clubs are ever exactly the same. The problem lies in manufacturing tolerances. Driver heads are welded together by hand. The tolerance for acceptance is 1* on either side of the target. We measure almost every driver head that we see. It is common for a 9* driver to measure 10.5 or even 11*. The same goes for face angle. You might find one head a degree closed and another a degree open.

Nakashima precisely measures each head after manufacture and includes that measurement with each head. You can specify that you want your 9.5* driver with a square (or zero*) face angle and a 10* actual loft. You know exactly what you’re getting.

Testing the Theory
Here’s why that’s important. I chose a .5* closed face for my first test. The head had a measured loft of 10*. I thought that would produce the right trajectory. You already heard part of the story. Paired up with a Fujikura Pro 3 shaft, that’s the driver that produced the Magic Shot at Stanford.

The problem with that setup was that it was inclined to snipe left. For the first time, I think I found a driver head that really did have a draw bias. The problem was a little too much draw bias. So I swapped the head out for a square face angle at the same 10* true loft. At the range and in one practice round, it still seemed to want to draw a little too much for my taste.

My third iteration was a .5* open face angle and a 10* true loft paired up with a SK Fiber Pure Energy shaft a little stiffer than normal at 258 CPM (45” grip off.). I was a little gun shy from the all of the problems going left but this one cured the problem in the other direction. I took the new driver to the course without getting acquainted at the range and I missed the first three fairways to the right. The driver cost me an OB on the third at Poppy Hills in a Palo Alto Club tournament. It also yielded an all-time record on the tenth, just a wind-aided nine iron away from the par five green. Over the next few weeks, I’ll have a chance to test all face angles and see which one works the best for me. Right now, I’m planning to go back to the square face because I like taking right out of play. I also think that a little more loft might help so I’ll look for a 10.5* head. Measured lofts and face angles make it possible to make small adjustments to get a perfect trajectory and shot shape.

But there’s another reason I’m even more excited. In his coaching, Eric emphasizes that increased power comes from a powerful “release”. He describes that move as “rolling your forearms”. Over the years, I have trained myself to “block” my drives, producing a slight fade, by holding the clubface a little open and not releasing fully. A powerful release and a closed clubface, if not timed perfectly can result in spinning hooks. I have opted for giving away a little distance in return for more control. In my heart I know that to get the distance I want, I’m going to have to “let it go”. I think that it will be easier and less dangerous if I play a driver with a square or slightly open face angle.

There is confirmation from the Tour. Scott Son reports that when better players find out they can choose their face angle, they are eager to try square and open heads. To respond to demand, Nakashima is making their next model for square to 1* open face angles.

Knowing the exact loft and face angle of your driver head, and your exact shaft specifications brings a whole new dimension to custom fitting drivers. Rather than waste hours on the range trying to figure out what a certain setup is going to do, without knowing exactly what it is, it is now possible to dial in exactly what you’re looking for after a single range session and one round on the course. Of course, it helps to have a friendly clubmaker who will let you change your specifications until you find the perfect Magic Driver.

It might take me a few more changes but I think I’ll get my Magic Driver for summer 2004 out of this testing process. Also, look for more manufacturers to measure their heads after manufacture. It only makes sense.

Flighted Rifle, Nippon 1050 and the Ultimate Lowbrows
The definition of “Lowbrow” is a set of clubs that would raise eyebrows at most private clubs. It used to be a serious sin if you showed up with non-Proline clubs at any private golf course. Over the years, that sin is not as deadly because most of the big name brand companies have confused the market by bringing out low priced copies of their own premium models. I stuck with my Infiniti 422’s for the whole month. My iron play was better than any of the other eight or ten sets I’ve used in the last year. I still have some tweaks in mind but overall the Lowbrows are working. I even reinforced the Lowbrow title by adding MATCHING WEDGES to the 422’s. Who plays matching wedges?

I built out two more sets for myself this month. I wanted to revisit Tour Flighted Rifles. It’s been a while since I played heavy steel and we’ve learned a lot about cutting Rifles shafts from 44” blanks to influence trajectory. I had a technique that I wanted to try out for myself. Then, there was that set of Wishon 550-C and 550-M heads that have been waiting for shafts for a couple of months. I thought it was time to try the Nippon 1050’s, the big brother to the very popular Nippon 950 GH. This work led to one conclusion that I’m going to stick with for the foreseeable future. I’m through with heavy weight (and even medium weight) steel. Done, kaput, over!

Well, maybe not totally. I couldn’t help but notice that Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els were both playing Royal Precision Project X shafts at the Masters. I’m going to have to try a set of those. I’ve had a couple of false starts but I’ll probably get the PX’s done next month. Then, I can tell the whole bloody story of heavy weight steel.

There’s still a lot to do. I think I’ve finally broken the code on Utility Clubs. There is a lot of interest in premium wedges, at least half a dozen new companies on the scene. And there will be new information on drivers, long and otherwise, especially the Nakashima after we’ve had a good month to work with it. Lots of fun . . .

See you next month.

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.