What's new on the West Coast

Golf Equipment Chronicles 2004 (Part 8)

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

Face Angle in Drivers, PX Shafts & Belly Putters

June and July are great mid-season months. Tournament schedules are in full swing, players are excited and scores are coming down. It’s natural to play a few lackadaisical rounds early in the year and let your handicap trend up a little. But by July, those comparisons to last year’s numbers become meaningful. I finally shot a subpar round in a match; my first one of the year and that got me feeling like I might get my index down under three again. That would convince me that I haven’t slipped too much in the last year. Isn’t that one of life’s benchmarks that golf helps us track?

I fulfilled the resolutions that I made last month to modify my bag and go with the belly putter. I even took a break from my favorite Fujikura VP 90 graphite shafts to give the Rifle Project X steel shafts a good trial in a new set of irons. And, I learned a lot about face angle and playing loft in drivers. I even had a chance to play a round and take a lesson from Eric Jones, and that was an eye-opener.

The Great Face Angle Dilemma
Over the last couple of years the major manufacturers have met a lot of competition from creative small companies, especially with drivers. The underlying reason for the great focus on drivers is the rise of a new sport: Long Driving. Long Driving is alien to golf as we know it. To start, it is an arena sport. The contestants take the tee like prize fighters, hooting and hollering, trying to get the crowd screaming in the bleachers. Many contestants are impressive physical specimens: tall, strong and tough. And when they hit the ball, it explodes so fast that you probably won’t see it until the “Jumbotron” picks up the ball flight down range. Balls usually come back to earth between 350 and 400 yards out. A little following wind and a hard “grid” can result in 500-yard wallops. The crowd cheers like it’s a college football game. And then there’s the money. The incentive of winning $100,000 for a single swing has motivated thousands of hopeful new players to buy a bag full of long drivers and head for the practice tee.

Needless to say, specialized equipment is a requirement. You can be sure that no contestant will ever be successful again with a stock, off-the-shelf driver. That reality created a big new market and instant legitimacy for “component drivers.” So far the strategy is working. At least among seniors, going to a longer driver is becoming more and more common for players who are reaching for an extra 15 or 20 yards off the tee. This is a good example of ordinary golfers benefiting from the research and development conducted by companies catering to competitive long drivers.

The innovative companies pushed head size up to over 500cc. These “bricks on a stick” inspired the USGA to impose a size limit, which is now 460cc. A larger head is easier to hit when you’re swinging hard. Most long drive contestants use the largest legal heads; very few competing with a head under 400cc. Long drive requirements have also driven shaft manufacturers to focus on engineering the lightest possible shafts. In an interesting move, the Long Drivers of America (LDA) has imposed a new limit on driver length to be effective in 2005. When the new LDA limit goes into effect, it will be the almost the same 48” club that is legal under USGA rules. The reason: to make Long Driving more like the real game of golf. The theory is that common equipment will generate more interest in long driving among normal golfers. We can then pretend “they’re just like us.”

In competition, breakage has been a problem. You don’t stand a chance in long drive tournaments unless your swing speed tops 140. You must have superior physical coordination to handle a driver up to 52” long. And you have to hit it square and straight. That kind of force can break an ordinary driver head in a few swings. The demand for durability established a new bunch of companies: SMT was the first that “cannon tested” each head and offered a lifetime guarantee, even for long drivers. SMT has plenty of competition today. Alpha Reaction is coming on strong, building the largest team of sponsored contestants. Bang is in a lot of bags. The big money conglomerates have gotten into the fray. Cobra became a major sponsor of the LDA last year. There’s even room for a few small, boutique companies like Ashton Golf. Americans love to root for underdogs.

Ashton was founded by Canadian clubmaker Cliff Baron, who started out supplying long drive contestants in and around the frozen north. When he had breakage problems with other companies’ products, he explored designing and distributing his own designs. He found his way to China and began to work with one of the top foundries. His first idea was to produce a head around 390cc but after testing prototypes with several of his long driver competition team, he took their advice and settled on 460cc.

After I saw the Ashton heads favorably mentioned in online forums, I ordered a few Ashton X-1 heads. Each of the heads arrived stickered with measured loft, lie, face angle and weight. I made up a demo driver for myself with a square face angle at 10¡ true loft fitted with a Harrison Striper Tour 60 shaft at 46” length decked out with a Balance-Certified 20g. counterweight system. I SST PUREd the shaft and installed it in a “strong” position, promoting a draw. The head is black on black with a polished face, very stylish and even svelte for a head that size.

Head weight is an issue for long drivers. The Ashton heads arrived at 198 grams, a popular weight for conventional driver heads. We now know that heads in the low 190s increase swing speed by up to 5 MPH, and that can mean 15 extra yards. When I questioned Cliff about supplying lighter weight heads, he said that he was working on making a lighter weight design strong enough.

When I took the Ashton X-1, Striper Tour 60 combo to the course for the first time, my misses were all to the left. In the past, I would never blame the driver for that problem but over the last couple of months a two customers returned to the Golf Lab with Nakashima drivers we built, insisting that they “go left.” I have usually disregarded such complaints as coming from players with insufficient skill. One complaint is an anomaly, but two complaints make a trend. The incidents got me wondering about controlling trajectory and shot shape with a combination of face angle, loft and shaft orientation. A quick fix was simply swapping out the head with an open face angle model. That stopped the “go left” problem and satisfied the customer. But I was not sure I fully understood the cause of the problem.

I was working with three variables (not counting my swing). The first was the engineered tendency of the head to produce a specific ball flight. The new top quality driver heads (Nakashima, Ashton, Alpha Reaction and Titleist) are manufactured with a cast body and welded face, permitting weight to be precisely located inside the head to promote a specific ball flight. Titleist pioneered this technology a couple of years ago with the LFE, LFF and JVS models. Locating weight inside the head is a primitive precursor to the adjustable weight system introduced in the Taylor Made R-7 driver (more on that subject later). The weight distribution in the Ashton Head X-1 was located to promote a draw and a boring, flat trajectory.

Second, I installed the SST PUREd Harrison shaft in the “strong” position. The USGA issued a ruling that aligning a shaft in a golf club is legal as long as it results in a “neutral” orientation. That is, the shaft orientation is not permitted to influence ball flight. The SST PUREing system focuses on finding the most stable neutral plane for a golf shaft where the “hard side” is located at the leading edge, or the 9 o’clock position, viewed from the top. To facilitate that orientation, an alignment mark is placed on the top of the shaft (the 12 o’clock position). The clubmaker centers the mark on the hosel. Over time, some SST Licensees have experimented with moving the alignment mark a little toward 11 o’clock to promote a right-to-left ball flight and a little toward 1 o’clock to promote left-to-right ball flight. (These experiments were all conducted in the interest of science and never applied to competition clubs.)

Finally, the face angle of the Ashton X-1 driver was measured to be “square.” Old-timers know that “square” actually looks closed. If you want a driver to look square, you have to find a head that measures at least 1¡ open. That’s the setup that sent every miss to the left for two rounds. I began to believe that the driver was causing the tendency and it was just too difficult to control. Conclusion: if you want to blame the arrow instead of the Indian, your driver absolutely can be causing your control problems.

One of the “dirty little secrets” in the golf business is that supposedly identical golf clubs are not identical. Manufacturing tolerances for the best companies are 1¡ each way from the target. A head that says 9.5¡ on the bottom can be 8.5¡ or 10.5¡ and still fall within the acceptable range. The same goes for face angle. You never know the exact specifications of a clubhead unless you measure it. That’s why it’s dangerous to make a special order. Your best bet is “always buy the demo.”

Modifying the Face Angle and Shaft Orientation
I decided to try an experiment. I swapped out the Ashton X-1 head for a nearly identical head. This one had a .5¡ open face angle and the same measured loft at 10¡. I used the same shaft, but this time moved the SST PURE alignment mark a little toward 1 o’clock, promoting a fade.

You can guess the result. For the next two rounds, I never missed a single drive to the left. Every miss was to the right with an annoying little fade. Not only that, trajectory came down a very noticeable amount. That result leads to another counter-intuitive reality. As you open the face angle, the playing loft of the driver DECREASES by an equal ratio.

The Nail in the Coffin
One final experiment: I reinstalled the first X-1 head on the same shaft. This time I moved the alignment mark to the neutral position. That turned out to be the perfect setup. Ball flight came back up and shot shape turned into a gentle draw. Voila! Problem solved. I was surprised at the result. In this case, the culprit seemed to be purely shaft orientation. I wouldn’t say that a single experience is scientific proof. But, it’s a fair conclusion that trajectory and shot shape are controlled by face angle, trajectory AND shaft orientation. Any one of the three variables can cause a result you don’t like. That’s why it’s not really crazy to keep switching drivers until you find one that works for you. Each driver is different at least in some small way. That’s why the “Search for the “Magic Driver” is so frustrating.

Good players tend to search for drivers that look square. You now know that means the face has to be a little open. The theory is that good players always fight the hook and an open face angle lets them release into the ball a little more aggressively without causing that dreaded shot that disappears left. Plus, it lines up a little better down the fairway.

My personal conclusion is that I’m no longer in love with the idea of a driver with an open face angle. For any players who insist on a driver that looks square, but is actually open, it is imperative to find one with more loft if you want to maintain trajectory. One final note: If you are planning to go to a driver like the X-1 with a 460cc head, you will put the ball up on a tall peg. When you do that, you swing faster. We have measured swing speed increases up to five miles an hour on our achiever launch monitor, simply by raising the tee height. There’s plenty of reality behind “Tee it high and let it fly.”

If you are really interested in experimenting with changing face angles and playing lofts, you can work with a head with a long hosel like the Nakashima NP-1. Mitchell Golf has just delivered a new Loft and Lie Machine for “woods.” It takes a lot of force, but the face angle can be changed on a titanium driver, which certainly changes the look to a player’s eye and also affects loft. The one problem is knowing the exact specifications on the head after the operation. Few custom golf shops can do an exact job of measuring playing loft and face angle after adjustment. But if the driver performs the way you want it to, why care about the details? You may be better off not knowing.

The New Gorilla - Taylor Made R-7
It’s perfectly obvious to me that every golfer with a cool grand to blow is going to buy a new toy, the TM R-7. That’s not much of a prediction because they’ve been flying out of the stores. As usual, the guys who went first aren’t getting such a great deal. The first release of the R-7 has the cheap, TM proprietary, .350 tip anti-breakage shaft that everyone replaces immediately. Worse, you don’t get enough weights to have any fun, or really learn much

On the other hand, my experience with the primitive experiment I just related convinces me that the R-7 is going to be a lot of fun, but only when you get one of the “TP” or higher versions that come with a good shaft, a .335 hosel and a pocketful of weights. That will let you make dramatic changes to the head, including swingweight. You will also be able to use a better selection of shafts. I’m calling around to my friends with TM accounts to see who will let one go for a little over cost. That will still be around $700. We should all be buying TM stock; they’re going to have a fabulous second half.

Which leads me to an interesting question. It took Dick Weiss, the founder of SST, a couple of years to convince the USGA that it should be legal to orient a shaft for consistency and feel as long as it doesn’t influence ball flight. Now, the R-7 shows up and promises that it can turn a slice into a straight ball. Why are heads different from shafts when it comes to game improvement? Maybe the USGA hasn’t been reading the magazines. Or, maybe they just aren’t in the mood for another Ping-type food fight. It looks like a double standard to me.

Project X Shafts are Ready for Amateurs
Royal Precision has developed a loyal following among Tour players and top amateurs. Their original Rifle shafts broke new ground by introducing the concept of matching shafts by testing frequency. The Royal Precision system established a standard for measuring and interpreting flex.

Conventional Rifle shafts are all the same when they’re born. They come out to the world as 44” blanks. Clubmakers who want to go to the limit with Rifle shafts attend a three day certification school to receive a Certified Rifle Center (CRC) designation. The whole point of becoming a CRC is to “understand the tube.” The tube is pretty easy to understand. It starts with a gradual taper to a point 11” from tip. At that point it tapers abruptly and continues to the tip in a .370 inch diameter parallel tip section. Certified Rifle Centers buy their Rifle shafts as blanks, choose the initial frequency depending on the finished flex they want, and then trim the shafts to achieve a frequency matched set.

If a player wants “Tour Flighted” Rifle shafts, the clubmaker starts with three distinct initial frequencies: target, one higher and one lower. He uses the higher frequency (stiffer) for the long irons, trimming less of the parallel tip section to promote higher ball flight. The short irons are produced by starting with a lower frequency (softer) and trimming more of the parallel tip section to promote a lower ball flight. The idea behind Tour Flighted Rifles is that the apex of the trajectory of each iron should be the same. Long irons go higher, short irons go lower, mid irons stay the same. The set still ends up frequency matched.

Rifle Project X shafts are a completely different animal. The profile of the shaft is a gradual taper to a point just above the hosel, a little more than 2” from the tip. Project X shafts are made to be installed just as they come from the factory with minimal tip trimming as an option to stiffen them up by a few cycles. The intent of the tapered profile is to make the shafts more consistent. Rifle designers view the parallel tip section in standard Rifle shafts as possibly creating a little inconsistency from shaft to shaft. (Don’t tell that to Ernie and Retief.) Project X shafts, on the other hand, were designed to be as stable and consistent as possible.

The problem with Project X shafts is that they have simply been too stiff for most players. At the Golf Lab, we have fitted only the strongest players with Project X shafts in 5.5 and 6.5 flexes. A few months ago, Royal Precision shipped a softer flex: 5.0. That motivated me to find a set of heads that would work with the 115 gram shafts at 1” over standard. It took a while, but I finally settled on a set of Ping I-3 heads, maroon color code (5¡ upright). The advantage of using Ping heads is that they are cast. Since they came from a shorter set of clubs, I needed to grind five or six grams off of the heads to get a swingweight in the D-6 range that I think is appropriate for 1” over length clubs. I also wanted to change the sole grind from the standard shape to work a little better around the Palo Alto Muni. You can grind cast clubs for weight, change the shape and then polish them up and they’re better than new. You can’t do that with forged clubs unless you don’t mind holes in your chrome.

I’ve had two competitive rounds with the new setup. I hit 11 greens at the Stanford 4-Ball (good from the Cardinal tees) and 15 greens in the 12-man match play against Lincoln Park at Palo Alto. If I missed the target right or left, it was always the correct distance. I’m going to give my Joe Blades and Fujikura VP-90 shafts a rest for another couple of weeks while I get real well acquainted with the Project X’s. I’m not ready to say I’m officially in love, but I’m going to build out another set and a few more demo clubs in the next month and find out. By the way, the Project X shaft is great in wedges. I don’t recommend buying the shafts produced for wedges. Rather, pick up some single eight- and nine-iron shafts to mount in your wedges. You get a little more feel.

Belly’s in the Bag
If you’ve been following the Chronicles for a few months, you’ll remember that my first shot at belly putters was a disaster. I found a very nice, valuable Bettinardi belly putter at the Second Swing on a trip back home to Indiana. (I always think I play better with expensive clubs.) I doctored on it for a few days and played it in a tournament at Wente Vineyards. I hit every green on the back nine and shot a 40. That was the end of that.

I was back in Indiana on my way to the Mitchell Golf Performance Fitting School in June and stopped by the same Second Swing. This time I adopted an orphan Scotty Cameron Pro Platinum Mid Sur. I’d seen the putter many times in shops but after my first dismal experience, I wasn’t about to pay full price for another disappointment. Back in California, I set it up to work for me. It turns out that fitting a belly putter is just about the most tedious job in clubmaking. Over the course of several days, I wasted three grips to add a little more length to the shaft. I found that length is critical. If you want the belly to work, it’s got to be jammed pretty solidly in your belly button. (That’s my method because I’m a symmetrical thinker. But if you believe Vijay Singh and Fred Couples, you’ve got to find a little spot between your ribs and your stomach, a couple of inches forward of your navel.)

The first round I played with the Cameron belly, it was a little too short and I found myself thinking about how it was wobbling in my navel as I started the stroke. Not exactly a positive swing thought and the result was a couple of embarrassing misses close enough to kick it in. But three extensions later, I was ready to go. I did a few other things to deck it out. I pulled the shaft and PUREd it. I’m not usually eager to take a putter apart and PURE the shaft, but with a belly putter the flex is noticeable on mid length putts and very noticeable on long putts. I figured “better safe than sorry.” Besides I didn’t want to be thinking about whether I should have PUREd the shaft in the middle of my backswing. While I had the shaft off, I slipped a 10g. brass tip weight into the shaft. I just thought that bringing the weight up a few points would make the club easier to handle. Then, for good measure, I put 60 grams of Balance-Certified counterweights in the grip. That was pure superstition.

Performance on the Course
Lately, I’ve been thinking I’m not a really atrocious putter. My friends Heather and Eric point out that’s not a positive swing thought. But my real motivation to give the belly a good test is that I’ve been watching the Golf Channel and reading the golf press for the last couple of months. With the growing number of pros crabbing about how belly putters are unfair, against spirit of golf and should be ruled illegal, I figured there must be an advantage. If they try to outlaw bellys, Vijay Singh will get together with Fred Couples and they’ll just buy the USGA to stop the argument. I’m kind of hoping there’s truth in the old saying “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

The belly takes some getting used to. A little practice could help as well. I already confessed about the missed short putts. At Stanford, I had two three putts, but they were from long distances on fast greens so that could have happened with any putter. A belly putter won’t cause miracles to happen. But I had no three putts and was very accurate both in line and distance control from long distances in my second round at Paly. In the two competitive rounds so far, I’ve made some very nice short but tricky putts. On average, I’m pretty sure my putts have been passing closer to the hole. Close enough and they might drop in.

As usual, I had some surprises and findings that are contrary to the conventional wisdom. Belly putters are supposed to be good from short range but dangerous on distance control. I found that to be the opposite. Especially from long range, I found distance control to be very good, surprisingly good. Even on the fast greens at Stanford, I was usually left with short tap-ins. The reason? I think that it’s easier to hit a putt solidly with a belly putter, especially on long lag putts. Over the last couple of months, I’ve been critical of my ability to get putts on line with my trusty White Hot. That completely changed with the Belly. For now, the Cameron Mid Sur is in the bag and I’ve got a bunch of heavy putter heads on order. I’m thinking that some of the new high Moment of Inertia (MOI) heads will produce even better results. Update next month.

My First Lesson in Two Years
Eric Jones has been teaching on Wednesdays at the Golf Lab for the last several months. I’m like most golfers who tolerate their results, wish they would improve, but are not willing to take action. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see myself, or even think about changing my swing. But after seeing Eric work with some young guns and get their swing speed up 10 MPH in 45 minutes, I thought I’d take the plunge and risk the embarrassment of seeing myself on video.

It was a little easier, because I played a round the day before with Eric at Paly. It was quite an experience. If you want to know how far he hits the ball in the real world, just walk out on the par 5 ninth hole and imagine getting there with a driver and 7 iron. He hit five drives that day that were the longest I’ve ever seen on their respective holes.

My driver was giving me fits. As I stretched shaft length, I began to fall back at impact. I hate the way that looks. Eric got me thinking about one thing, relaxing my left ankle. That was a new swing key because I’m old school. I was thinking about DIGGING IN with my left foot. Eric’s goal was to get me to make the modern move, which is to move back off the ball and then drive into the shot. I hope you’re not thinking that it worked great. It worked just like any radical lesson. I started hitting that driver even worse and had to go back to a shorter club. But I found I could move through the ball at 44.75”. I guess he never promised I’d be able to hit it like him. Unfortunately, there’s work still to do.

Ireland
I’ve got to do a little plug for the Golf Lab Ireland trip. As Bobby Jones said: “There’s golf and there’s links golf, and the two bear no resemblance to each other.” If you want to get acquainted with some of the best of the Irish links courses, you can’t do better than signing on for the Golf Lab trip in September. Check out the itinerary in an ad in this issue and give me a call with any questions. The big difference: in Europe you can actually play the top courses. We’ve got Royal Portrush on the schedule, home of the European Seniors Championship this year.

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.