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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2006 (Part 5)

Walking Wet and Wounded

By Leith Anderson

First it was the rains that drenched Northern California all of March and the first two weeks of April.

Then I had an accident. I made the mistake of doing a little repair work around the house. Bonnie bought a new bed frame to replace the rickety old orphan from a flea market that we’ve been sleeping on for thirty years. The new one is a Martha Stewart model. Like most golf clubs, it was made in China. You can collapse a Chinese driver and you can collapse a Chinese bed. Ours required serious reinforcement.

I slipped up and banged my shin on a bed slat. Good thing Bonnie is a nurse practitioner or I’d have called an ambulance. A week later the wound was infected and I was still hobbling around. I ended up at the walk in clinic. All that from putting a few screws into a bed frame. That’s why I didn’t make it to the golf course for over two weeks. Golf isn’t much fun when you can’t walk. I still have three or four of my sets sitting on the shelf waiting for a workout.

There’s been a lot of reader interest about the E21 Scandium shafts. E21 has been having supply problems so that project has gone into a holding pattern. But there is a lot of other shaft news. If your iron game isn’t much fun lately, we can rejuvenate that as well.

I did make one field trip up to the world famous Haggin Oaks Demo Days. I should have been on crutches – but it was like going to a big family reunion. It’s amazing what you find out behind the ropes.

New Fitting Methods

We are on the verge of an explosion of new electronic gizmos and fitting systems that will make it easier to find your own “magic clubs” and most likely, improve your swing and your game in the process. As we continue to evolve our tools and methods at the Golf Lab, we’re getting plenty of help and inspiration from other leaders of the industry. And there are some little guys who are contributing as well. My story is a smorgasbord of the best stories and new products that I encountered this month.

Tom Wishon is the “Patron Saint of Clubmakers”. Tom is one of the most experienced independent designers in the business. He is easily the most accessible of experts and willing to answer all questions put to him in extraordinary detail. He has done stints at all of the big distributors, turned down an offer from Titleist to run their R&D and ended up founding his own company, named after himself in Durango, Colorado. His mission in life is to promote the benefits of custom club fitting and custom club making. There’s a little self-interest involved since Tom designs and sells his own heads, shafts and grips that facilitate custom clubmaking.
A year ago, Tom published a book aimed at consumers “The Search for the Perfect Golf Club”. The goal of the book was to argue that name brand-name, off-the-rack golf clubs are manufactured without meaningful standards that allow a golfer to easily buy golf clubs that fit their game. His book promotes the virtues of custom made clubs, fitted and built by a conscientious clubmaker. Naturally, we agreed with the thesis.

In April 2006, Tom published a new book, this one aimed at custom clubfitters, “Common Sense Clubfitting”. It is a follow-up to his “Practical Clubfitting Guide” published in 1997. Common Sense Clubfitting is more of a milestone book than any of Tom’s others. Despite all of the new technology, new products, new shafts and new know-how, this is the first clubfitting book published since 1997. I received my Common Sense Clubfitting a few days before deadline so I didn’t have time to absorb the entire 485 pages of dense material, but I was able to read enough to guarantee that if you’re interested in clubfitting or clubmaking, this is a book that has to be in your library. There’s a lot of advanced subject matter but it’s also a textbook for budding clubmakers who are thinking about getting into the business.

I have a few first impressions. The “shaft fitting” section will be controversial for quite a few clubmakers – and players. Tom asserts that the shaft is a relatively minor factor contributing to the overall club performance. He takes a stand that the shaft is not the “engine of the club” – which goes against the conventional wisdom. Rather, he points to head design as the most important factor of golf club performance. That should be predictable from a guy who designs heads. Wishon shafts are mostly “plain vanilla”. I suspect he would close the doors of Tom Wishon Golf Technology before he put a $350 shaft in his catalog.

On the performance side, Tom goes into a great degree of detail about how the shaft bends during a golf swing. That information will be enlightening for any player, putting into a much more understandable perspective material that has appeared in more technical and consequently less accessible books over the years. As a technician, Tom focuses on physical properties that you can see and measure. He is frustrated by the concept of “feel”. For many of us, feel is part of the magic. I doubt that clubfitting will ever be fully measurable and predictable. It may only be hero worship, but a lot of players are buying expensive, exotic shafts and swear that they work.

A big surprise was the few pages devoted to shaft alignment and SST PUREing. It is rare to find a golf industry figure of any kind who supports and endorses SST PURE as a shaft alignment technique, and rarer still when the endorsement includes a detailed description of how and why SST PURE works to improve performance. Tom is unequivocal in his support for shaft alignment in general and SST PURE in particular. He states that it is a valid clubmaking technique for low handicap players who are concerned about eliminating “shaft induced mis-hits”. As strong supporters of SST PURE technology over the last four years, it was gratifying to see that our enthusiasm was not misplaced.

It’s always a challenge to find subjects for debate. I’m going to dig into the book in the next month, but there is at least one subject got my attention. Tom asserts that it’s very difficult for a clubmaker to alter the spin of a driver, once he has the right head for the player’s swing – a factor that yields the correct launch angle for the player’s ball speed. In launch monitor testing at the Golf Lab, we have been able to alter driver spin by over 500 RPM by swapping heads and shafts. We have also been able to make substantial changes by moving the weight forward or back in movable weight drivers. (The new KZG adjustable weight driver, designed by Clay Long has become a reliable fitting club that frequently earns a place in a player’s bag.) It is clear to me that some heads are “high spin” and others are “low spin”. I wish I could explain why – as of now, it’s still a mystery to me. Maybe the answer is in the book.

The technology section in Common Sense Clubfitting is rudimentary. The book gives adequate coverage of some of the new gizmos but stops short of presenting in-depth descriptions. Tom knows that his main constituency is the hobbyist clubmaker who has a home workshop and is unlikely to invest $30K to $50K in electronics. In many ways, Tom is “old school” which is normal for a guy who has been in the business for over thirty years and has seen a lot of fads come and go. Stay tuned for a more in-depth discussion next month. In the meantime, if you are a golf geek, I highly recommend that you pick up a copy for yourself. Buy from www.wishongolf.com or pick one up at the Golf Lab.

Dana Upshaw – A Relentlessly Innovative Clubmaker

Dana Upshaw advertises himself as the “Worlds Most Honored Clubmaker” and he has a legitimate claim on that title. Working out of a shop at the end of the road in Warner Robbins, Georgia, Dana has won just about every award available from the Professional Clubmakers’ Society (PCS) and the Golf Clubmakers’ Association (CGA).

Dana is willing to share his discoveries with other clubmakers, rather than playing his cards close to his chest. I first met him at a PCS Expo a few years back when we sat together at dinner. He was showing pictures of his shop to the table. I noticed his workbench had ten hand drills. When I asked him why, he said he had each one set up with a specific bit so he didn’t have to waste thirty seconds changing the bits for every operation. Over the course of a year, the investment in multiple drills paid for itself many times over in time saved. I’ve often thought of that experience as a sign of success. One of these days, we’ll have ten drills on the bench at the Golf Lab.

Dana is a sponsor of the Golf Equipment Aficionados forum on the Internet (www.4gea.com) and posts regularly. His last major breakthrough is his fitting system. He uses the Club Conex hardware (www.clubconex.com) to marry shafts and heads. By itself, that’s not too unusual, but Dana worked out a system to fit irons that challenges some of the current thinking among clubmakers.

One of the trends in the golf industry is interchangeable shafts and heads. The first clubmaker to introduce such a system was Mitch Voges at Max Out Golf Labs in Los Angeles. That was way back in 2001. Bruce Burrows copied Mitch’s system for Burrows Golf. Callaway introduced its Opti-Fit system this year at the PGA Show and Nakashima Golf added its integrated interchangeable shaft system designed for actual play on the course. Nike is negotiating to pick up the Burrows system after the Burrows Golf bankruptcy. The day is going to come when players will insist on testing the exact setup that they plan on buying. At your next demo day, you’ll probably be swapping shafts and heads and whaling away. If the Nakashima system takes hold, you might even try the exact club that you end up playing, making it legal by dropping a dab of epoxy in the connection to form a “permanent” bond.

But all of those systems are fundamentally different from Dana’s breakthrough use of Club Conex. The manufacturers’ systems are all designed to test shafts. They are all proprietary, meaning that if you want to know how one of their heads feels with any shaft, you can do that. But each company wants to make sure that you only use their heads. None of those systems were designed to let a player compare heads from different manufacturers. That’s a huge defect in a fitting system that aims to be truly universal.

What happens after you find the shaft that fits your swing? Does it make sense that all heads will perform the same? The work that Dana did with his fitting system was to develop a truly democratic system, with the ability to test heads from any manufacturer with shafts from any manufacturer. If you’re really interested in finding the very best combination, that’s the best way to do it.

Most players think that all heads of a certain type deliver similar performance. For example, a forged blade is a forged blade, forged cavity back a forged cavity back and so on. What Dana has found is that there is just as much magic in an iron head as in a shaft. He has fitted players to find the shaft that works and feels the best and then turned his attention to heads. Some work better than others – measured by ball speed. He has discovered major differences in carry distances by simply changing heads. That should be bad news for all of the players who think that Titleist (or any other hereditary brand choice) is “their brand”. The ability to swap heads and shafts has the chance to revolutionize the way players find their magic clubs more than any other breakthrough since the advent of the launch monitor.

If there is a downside to the fitting system, it is the nagging doubt that because a temporary attachment is introduced to the juncture between the shaft and the head, feel must surely be affected. Dana’s testing indicates that it’s very difficult to detect differences in feel. But the system only has to work to compare performance differences. Any feel issues will be resolved when the final club is built.

My experience in the high tech industry gave me a lot of respect for being on the “bleeding edge” of technology. Being first in any development of new systems is dangerous. It takes a lot of time and energy to work out the bugs and you never know whether your work will pay off. There’s an enormous investment in creating a system like Dana’s. Each head has to be machined to common tolerances and ground to known weights. Each shaft has to be meticulously trimmed to get exactly the right flex Taken together, that’s hundreds of parts that need to be prepared, tested and labeled. We’re now satisfied that Dana’s use of the Club Conex system is the most universal custom fitting system available today. With Dana’s assistance and blessing, we’re building out our own version for the Golf Lab. Time will tell whether this fitting system will become the standard methodology in the future. As of now, it looks like the best to us.

Takeaway for players: you now have a chance to test whether the clubs that you think are right actually perform the best. Objective testing of every option is the only way to know for sure.

Do You Know Your Swing Path?

Whenever we start a fitting at the Golf Lab, we focus first on swing path and face angle. Most players who’ve been playing golf for a few years know whether they have an inside-out (draw) or outside-in (cut) move. A consistent swing path is very important for a player if he wants to become a low single digit golfer. Here’s the reason: Golfers who make the step down to low index country know where they will miss their shots. That lets them aim for the right side of the fairway or green if they know that their miss is likely to be to the left. They have the entire target area to hit.

If you don’t have control over your swing path, you have no way to predict where your miss is going to end up. You aim at the right side of the green but swing with a cut and leave the face open and you’re right of the bunker in the trees. I am surprised by how many players show up at the Golf Lab without knowing their swing path. There’s a reason for that. You can’t see your swing path – until now.

At the Haggin Oaks Demo Day I ran across a lonesome little booth with an entrepreneur handing out little packages of fluorescent stickers. The idea is that you paste them on your clubs and you’ll be able to “see” your swing path. Guess what? They work. I brought a handful of samples back to the Golf Lab and started using them on players’ clubs who were having a hard time imagining their swing path. If you keep your eyes open, you get a flash of light coming through the ball. They work on woods and irons and cost a few nickels each. They are a great practice aid for players trying to groove their swing path. Go to www.swingwatch.com for more information or to order.

Strike-n-Swipe Impact Labels

Here’s another low-tech product to help with fitting and practice. At the Golf Lab, we use impact labels every day. They tell us how a player’s swing matches up with the lie angle on his clubs and whether a player is striking the ball near the center of the face. We use thousands a year. So, how about a reusable impact label?

That was the idea that woke Victor Camaj up in the middle of the night more than five years ago. He finished watching a Golf Channel program late one night that mentioned impact labels and for some reason, in the middle of the night, he thought about how to marry an “Etch a Sketch” and impact labels and make them reusable. The next day he picked up a few Etch a Sketch tablets and started to work out his label idea in his basement. Needless to say, the idea went through many iterations before it worked.
He had to find a manufacturer. He had to protect his idea with US and worldwide patents. Victor isn’t a rich man, but his Coney Island Hot Dog restaurant in Detroit throws off some profits and he thought investing in his idea would be a good investment. That was half a million dollars ago – a lot of hot dogs and root beer. Needless to say, there have been days when he thought he should have stuck to his cooking.

This is a fascinating story. An entrepreneur thinks up a product that’s reusable, but not indestructible. It’s cheap to produce, cheap to buy and very useful. It can be protected by a worldwide patent so no Johnny-come-lately can knock you off. That’s the kind of idea that can make a fortune. But, will it really work and turn into a business? The design is brilliant. You hit a shot and it leaves an impression. You wipe your finger across the label and “presto” the impression is gone.

I’m not so sure about replacing standard impact labels. At the Golf Lab, we spend less than $100 per year on labels and most of them come from our suppliers who think that having their name on our throw-aways is a good marketing program. Most of the labels are used for three or four hits and we paste them on a report to compare performance of different clubs. The same goes for the sole impact labels to check lie. Hit them once, and we’re done. Where do reusable impact labels turn into a good business?

There are a couple of areas where they are very useful. The best use is the putter impact label. You put it on the face of your putter. Not only does the impression show the location of the strike, but if you look closely, you can see whether you struck the ball with the face of your putter open or closed. If you’re putting just perfectly, you will see a little heavier impression on the top, showing that you’re trying to get some topspin going. If you practice putting, you will find that the Strike-n-Swipe impact labels for your putter will help you improve your consistency and understand how you’re striking the ball on your putter.

If you like to know where you’re striking the ball on the face of your clubs while you’re practicing, the Strike-n-Swipe is going to be a godsend. Rather than using paper labels, with all of the mess, you can use a single Strike-n-Swipe for an entire practice session. Hit a shot, wipe it away, and hit another shot. Much better than paper labels or the messy spray on powder. Players who like to know where they’re hitting the ball on the face of their club will like Strike-n-Swipe. Go to www.strikenswipe.com.

The New Premium Shaft Story and Alternatives

There is an undercurrent of disbelief in the shaft business. At the Haggin Oaks Demo Day, I ran into quite a cross section of marketing and sales guys. Haggin Oaks is kind of like a reunion for everyone in the golf business who has ties to California – and everyone else in the golf business that’s afraid not to show up. 12,000 consumers over three days is a huge magnet for sales guys.

The undercurrent of doubt made itself clear talking with representatives from Aldila and Harrison shaft companies. These are two successful companies. Aldila is the grandfather of the industry, the first company in the graphite shaft business. Harrison has been around for a long time also, enjoying a great deal of success in long drive with their super lightweight high performance shafts. Aldila loaded the boat with its incredibly popular NV and NVS series of shafts that have been picked up by almost every manufacturer. Aldila virtually created the OEM move to premium shafts single-handedly by establishing the NV as a premium shaft ($150 retail) and then giving it to Ping on a $299 driver. It looked like an incredible bargain and Ping rode the technique to a record year when they completely restructured driver pricing in 2005. Buyers no longer trust proprietary shafts in golf clubs. They want recognizable name brands.

Neither of these venerable companies can understand what’s happening with graphite shaft pricing. They used to think they were breaking the bank with the equivalent of $3 a gallon gasoline when their dealers got $150 for a driver shaft. Then Fujikura came along with $300 Speeders, ACCRA topped Fuji with $425 for their SE80, and Matrix Composite (formerly Apache) tried to prove that they were the best by being the most expensive on the planet with their OZIK at $450 and then their “Grand OZIK” at $1000. Matrix found that there was no oxygen in the stratosphere of prices and dialed their expectations back down to the new premium price point: $350.

In 2005, Mitsubishi established the $350 price point with their Diamana (blue board) shaft that found its way into Tiger Woods bag for a part of the season. At one point six of the top ten money winners on Tour were playing Diamanas which made it look like a good buy at $350 – although I wonder if even the immensely wealthy top tour pros would pay that much for a shaft if they actually had to part with their own easily-earned money.

In any event, the $350 price point is here to stay. Fujikura’s new Rombax is getting great reviews – and they would be embarrassed to sell for less than Mitsubishi. Ditto Matrix. Ditto Stulz with their triangular “Nano-Arrow” shaft. Ditto Graffaloy and their new Axis shaft.

Meantime, poor old Aldila has released its new premium VS Proto to good reviews. They just can’t screw up the courage at Aldila to try for the brass ring. Their new top of the line will come out at $200. Same with Harrison. Their new Mugen shaft – also receiving good reviews is going to be in the same “bargain” area. The old timers are still in disbelief that the shaft market can sustain pricing at $350.

This year the buzzwords describing the benefits of the new generation of premium shafts focus on exotic materials that increase the “hoop strength” of the shaft. In a golf swing, the shaft gets put under pressure and tends to deform. That deformation is described as “ovaling” – getting squeezed out of round. Extra hoop strength, theoretically at least, keeps the shaft round which presumably means that it will be more consistent in returning the clubhead to the ball. Better accuracy? For $350, we sure hope so.

I’m not trying to talk anyone out of buying an expensive shaft. And when you do, I hope you buy it SST PUREd at the Golf Lab. As a precaution, however, you might consider testing it in advance, mounted in the head of your choice, with the performance measured by a launch monitor. When those numbers turn out good, before you lay down $500 or more for a driver, you might even want to see how it does on your course. It’s worth going to a little trouble and expense to make sure you don’t end up with a $500 orphan in your closet. If you work with a clubmaker, you can test the exact club you plan to buy on your own course with your own golf balls.

If Tom Wishon is right and the ultra premium shafts are an unnecessary extravagance, there are plenty of good options in the $150 to $200 price range – SST PUREd and installed.

More Fun with Your Next Set of Irons

Every year there’s a sweepstakes winner in iron head designs. This year, it’s the Mizuno MP-60. As time goes on, the model that everyone picks as the “year’s best” tends to hold its value and become a classic. Last year, Mizuno won with the MP-32 “cut muscle”. Here’s a question: do you think there’s much difference between forged blades that were made last year or ten years ago? How about twenty years ago? 1984 was a great year for forged blades. The Taylor Made TPF is one of the all time best. How about 1993? The Wilson Progressives were good enough to help Payne Stewart win the Open.

If you’re thinking about another set of irons, you don’t have to spend $1K or more for a new set of forged blades, decked out with custom shafts and SST PUREd. You can pick out a set of classic heads, maybe a model with some historical interest, and have them rebuilt with high performance, lightweight, modern shafts. The whole set will cost you around $500 and they’ll be more fun to play than anything you can buy off the rack today. If you’re currently playing game improvement irons, treat yourself to a set of classic forged blades and you’ll find out you can probably play forged just as well as cast shovels. If you just want to give forged a try, a couple of true-forged wedges from Scratch is a reasonable starting point. Pair them up with shafts from Nippon Steel, Aerotech or Royal Precision Spinner or Project X to explore the difference in feel.

On the other end of the spectrum is Miura. Miura iron heads are finished like jewelry. The limited edition TF – the “tiny blade” will be available in June. Only 85 sets will be available in North America. It will be a collector’s item. You might need to buy one to play and one to put away. We think it’s the “Tiger Blade”. In any event, there is such a thing as “top of the line” and Miura is it.

Mornings at the Muni

With the weather and my leg improving, I’m getting back into my regular nine holes Monday through Thursday mornings at the Palo Alto Muni. I welcome the chance to play with friends and customers. I’m happy to offer ideas about how your clubs fit your game. We start before 8. We stay for breakfast at Don’s grill and get to work by 10:30. Please call ahead to make sure it’s happening. 650-493-1770.

That’s all for now. Next month I’ll be back on the testing trail.

Leith Anderson is a Partner in the Golf Lab, Palo Alto, CA.
He will answer any and all questions relating to club fitting and club making. Contact: Leith@calgolftech.com.