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The Search for the Magic Driver (Part 5)

By Leith Anderson

The Winner and New Champion - SMT Shinnecock

"Mr. Shinny" didn't do it all by himself (he got a little help from his cousin, Mr. Orange) but there's a new Magic Driver in the bag. It was a dogfight this month. Read on for the details. To make the story more meaningful, a little background is necessary.

The Death of the Clone and Knock-Off

There was a time when a few Big Names ruled the golf world. If you were a "Player" years ago you loved Wilson or Hogan or MacGregor. The Big Three were expensive to buy and usually sold only by Green Grass golf professionals. Later, Ping and then Callaway entered the contest with great success. High prices always motivate golfers to search for alternatives and that's when the "clone" and "knock-off" business took off. If you wanted a set of clubs that cost about half what the name brands were selling for, you found yourself a clubmaker and he could build a set that looked a lot like one of the name brands. But you still couldn't show up to play at the Olympic Club with clones in your bag.

And then things changed. The Name Brand Companies began protecting their designs with copyrights. It became more and more difficult for copycats to produce clubs that were too close to the name brands. Lawsuits flew around and copycat companies went out of business.

And there were quality issues. As the golf component business moved more and more to Taiwan and then mainland China the quality sometimes came down with the prices. Lots of products were returned because they failed in play. These factors lead to the rise of a whole new class of entrepreneur. Ambitious small-time businessmen found their way to China and started businesses based on original clubhead designs and high quality standards. Top design and performance no longer was the domain of the Big Guys.

Today there are no really successful companies left that are ripping off original designs. The next wave in the custom golf component business is original products that, at a minimum, are totally competitive with the best from Titleist, Ping, Callaway, Taylormade or Hogan.

Mainland China - the new center of the Golf Universe.

It won't be long before almost all golf club heads, shafts and grips will be made in Mainland China. It's hard to imagine a Chinese worker welding dozens of Titanium driver heads a day with each one worth a year's wages in China.

But China has been "open" for years. First, the multinational golf OEM companies sourced their components there. Then came Golfsmith, Golfworks, Dynacraft and others serving the custom clubmaking industry. Along the way a few Americans with Chinese heritage began to import heads to distribute in America. Today, importing from China doesn't take multinational power or an ethnic heritage. Plain old Americans can take their original ideas to China and return with a product that performs in the American market.

Mike Tait (SMT) and Steve Almo (Bang Golf)

The two companies that have emerged as the leaders in originality are Bang and SMT. Bang is the brainchild of Steve Almo and SMT came from the imagination of Mike Tait.

At some point in the future it will be interesting to discuss Bang Golf in more detail as well as Infiniti, Zero Tolerance, Integra and Kent Sports. But for today, I'm going to focus on SMT. SMT stands for "Superior Metal Technology".

Mike Tait has been in the golf industry for many years. He's a former golf pro who made a living distributing Chinese components to the American clubmaking community. In the last few years, a new category emerged. It is the "Long Drive Tour". It turns out that the "Long Drivers" are the ultimate supporters of the golf component industry. By definition, any competitor in the Long Drive business cannot possibly use "off the shelf" clubs. They are subjecting their equipment to abuse that an average golfer cannot even imagine. Shafts are 50 inches and these athletes can destroy a clubhead with a few swings.

That is what got Mike into his own company. He was importing Chinese titanium driver heads and began to notice he was replacing as many as he was selling in a bad month. The long drive contestants were simply crushing anything the touched. He resolved to start a company that made a product that would withstand the demands of the Long Drive Professionals. In addition to creating original designs, he subjected each head to "cannon testing" - blasting each one at least 100 balls at speeds exceeding the 140+ MPH swingspeeds that it takes to be competitive. The result was an almost instant success. He captured the hearts and minds of the golf "techno freaks" who hang out on the Golf Equipment Aficionado's Forum on Delphi. (BTW: If you're interested in golf equipment, the GEA is a great forum.)

The next step was to capture the hearts and minds of the Long Drivers. SMT did that at the "Nationals" that were completed in early November at Mesquite, Nevada. SMT won the open division with its bright red "450 Deep Bore" head (on an Accuflex shaft), and the senior division with its Purple "Nemisis" model. These new designs are successors to the Shinnecock, arguably the most successful long drive head in the last year. So that's my lead in for the next part of the story, a contest between "Mr. Red" and "Mr. Purple" and "Mr. Shinny" to unseat the current Magic Driver, my old friend the Nicklaus Air Max 360.

The Battlefield - Pasatiempo

It was convenient that my friend Brian invited me down to Pasatiempo on November 9th for a friendly round with another Oracle veteran, Dan, a.k.a, "The Doctor". The rains had subsided the day before but the course was still as soggy as a wet sponge. Brian had a bad back that day so he decided we should play the white tees. It was, absolutely, the longest 6100 course in the world. But it was perfect for a contest between "Mr. Red" and "Mr. Purple".

Mr. Red came out of the bag on the second hole. This was literally the first swing for the driver that I built the night before with an Apache 58+ shaft flexed at 6.0 on the PCS Equalizer System. I even cheated a little bit and made the club 46" - talking a page out of the Long Drive Bible. The online forums all suggest a long, smooth swing on an inside to out and upward path. Perfect swing, solid contact and (gasp!!) a drive that seemed to stay in the air for ten seconds. If you have played Pasatiempo, you know that the second hold is a long, difficult par four. I was in the middle of the fairway with a nine iron into the green. As many times as I have played "Pasa" the only drive I remember that was farther was in the middle of the summer when the fairways were hard. There is only one way to say it, this was a B-O-M-B.

After a very long fade on the fourth and a dead straight bullet on the sixth, the Doctor asked if he could try Mr. Red. He hit a "pop up" that sailed past a solid shot with his own custom fit Callaway Biggest Bertha on the ninth. From that point on, the Doctor and I were hitting several drives with Mr. Red on most holes. (You can do that on Pasatiempo and still finish a round in four hours.)

Without boring you with every detail, Mr. Red also gave up a career best on the tenth hole. With the round complete, it looked like a hands-down victory for Mr. Red. It was so much fun that we really didn't give Mr. Purple a fair shake. Shinny didn't even make the trip.

Confirming the Results (or not!!)

I went back to the shop that afternoon and fired up the Distance Caddy to confirm my perceptions. Over the years, I have been fooled many times by a club that seemed to be performing but found the honeymoon was very short. I had a little nagging doubt in the back of my mind. On a couple of holes at Pasa, everything felt right but when I got to the ball, I was disappointed that it wasn't a little farther.

The Distance Caddy is a very useful tool for fitting clubs. When connected to a personal computer, it records the carry distance, clubhead speed, ball speed, and a statistic called "efficiency". Efficiency is a calculation based on the energy transfer between the clubhead and the ball and provides a shorthand indication of how solid the shot was. The DC Wiz Fit software lets you test four clubs side by side and compare the individual shot statistics and the averages. Over the last few months, I have found the comparative statistics to be very reliable.

My swing speed tests out at 105 MPH, plus or minus. Distance Caddy measurements show that a 105 swingspeed will deliver a 225-235 carry distance, a ball speed off the face in the low to mid 140's at normal efficiency ratings. Another way to figure the relationship is through the ratio of ball speed divided by clubhead speed. A ball speed of 130 divided by a clubhead speed of 100 yields a ratio of 1.3. The ball is coming off the face at 1.3 times clubhead speed. If you know your ball speed, you can work to achieve the proper launch angle and spin rate to reach maximum distance. Launch monitors like the Swing Dynamics machine focus on this ratio. Experience shows that ratios in the 1.4 range are very good and 1.5+ are excellent. Very few amateurs exceed the high 1.4 range. Understanding numbers and relationships like this make "reasonable expectations" very clear. Physics will tell you how far you can expect a ball to travel. You can't defy the Laws of Nature.

When I tested Mr. Red on the Distance Caddy, some very disturbing numbers came up. I was getting higher than normal clubhead speed, well north of 105, which I attributed to the extra length of the club. The carry distance was a few yards farther than normal. However, the balls peed just barely got into the 140's, which was much too low. I began to suspect that the Apache 58+ shaft was too weak. I couldn't think of any other reason that the high swingspeed was not getting into the ball.

This suspicion was supported by the numbers that were coming in from Mr. Purple, shafted up with an Apache 65P at 45" and flexed to a PCS Equalizer standard 6.5. The DC showed that Mr. Purple was producing ball speeds in the high 140's with a normal swingspeed. Mr. Purple's efficiency numbers were much better as well, indicating more solid contact. Indoor distances were about equal.

Day Two - The Honeymoon is Over

Sunday November tenth I had another low-key round scheduled with my friend Todd, a giant of a golfer at 6' 10" who was playing his first round with a set of Apache 40+ shafted graphite irons at 2" over length. I wanted to be there to pick up the splinters.

I had Mr. Red in the bag looking for a repeat of the day before. It was a chilly day with a blustery wind and intermittent rain. I won't bore you with failure, but I never hit a solid drive with Mr. Red. Maybe I was stiff, maybe cold, maybe the club was too long. I don't know exactly what the problem was but Mr. Red went back in the trunk after the first nine. Luckily, the Nicklaus driver was still in the car and I salvaged the back nine.

Back to the Lab

I spent the next several hours at the Golf Lab testing Mr. Red, Mr. Purple and the trusty old Shinnecock that had been waiting for a shot. The head styles are very different. Mr. Red looks like a "brick on a stick". It looks surprisingly small for its 450 cc size. Even though Mr. Red bombed out of this competition early, I'm not totally ready to give up on the large driver heads. There is simply too much evidence on the online forums that very large drivers deliver better distance and consistency. I think that my trouble came from the requirement to swing somewhat differently with a longer shaft. I also have to find the right shaft.

Mr. Purple is a striking clubhead, both color, the polished face with no scorelines, and the shape which is out of the pear-shaped tradition, but still radical. When shafted with an Apache 65P, it looked like a winner and seemed to show that with indoor testing. Mr. Purple fell out of the race when we went to the range. Despite building the club to a much softer frequency, a PCS 6.0, the club still played much too stiff. This was compounded by the relatively low loft of Mr. Purple's head (8*). The ballflight was simply too low and misses went low and to the right. It took about ten shots to confirm that Mr. Purple was good in the net, but couldn't take it to the course.

Luckily, Mr. Shinny was tested out and ready to go. The indoor numbers were very close to Mr. Purple and both had beat out the Magic Nicklaus in swingspeed and ball speed tests on the Distance Caddy. Also, The Shinnecock was a 10* loft shafted with a 65N at 45" flexed to a PCS Equalizer 6.0. The ultimate test was ball flight and shot shape. I had grown too accustomed to working the Nicklaus "both ways" and loved the consistency. A couple of range sessions confirmed that the Shinny won a place in the bag for at least the next month. The driver was hot, launch angle perfect and the natural draw could be turned into a fade.

Conclusions from the November "Search"

Finding the correct shaft flex profile is a problem. The newer shafts are touting "high bend point" and some kind of "tip stiff" characteristics. I think they are just too demanding for most players to hit. For example, the 65 P from Apache which is gaining a following on the PGA Tour after K.J. Choi used it to win two tournaments is too difficult for my 105 MPH swingspeed even at flexes much softer than normal. I haven't found a flex soft enough to work with the 65 P.

On the other hand, the Apache 65 N which is described as a mid bend point shaft and aimed at amateurs is a good performer, although it still plays very stiff. I think it is important to dial down flex with the newer shafts. This is especially true when the shafts have been PUREd.

Ultralight shafts might contribute to distance problems for golfers with higher swing speeds. My experience this month with the Apache 58+ makes me wonder if there is enough "backbone" in the ultralight shafts to transfer power from faster swings. More testing will be required, but I'm thinking that if you're going to use an ultralight shaft, it might be necessary to step up to a much stiffer flex.

Loft is your friend. Most golfers tend to make the "macho" choice and buy drivers with 8 or 9 degrees of loft. Depending on the head style, this is likely to be too little. Mr. Purple was an 8* head. I couldn't get a decent trajectory. I think it would take at least a 10* Nemesis to be playable for a good amateur. The Shinnecock was 10* and it produced a trajectory that I would have guessed to be 8*. It also takes a higher loft to be able to work the ball both ways. This shows one more time that you've simply got to take a driver you're thinking of buying to the range to see the ball flight outdoors.

The "Power Plug" is still performing. We have about 30 players who have installed them in their drivers with 100% satisfaction. Reports are that the counterweight delivers a little more consistency and an average of ten yards more distance. This may be a trend, I heard from an inside source recently that Apache is working on a backweighted shaft. Interesting. As for irons, we're still testing. I have plugs installed in my irons but I'm still tinkering to find the correct weight.

"Mr.Shinny" is going to the course this month. There are a couple of tournaments so we'll see how he does under pressure. I'll let you know.

Leith Anderson
Clubmaker and Clubfitter
Golf Lab, Palo Alto, CA.
He can be reached by email: Leith@calgolftech.com
Or by phone (650) 743-2816.