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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2006 (Part 5)

Copyright 2006 by Leith Anderson
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Originally appeared in October 2006 issue of Golf Today

Magic Driver Success Stories - 2006

By Leith Anderson

Five years ago, I started my search for the “Magic Driver”.  I might as well have been looking for the Holy Grail.  Since that time, I have had quite a few successes but each driver that had its days in the California sun was surpassed by the next “latest and greatest” as technology improved. 

Long time readers will remember the first Magic Driver – The Nicklaus Airmax 360 – which reminds us how big drivers were five years ago.  360 cc’s in those days was enormous.  That Nicklaus driver made me a lot of friends when I recommended it against the darlings of the day.  I had a brief affair with a Taylor Made 510 TP – my first introduction to the “Tour Proven” line that Taylor Made turned into a highly respected product line.  That driver is still a classic.  One of the ones I missed was the Orlimar Hip Ti 420 designed by Jesse Ortiz.  When Hip-Ti’s show up today at the Golf Lab today we frequently warn their owners that we might not be able to knock them out of the bag.  Four years later, they’re still that good.

As drivers increased in size, there were a couple of years when 400 cc’s was the size leader.  Year after year, manufacturers discovered newer and stronger metals as well as fabrication methods that allowed making driver heads ever larger and more resilient while maintaining their weight at a svelte 200 grams.

One Magic Driver that lasted an unusually long time was a Titleist 983 LFE paired up with my first Fujikura Speeder – an “R” flex that tested out just a little south of “X” on our Professional Clubmakers’ Equalizer system.  It was totally tweaked with PUREing, counter-weighting and even treated to a stylish new powder coat finish.  I had a great run of tournaments with that driver.  It’s in safe keeping with other treasures, including my high school Glass Shaft Tartan model putter and my college Wilson Strata Bloc woods.  There were others.  A Makser 400 received the honor of an extended trip to Ireland, shafted up with a Harrison Striper.  I kept that one too but it’s not retired; rather earning its keep in the demo bag.  Taylor Made got into the bag again, the second time with an R7 TP shafted up with a Mitsubishi Diamana – when Tiger and all of his friends were playing that shaft.  I probably built and played over 100 drivers.  Most lasted only a day or a trip to the range before returning to the parts bin.  That should tell something about your odds of finding a good driver – forget Magic.

The USGA heeded warnings about new technology making classic old golf courses obsolete and the game too easy.  They picked on the defenseless driver industry instead of taking on the rich and powerful golf ball lobby.  (Remember the Gillette lesson:  Give away the razor and sell the blades.)  With limits imposed on driver technology – 460 cc size and .830 COR – there appeared to be little any manufacturer could do in 2006 except tweak materials, manufacturing techniques, weight distribution, color and cosmetics.  The USGA left the driver manufacturers little meat on the bone.  The driver story for 2006 turned to influencing spin and trajectory with weight distribution technology and increasing moment of inertia (MOI) with radical shapes. 

The USGA action is hard to judge as fair.  As a proponent of shaft alignment to counteract manufacturing irregularities, I am acutely aware that the USGA sternly prohibits any shaft alignment that purports to influence ball flight.  I contacted the USGA about the discrepancy – why it is permissible to buy a head that is marketed as influencing ball flight (R7) but not permissible for a shaft to do the same?  You can even build a driver that is marketed to hit nothing but hooks – the new Taylor Made “draw bias” driver – but you can’t put a shaft in a head to induce a draw.  Their terse reply:  “That’s the way it is.”  Why does it always take a fight?

If there was a big winner in 2006 in addition to Taylor Made, it was Nike.  The radical Nike Sasquatch was one of those “love it or hate it” designs that was designed to hit the ball straighter.  Without doubt, the Tom Stites’ invention was the most innovative individual design of 2006 by emphasizing “moment of inertia” or resistance to twisting.  In a year when most other driver designers were despairing about USGA-imposed limits on technology, Stites came up with something that was truly different.  We have found the Sasquatch to be a very good performer in launch monitor testing, delivering high ball speeds and low spin.  There’s another trend that happened with the Sasquatch.  Nike shipped the driver with a slightly heavier head than the industry norm.  The average weight was around 204 grams, just a couple of dimes more than the current standard 200 grams.  That allowed drivers to be cut down to 44.5” without adding too much lead tape to the head to maintain swingweight.  Heavier weight heads are frequently referred to as “Tour weight”. 

A week ago, our Nike rep showed up with the 2007 line.  Egad!!  I thought that the 2006 Sasquatch must surely be the end of the line in radical designs.  Absolutely not!  The new 2007 Nike Drivers come in two models – aptly named the “Sumo” and the “Sumo Squared”.  The Sumo is similar in shape to this year’s model with a flattened profile and further extended and rounded back end.  You can look it as a natural evolution of the Sasquatch design – if you can say “natural” about anything Sasquatch.

Then comes the Sumo Squared.  This is a driver that the whole industry is sure to be talking about.  When you look at it, you can’t imagine that it’s only 450 cc in size.  It looks monstrous.  Stites accomplished his newest design by further flattening and hollowing out the top of the driver while extending the back in a flattened, squared-off shape that is reminiscent of a hawk’s tail.

And then there’s the sound.  Nike’s technical rep in Las Vegas performs fittings at the Nike store in the Mandalay Bay hotel.  He says it’s “too loud for indoors”.  If there is a problem with the new design, it could be the sound.  A couple of years ago, MacGregor drivers performed well but players couldn’t stand the sound and refused to buy them.  Maybe times have changed, or maybe Nike will figure out a way to put a silencer on the Sumo.

Nike is proving that it wants to become a dominant player in the golf industry.  The company showed it means business by signing up a bunch of the top Tour players – in addition to the two that everyone knows.  For 2007, they’re going to have a new iron model, a graphite sandwich with tungsten weighting that looks like it’s targeting the Callaway Fusion.  Nike’s new putters are truly different.  They figured out how to join the shaft and the head without a seam so the putter looks like it is one piece. 

The Lure of the Most Expensive Option

You can spend ten million dollars for a house in California and it probably won’t be the nicest one in the neighborhood.  You can spend five million for a car, three million for a diamond ring or a million for a wristwatch.  Whatever you spend, there will always be another one that is rarer and more valuable.

The desire that we all have to taste the best is one of the reasons that expensive golf equipment is so tempting.  For most of us, the “best of the best” in any other category is unobtainable.  But almost anyone can buy the best driver shaft on the planet – that takes $1000 for the “Grand OZIK – and that’s only if you think the most expensive is the best.  You might even be satisfied with the $400 ACCRA SE series, the “Baby OZIK”, the Accuflex Creation, the Mitsubishi Diamana, the Graffaloy Axis or the Fujikura Rombax.  These are exactly the same models that the stars play on Tour.

An ordinary guy can save up his allowance and buy a set of irons that is the equal of any PGA Tour pro.  Miura irons with a Tour-grade shaft, decked out and tweaked to perfection with SST PUREing are just a couple of hundred dollars a stick.  You can buy a Scratch Japanese forged wedge custom ground to your specifications, stamped with your initials or personal sign and finished any way you can dream up for under $300.  I can’t think of any other product where normal folks can buy the best there is.

I spent most of the last three months building the most exotic drivers I could imagine.  I went the OEM route and the component route.  I tested a wide variety of ultra-premium shafts and heads. 

If it doesn’t fit, you’d better quit

I have one major warning for anyone thinking about buying any of the high-end shafts.  They all play very stiff – and that includes the models with the so-called “active tip sections”.  Most of the exotic driver shafts in the high performance expensive category only come in stiff and extra stiff flexes.

If you want to compare your options against my personal testing, my swing speed is 105 MPH.  I’m ecstatic when my ball speed breaks the 150 barrier.  I have a good lag, load the shaft at 12.0 on the Shaft Max (topped out).  My swing is relatively quick, relatively short.  I have the normal flexibility and balance issues that plague over 60 golfers who don’t have all of their native parts.  My index has stayed under 4 all year, despite a more limited playing schedule.  The golf business does that to you.

Two shafts were just plain out of my league.  I wanted to love the “Professional Tour Only” Accuflex Creation shaft that’s in very limited distribution because it’s cool to play a shaft nobody has seen.  Fuji Bob unleashed a career best drive by 20 yards in a recent round on the 12th hole at Stanford with the Creation in a KZG G Force adjustable weight head.  In “S” flex, untipped, that shaft is too much for me.  If you want a Tour Only Accuflex Creation, you’d better top 110 swing speed with your shoes off.  The going price is $400.

When I was a kid, I was in love with baseball.  Ernie Banks played shortstop for the Cubs.  He had fast hands.  All of us little leaguers wanted to swing like Ernie.  I’ve always understood the fundamental concept shared by baseball and golf – “the fastest speed at the moment of impact”.  That’s where home runs come from.  To hit home runs with my driver, I like some feedback from my shaft.  I want to feel a little release at the moment of impact.  Some players describe that sensation as a “kick”.  A shaft that is too stiff won’t kick.

The ACCRA SE series was created to be the lowest torque graphite shaft available.  The SE series was designed to have an “active tip” to help the shaft be more playable.  We had one of the original SE 80 – 80 gram “Tour Grade” shafts.  It went into several demo drivers for very good players but they all brought it back.  I was convinced that it was too much shaft until I saw Mark Timms of Hot Stix fame bust some record long drives with his prototype SE 80 at the fall PGA Show best ball tournament.  If you have the “right swing” (quick with a heavy load) it could be the shaft for you.  Meantime, the ACCRA folks have released two new designs; each designed to be a little easier to manage.  The SE 80 * (star) with a slightly softer tip and the SE 70 * with a little lighter weight and softer tip.  After seeing Stewart Cink take Tiger to the limit with his SE 80-shafted Sasquatch at Firestone, I built out my own version with the SE 70* and a Nike SQ head.  Even the lighter weight SE is a little too much for me to love.  It will be too much for most players to buy – MSRP at $425.

One of the tricks we’ve learned this season at the Golf Lab is pairing up high loft heads with low launch, low spin shafts.  We have found the MacGregor “MacTec” head to be a good performer on our launch monitor testing.  The MacTec is built with a “cup face” that is bonded to the body of the head with a new process that presumably expands the sweet spot.  MacGregor claims that the “whole face is the sweet spot” which is marketing hyperbole.  The MacTec construction gives some players three or four more MPH of ball speed with low spin.  That classifies as “hot” for us and can produce ten more yards of carry on the course.  One MacTec head is really different.  It is the 10* “high launch (HL)”.  Company insiders confess that the HL is really 12* but they put 10* on the head so they wouldn’t spook good players who would never even waggle a 12* head.  The difference is that the HL head was designed to be 2* open so it would look square at address.  Therein lays the benefit.  Open face angles play to a lower loft.  Consequently a 12* head at 2* open will play to about 10*.  That’s exactly what we found with the HL. 

My first test with the MacGregor MacTec was to pair it up with the new Fujikura Rombax.  The Rombax is designed to be the successor to the famous Speeder line.  If you’re going to choose a Rombax, you’d better have a good look at the Fujikura website for shaft specifications (www.fujikuragolf.com).  The Rombax is not a single shaft, rather it is a family.  Each shaft in the family is a different weight with a different flex profile.  The weights range from 55 grams in the 5W06 to 75 grams in the 7W06.  I chose the 6W06 at 65 grams for my first test.  Even though I have a lot of experience with Fujikura shafts, I couldn’t bring myself to install an “R” flex the first time around.  I went with the “S” and true to form, I found myself swinging too hard to make the shaft work.  (Shafts that are too stiff whisper in your ear “hit me hard” – and you fall off balance.)  In their fitting recommendations, Fujikura puts a 105 swingspeed on the borderline between “S” and “X”.  At least for me, that recommendation has proven to be too optimistic.  With Speeders and Rombax shafts, I have found that the “R” flex works better for me.  If you want to play Fujikura successfully, you might have to suppress your ego.  The retail price is a Speeder-like $300 plus.

The final combination that had a week of vacation in Las Vegas was the Advanced Golf Technologies Aurora head combined with the new Graffaloy Axis shaft.  I frequently mention Steve Solo and Advanced Golf Technology (AGT), www.advancedgolftechnology.com as a company that deserves support.  Steve focuses his products on “made in America” materials and technology.  His fairway woods are among my favorites.  He redesigned the line and added a “fairway driver” – a large fairway club with 17* of loft designed to get the ball up and carry a long way.  It’s a unique design that should work for players who need maximum distance from the fairway.

The AGT Aurora driver is a conventional deep face design but very pretty.  The first time out at Paiute Golf Course in Las Vegas the Aurora, teamed up with the new Graffaloy Axis shaft was very straight.  I kept the ball in play all the way around, despite some very narrow fairways.

Alas, the honeymoon only lasted for one day as the driver turned wild at Bali Hai – featured in the Big Break.  I set a new personal record – smacking a billboard on I-15 with one tee ball.  The Axis shaft is one of those new premium shafts which Graffaloy hopes will break the $300 barrier at retail – a matter of defending the company’s honor.  Fuji Bob tested his in the “S” flex and had no love – claiming it played stiffer than the Accuflex Creation.  I started out with the “R” flex – tested at 251 cycles untipped on the Equalizer – not overly stiff from a frequency perspective and it is all the shaft that I can imagine playing.  I’m not blaming the driver for the billboard.  Once again, unless you’re a gorilla, be careful with your flex choice.  If you choose one that’s too stiff you can waste several rounds as well as the money you pay.

If I had to choose today . . .

So after all this fooling around, it’s a fair question to ask.  If I had to pick a driver for the next six months and never change (God forbid!!) which one would I choose?  I’m not sure I can do that.  I have a psychological problem.  I’ll bet you’re the same.

Whenever I start a round with a new driver, I expect it to take me to places I’ve never been before.  If you play a course dozens, or hundreds of times, you remember your best drives.  Never mind that it was 110* in the shade with a 30 MPH following wind on a week when the course was dry as a rock.  You know your longest drive on every hole.  I expect to beat that record every round I play.  Sound familiar?

None of my recent drivers set a record at the Palo Alto Muni.  I don’t want to admit that I might just be getting old and weak.  I just can’t accept the possibility that I may never set another personal distance record.  Golfers equate driving distance with their overall health and well being.  When your drives come up short, you start looking at yourself closely in the mirror, trying to detect signs of aging.  Your golf game is a metaphor for health and fitness.  If you drive to your maximum distance and your handicap doesn’t rise, there’s no reason to worry about the future.  But when you’re hitting it short, and making double bogies, you start thinking about increasing your life insurance.

One thing you can do if you’ve been thinking about life insurance too much lately is to play new courses.  Then, you won’t have to compare your current performance against your past successes.  I played Poppy Hills a few times in the last couple of months.  Poppy Hills is the best ticket in northern California for players who don’t have a private club to fall back on.  I have a sweet feeling about my SMT 455 DB with the oh-so-common-and-so-inexpensive SK Fiber Pure Energy shaft that left me with good memories.  I can still set personal records at Poppy Hills.  The most expensive alternative proved one thing for me – I can’t buy a game.

Unusual Magic Drivers

Here are a few examples of players who have found drivers that are “magic” for them.  In all cases, finding their own magic driver was the result of a lot of indoor and outdoor fitting, experimentation and testing.  There is no single magic driver.  The one that you find will be yours.  It’s all a matter of how much work you want to do.

Case Study:  Walter

Walter is a late-50’s low index player.  He’s played a lot of tournament golf as an amateur.  His swing speed is 105, his tempo is quick and he has an incredible lag.  If there was ever a player who you would not expect to do well with a 48” driver, he would head the list.  So much for logic.  Over the last three years, Walter has played several 48” drivers, usually with the SMT 455 DB head and the latest “hot” shaft.  He has worked through the SK Fiber Pure Energy and the Mitsubishi 55 gram Diamana.  Currently in the bag:  the ACCRA Tour 50 gram shaft in the stiffest available flex on a SMT 455 DB head.  His driver is counterweighted.  He hits the ball a long, long way.

Lesson learned:  If you want to hit the ball farther with your driver, you have to make a physical change.  One thing you can change is the length.  If you can control it, three inches can add 30 to 40 yards.  The trick is to find the lightest possible shaft in the right flex – which will probably be stiffer than you normally play.  You will also probably find that the right loft is a degree or two lower than you normally play.  If you can combine all of that with a head in the low 190 gram range, you will have the best chance to hit it as far as possible.

Case Study:  Heather

Heather is a professional who won the San Francisco City Amateur a couple of times.  Her 85 MPH swing speed is pretty similar to many amateur men and some stronger women players.  Here swing path is consistently outside-in.  Over the years, she has lost distance with a cut that can turn into a slice.  Needless to say, Heather has endured endless fittings at the Golf Lab as one of our certified “crash test dummies”.  Conventional fitting results suggest a high loft driver and “regular” flex shaft to maximize carry distance.  The problem is that setup does not work the best on the course.

The solution for Heather turned out to be a relatively low loft driver at 9* with a 3* closed face angle.  An Aerotech Powercoil 50 gram shaft at 45” delivered the best performance in a stiff flex.  The combination of low loft, stiff flex and closed face angle can produce a draw with a cut swing that runs out to maximum distance.  We never would have found that setup without a lot of trial and error.

Lesson Learned:  Conventional fitting recommendations can be wrong, especially for women and seniors.  If you rely on roll to get your distance, conventional fitting programs and launch monitor software might not get it right.  In the end, you have to take it to the course to find out what really works for you.  And, don’t be afraid to choose a face angle that offsets a swing flaw – especially if your miss is to the right.

Case Study:  The Marshall

The Marshall is a retired airline pilot that who loves golf.  He swings his driver at about 80 MPH.  He’s got a bag full of hybrids.  His longest iron is a six.  The answer for the Marshall was a KZG Gemini SL driver – a 14* loft head paired up with an Aerotech 50 gram shaft at 46”, SST PUREd and counterweighted with a 20 gram Balance-Certified weight.  We hit that combination early and couldn’t find another that knocked it out of the bag.

Lesson Learned:  Even though the Marshall’s swing is quite similar to Heather’s, he has a strong inside out swing path so doesn’t need the closed face angle to counteract a cut swing.  His inside out swing produces a natural draw so the ball is inclined to hop when it lands.  The longer shaft, counterweighted, adds about ten miles an hour of ball speed.  Many players with relatively slow swing speeds benefit from longer shafts and counterweighting.

Case Study:  Fuji Bob

The most amazing Magic Driver this year is the 13* Nike Sasquatch that Fuji Bob paired up with a 43” Fujikura Vista Tour shaft.  Here’s the high loft head with the low hitting, low spin shaft.  Bob routinely bombs this little beast way past his playing partners – frequently delivering personal distance records.  Not only that, he almost can’t hit it off line.

Lesson Learned:  Some players do better with shorter drivers – even good players.  Performance with a shorter driver depends on how a player loads the shaft.  The right launch angle and the right spin rate are also paramount.  It is simply not true that 45” drivers will perform best for most players.  In fact, 45” drivers are probably too long for almost everyone.  If you want a long driver to gain distance, make it long enough to count – 47” or 48”.

Case Study:  Iron Byron

Iron Byron is a scratch player who just kills the ball.  His swing speed is in the 115 plus neighborhood, the territory of Tour players.  He has a swing that sends the ball high to the right and then spins it back with a strong hook spin.  His gamer was a Taylor Made Tour head at 7.5*.  In the last couple of years he’s had every premium shaft on the planet in that head.  Nothing changed his ball flight very much.

Then, we tried a 6* SMT DB “Big Red” head shafted with an ordinary SK Fiber Pure Energy shaft – mainly because the colors matched.  Everything changed.  All of a sudden the trajectory was perfect, the spin was low and the ball stopped forty more yards down the fairway.  Into the wind, there was no contest.  I’ve seen Iron Byron fly in 350 on a soft fairway into a breeze.  The difference was unbelievable.

Lesson Learned:  Just like some players are going to high loft heads with success, it might be necessary to try a low loft head.  Even though 7.5* is the lowest loft available from Taylor Made, long drive contestants routinely use 4*, 5* and 6* drivers.  If you can’t make the swing change to launch the ball on the right trajectory with the right spin, you can make an equipment change.  Don’t be afraid to think outside the box.  If you can’t change your swing, change your club.

Case Study:  BJ

BJ loves Titleist.  He can’t help himself, he grew up in the sixties.  He’s willing to accept a little less distance to play his favorite label.  BJ is in his late forties, carries a nine index and has plenty of power.  BJ has a lot of friends who are members at very fancy and very difficult courses.  He’s got a great personality so they invite him to their member-guest tournaments.  He needs to keep the ball in the fairway.

After a lengthy, inconclusive fitting session, I settled for taking half an inch off of BJ’s Titleist.  We proved it didn’t cost any distance by doing a “before and after” launch monitor test.  Ball speed at the shorter length increased.  BJ is back from his summer schedule of exclusive tournaments.  I’ve got a case of French wine for my $10 contribution to his accuracy.

Lesson Learned:  If you don’t do anything else to help your game, find a clubmaker with a launch monitor.  Let him test for your driver ball speed.  Cut half an inch off your driver.  Test again.  If ball speed doesn’t decrease, take that driver to the course and look for increased accuracy.  If that happens, consider another nibble.  You can always consult Tom Wishon’s book, Search for the Perfect Golf Clubs for the chart that recommends driver length from your wrist to floor measurement.

Finding your own Magic Driver

There are some clues as you read between the lines about others’ successes.  First, there is no such thing as one Magic Driver that fits everyone.  It is doubtful that a friend’s driver that you borrow for a couple of swings will be the best you could ever find.  Neither is a “Tour” driver that may have been built up for a certain player whose specifications are unlikely to match yours.  It might be an interesting collector’s item but you need to find the driver that fits your swing.

It’s also unlikely that a certain expensive shaft will make a huge difference.  If you’re playing competitive golf where missing an extra fairway a round can make the difference between winning and losing, you should do everything you can with your equipment to gain even the tiniest advantage.  For most players, getting the shaft weight, flex, length, bend profile and grip size right is plenty good enough.  You can do that for a lot less than $300.

The same goes for driver heads.  It is far more important to choose a head with the right loft and face angle than one with a fancy name.  There is no doubt that adjustable weight drivers like the Taylor Made R7 and KZG G Force can alter spin rates enough to make a difference.  It is also proven that radical designs like the Nike Sasquatch and the Cleveland Hi-Bore will work for some players.  But nothing works for everyone.

If you want to find the driver that performs best for you, you need to concentrate on club length, loft, face angle, shaft weight, shaft flex, shaft alignment, balance (swingweight) and backweighting.  Each of those specifications is a unique variable that can be tweaked.  Subtle differences in performance can be measured. 

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.