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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2008 (Part 7)

The Newest Crazy Idea

by Leith Anderson

Golfer psychology: “I know what I like, don’t confuse me with the facts.”

Golfers tend to choose the same equipment, time and again. There are no other products that come to mind that inspire such single-minded obsession to buy the same thing year after year.

Once in a great while a new idea comes along that actually helps players hit the ball a little more solidly and a little more consistently. You could put perimeter weighted irons, graphite shafts, lightweight steel shafts, low-profile fairway woods, hybrids and titanium drivers in that class. It’s a short list.

Many years ago, Gene Sarazen “invented” the sand wedge. That was a good thing.

Good ideas that actually help golfers play better are few and far between. When they do happen along, they are likely to be rejected for several years. Acceptance, even for good ideas that work, takes time. Think about it. When was the last time you bought a new club that was significantly different from the one you were already playing? Most golfers buy new golf clubs just because they’re bored with the ones that they already have. Golf clubs rarely wear out.

Remember, the definition of insanity is to expect different results while continuing to do exactly the same thing. Maybe it’s time to think about changing your habits.

The “Miracle” of Balancing Golf Clubs

For the last few months I’ve called attention to a technique to make a golfer’s current clubs work better. “Working better” is defined by things you can measure: higher ball speeds (more distance) and more consistent launch angles, swing paths and face angles at impact. The advent of launch monitors has made comparing “before and after” performance of golf clubs precise and convincing.

Balancing golf clubs is accomplished with weights that are designed to be secured in the butt or down the shaft of the club. The gizmos are referred to as “counter weights” although the companies that make them are inventing new names like “Shaft Stabilizer” to make them sound more scientific.

Counter weighting golf clubs is not a new idea. Golf folklore says that Jack Nicklaus applied lead tape under his grips and Ben Hogan played with clubs that were much stiffer and much heavier than any of his contemporaries. Maybe that was “Hogan’s Secret”.

In over one hundred player tests at the Golf Lab we have seen immediate improvement in performance ranging up to twenty yards of increased carry distance with a driver. Why not get a little free distance with a club you already own? As the story unfolds, you will also see that there is a chance that coupling counterweights with lightweight shafts and clubheads could be one of the crazy new ideas that makes the all-time list of inventions that help golfers improve.

Balance Certified Golf

A few years ago, a small company near Huntsville, Alabama got the bright idea that dropping a heavy weight down the shaft of a putter would help a golfer calm the twitch in his hands and use his “big muscles” to smooth out his putting stroke. They spent a lot of time hanging around the PGA Tour and eventually convinced a few Tour Pros that a heavier putter works better – for some players, some of the time. Scott Hoch became an endorser, advisor and investor in the company.

It was a natural progression to try counterweights in other clubs. In those days, that was a radical idea. Heavier total weight in golf clubs is counterintuitive. If you want more distance and control, the conventional wisdom calls for lighter overall weight. But it turned out that locating ten to thirty grams at the butt end of the club produced better feel and performance for some players, all of the time.

The problem was the first generation of the counterweights was a pain to install. You had to waste the grip and cut half an inch off of the shaft. Then you epoxied a sleeve into the shaft that accepted a variable weight plug. Then you had to regrip the club. The process could not be accomplished in a single visit to a golf shop. The parts were expensive. Installing counterweights cost a minimum of $50 per club. That was a good way to double the cost of a set of irons. To make matters worse, the counterweights were not reusable. As a result, the “technology” never really took off.

Balance-Certified brought out an intermediate design a couple of years ago that was designed to “drop in” to the end of the shaft. A clubmaker could cut a hole in the top of the grip with a sharp circular saw and secure the counter weight in the shaft. That eliminated the objection about time, and complexity but Balance-Certified counter weights were intricate, machined parts and still cost at least $50 per club with installation.

At the beginning of 2008 a couple of things happened to ignite the acceptance of counter weighting as a “science”. Jeff Lindner, the engineering brains behind Balance-Certified invented a new form of counterweight. It is a torpedo-shaped gizmo that slides through a hole in the top of the grip (cut out with that special circular saw blade). It is secured in the shaft with an expanding rubber gasket. The invention was to move half the weight about seven inches down the shaft – under a player’s lower hand. The new invention was named the “Shaft Stabilizer”. It worked better than a single weight located at the butt of the club. Most players experienced an immediate increase in ball speed, center face contact and consistency of swing path, face angle and trajectory. All of the improvements were easy to measure with a launch monitor. The Shaft Stabilizer was a “breakthrough” product for balancing golf clubs.

Better yet, the Shaft Stabilizer was easy to install. It could be done in minutes. It was easy to compare performance. Hit a few shots, install the Shaft Stabilizer, and hit a few more shots. Then, compare the computer printouts. For most players the improvement in performance was immediate and significant. A high success rate and ease of use produced easy sales and happy customers. The “honeymoon” continued – players were satisfied by better shots on the course.

Tour Lock Golf

About the same time another entrepreneur, John Johnson, was pursuing similar ideas at the other end of the country – Tour Lock Golf is headquartered in Ventura, California. Johnson is a PGA Tour Pro who spent a few years in the 90’s chasing his dream only to be sidelined with a bad back. He bought a driving range and dreamed about inventing golf gizmos that would make him rich. He brought a few of his ideas to market but never found gold.

But he figured out a way to make counterweights cheaper. At $20 per club instead of $50, fitting and counter weighting a set of irons could be done for less than $200. The new design was quick to install so and entire set of clubs could be fitted and modified in a single visit. The lower cost improved the profit margin so club fitters were more eager to promote the service and rely on a nearly certain sale to produce the necessary profit. By the middle of 2008, counter weighting entire sets of clubs was gaining momentum from club fitters and players.

Johnson noticed the success that Balance-Certified was enjoying with its Shaft Stabilizer and set out to develop a product that extended the state of the art. His first attempt at inventing a “free weight” that could be located at any point in a shaft was a bust. It relied on a rod and a tiny magnet to position the weights down the shaft. The problem was that the weights were susceptible to getting stuck and the magnet was not strong enough to pull them back out. The first time I installed the “Power Weight” as Johnson named his new invention, it got stuck and I had to pull the head and drive the weight out from the other end with a ramrod. That wasn’t a positive experience.

The second generation of Power Weights is much better. It is that same brass weight, threaded at one and encased in a foam sleeve. The weight is located down the shaft with a threaded rod and secured with an innovative expanding ring. It is a very nifty system that gives a club fitter a great deal of flexibility in where he locates the weight in the shaft. Once located, the shaft can be firmly secured.

The Current State of the Art

It is important to note that the “science” of counter weighting is far from defined and documented. As of November 2008 there are just a few club fitters around the country who are actively promoting the technique. I’m at the head of the list. In the past several months, working with over 100 customers who volunteered to “Donate their swings to science”, here’s a summary of what I learned:

The key technical change is that the balance point of a golf club is moved toward the hands when counter weights are installed. As I mentioned, there is the anecdotal evidence from Nicklaus, Hogan and the online golf forums that this has been tried before. The new KB Tour shafts that have become popular with some adventurous players on the PGA Tour (Kenny Perry leads the small pack) are designed to move weight up the shaft – raising the balance point. It appears to be true that raising the balance point of a golf club helps a player control the club better.

It also seems that distributing the weight down the shaft works better. The Balance-Certified Shaft Stabilizer improves results for more players than single counterweights located at the butt of the shaft. Player testing with launch monitor oversight confirms that conclusion. The questions that haven’t been answered are “where do you locate the weight and how much weight should you use?”

The answer to those questions is not obvious. After several months fitting Balance-Certified Shaft Stabilizers and several days experimenting with the Tour Lock Power Weights, it seems certain that performance and feel are improved by locating part of the weight well down the shaft – at 7-12 inches or a little more from the butt end. Locating weight farther from the butt end decreased ball speed in our testing. However, the decreases in ball speed were minimal and it may be that improved balance and feel will ultimately prove to be more important than an extra yard or two of carry distance.

“How much weight?” Balance-Certified makes Shaft Stabilizers in two weights, thirty and sixty grams. In our testing of over 100 players at the Golf Lab the thirty gram weight produced the best results for about eighty percent of the players. A solid minority performed better with the sixty gram Stabilizer. There was no way to predict which player would do the best with what weight. The logical prediction was for strong men to prefer the heavier weight. Not always so. The unlikely result was that it was common for young and not very strong girls to do better with the heavier weight.

Personally, I got the best results with the lightest available weights in both classes. I think that there is a tendency for players who do not have a launch monitor to verify results to use weights that are too heavy. I think that as a general rule, if you feel the weight - it is too heavy.

A final unresolved question is about the testing protocol itself. We have chosen to think of increased ball speed as the best indicator for better performance. That may be true but ball speed increases are sometimes minimal. Does it really matter, or is it even material, if ball speed increases one or two miles per hour? Isn’t a better indicator consistency, feel and performance on the course?

I expect to spend a lot of time outdoors in the future, moving weight up and down the shaft and testing different shaft weights to see the effect of counter weights on trajectory, shot shape and consistency where it counts. If you’re interested in doing the same thing, you’re going to need your own weight kit and simple tools. For more information on DIY, email Leith@calgolftech.com.

The Northern California Golf Show

As we have for many years, the Golf Lab rented a booth at the Northern California Golf Show held every October in Pleasanton, California. The best part about the show is that it provides a never-ending stream of test subjects. Since I was obsessed with understanding why and how counter weighting worked, I invited John Johnson to join us in the Golf Lab booth to work together to try to answer the nagging questions. (Even the guy who makes the weights doesn’t know exactly why they work.) We installed two Achiever launch monitors and ran a two-ring circus throughout the show. We tested over fifty golfers over the three days.

As a PGA Professional and long time teaching professional, John is most interested in the way counter weighting affects a golfer’s technique. In particular, he’s looking at the way and position where a player releases the club during the swing. His best description of the benefit of counter weighting a club – in his own words for his own swing – is that the club “doesn’t get stuck behind me”.

As somewhat less experienced students of the golf swing, I and the remainder of the Golf Lab Gang are more inclined to look at the hard numbers provided by the launch monitors – increased ball speed and better consistency. There’s more to counter weighting than just raw numbers. Our experience with John shows that balancing golf clubs is likely to be adopted by teaching professionals who are focused on improving a player’s technique as well.

For Love of Putters

It turns out that John’s real passion is putters. He’s gone as far as to work with SK Fiber to design and produce a new putter shaft that is designed to accept weights in the shaft. The putter shaft is graphite, 60 grams, with a big center bore that allows a weight to be located at any point in the shaft. The ultra lightweight shaft, combined with weights that can be located high or low, permits the weights to have the maximum impact on changing the feel of the putter.

That idea proved to be important to inspire our next project. Hold this thought: Counterweights work best in light weight shafts. For maximum change in performance, it is important to aim for the maximum ratio of counter weight versus shaft weight.

For the Northern California Golf Show, John had the new Miura putters set up with his new shafts. The feel was extraordinary. Dozens of golfers tested the new shafts and experimented with the placement of the weights inside the shaft. Several trekked back to their cars to collect their own putters for retrofitting. Others bought a selection of modified Miura, Yes! and Mentor designs.

One of the breakthroughs on the horizon for 2009 is sophisticated putter fitting methodology. Several companies have released component systems aimed at fitting for one of many parameters. The electronics to measure and test putting strokes as well as high speed photography are in their third generation – just about reaching a price point that makes assembling a comprehensive testing and training environment feasible. We’re not too far away from the day when the same techniques will be available for optimizing putters that are common today for golf clubs. Is it important? Is half the game important?

The Latest Crazy Idea

When you spend twelve hours a day with a guy over a weekend with nothing to talk about but golf, the subject inevitably leads to “what would you do if . . . ?”

It turns out that John had been dreaming about an entirely different way to build golf clubs. It is safe to say that no club fitter or club maker would ever think of fitting John with clubs the way he wanted to fit himself. That made it an interesting project. John decided to stay in the Bay Area one more day so we could spend Monday after the golf show building his new set of clubs at the Golf Lab.

John, as you might expect for a tournament-playing professional, is more concerned with control of the club and solid contact than he is about maximum distance – although a little more distance is always desirable.

He tried one experiment with his driver: He found a shaft that was light for its day, a Penley that weighed about fifty grams. He coupled that with a lightweight head in a smaller size – under 400 cc. The head weighed 195 grams. He played the driver at 44.5”. Under normal circumstances, you would describe that driver as “light as a feather” and expect it to be difficult for a good player to control.

But despite the light weight and short length, John maintained “head feel” with his Power Weight system. Today, the “conventional wisdom” of clubfitting is to fit very good players with heavier weight shafts and heads to help them “stay on plane”. That is today’s “tour spec”. John was looking for the feel that would help him stay on plane but the lighter weight that would yield better distance and perhaps permit a little more finesse working the ball. His early experiment convinced him that is exactly what happened with his home built driver.

It wasn’t hard to take the new driver to the max. For a shaft, we chose the ACCRA T-40 (40 grams) in an M-4 flex (the stiffest available – but not a pipe). We tipped it 1.5 inches. The frequency, measured by the PCS Equalizer standard was 261 cycles per minute. I thought that was borderline for a former touring pro with a 114 MPH swing speed.

The head we chose was an old Adams 430 Q – reflecting John’s desire to keep the head size under the current 460 cc standard. The other virtue of the 430 Q is that it is designed with adjustable weights. The base head is light, around 188 grams. It’s not difficult to keep the overall weight well under the current 200 gram standard by adding exactly the amount of weight you want. We settled on 193 grams for the head weight. That’s how we met John’s requirement for the lightest possible shaft and the lightest possible head. John’s driver also points out that you can build very good golf clubs with components that might be a few years old. As we now know, off-the-rack golf clubs don’t change much year over year.

The irons were even more unconventional. Keeping with John’s desire to build his set with the lightest possible shafts, we chose the Aerotech Steel Fibers in a 70 gram weight. We set them to a PCS Equalizer 6.0 flex value at half an inch over standard length. I’m sure that’s the first time that’s ever been done for a tour player. You’d get the bum’s rush out of a PGA Tour Van if you recommended 70 gram shafts for their customers.

For heads, we went with a set of last year’s Bridgestone J-33 combos, because they are a very good design and great quality. They’re also not very popular which makes them economical. It’s not a bad idea when you’re building an experimental set of irons to not waste a set of premium heads. There’s always time to swap the heads out later if the idea works.

The unique touch was to fit all of the clubs with John’s new weights down the shaft. He went with 15 grams at 8 inches down the shaft and a 16 gram counterweight in the butt. The theory behind counter weighting a very light iron is to bring it part way back to the “normal” static weight so that, even though much lighter than a traditional iron, it would still have a hefty feel in a player’s hands. You want it “light as a feather” but you need to control the club and that requires replacing some of the weight.

We performed a brief testing sequence with our launch monitors at the Golf Lab before John returned home late on Monday after the show. Very good players tend to show less increase in ball speed with counter weighted clubs than average players. My theory about why that might be is that very good players maintain their tempo better, regardless of the weight of the club that they’re swinging. I wouldn’t call that a final conclusion, but it bucked up our spirits when John’s ball speed tested just two MPH higher than with his “Neanderthal” irons – forged blades, S-300 shafts at standard length.

John only had one weekend to play the clubs before our publication deadline. He called to say that he “loved” both the driver and the irons. (Good for him. How many of your great ideas worked the first time?)

He said the driver was “hot”. John was giving nothing up with the Adams 430 Q head. That was one of the best performers a couple of years ago – and nothing has come along that is a whole lot better today – and certainly none of the new drivers that don’t offer the flexibility to manipulate the head weight. The result was as hoped: “The driver doesn’t get stuck behind me.”

The irons were the biggest surprise. Before trying the Aerotech Steel Fiber shafts, he had done all of his experiments with lightweight, proprietary graphite shafts that come on OEM sets from the factory. All of the shafts that he tested were very soft. For the first time he said he could “go after it” with the Aerotechs. That’s the first real difference between “then” and “now”. Today’s composite technology is arguably stronger and more stable than steel. Players who experienced disappointment with early generations of graphite shafts are in for a surprise when they test state-of-the art composite shafts – even in very light weights.

Conclusion: John “loved” the irons. He got about an extra half a club in distance without working to do it. The best, and unexpected result was enhanced feel. He was also very happy with partial shots – “coming down the shaft” – to hit those soft cuts and draws. He was probably most surprised by the three iron – hitting almost a full bucket – fading and drawing the ball at will.

But it’s not over. This is the first set of irons that were built to John’s specifications. Even though the first tests were positive, he “knows” that he needs more weight. When you think about it, that makes sense. The difference in shaft weight between the Aerotech 70 gram and a standard True Temper Dynamic is almost 55 grams. The 15 gram weight in the shaft and 16 gram butt weight still leave the new iron about an ounce lighter than a “standard” iron. John will spend the next few weeks experimenting with different weight combinations to see what gives him the best feel and control.

Regarding the “feel and control” observation, Chris Hilleary, the president of Aerotech Golf and supplier of the Steel Fiber shafts, suggested that the shaft itself may be responsible for the improved feel. His reasoning was that most good players who play graphite choose relatively heavy weights – 95 to 125 grams. Creating a heavy weight graphite shaft requires a lot of material. The shaft walls are much thicker. Hilleary’s reasoning is that the thicker shaft walls would limit the transfer of vibration up the shaft to the player’s hands – the essence of “feel”. So, it may be that when we finally break the code the belief that good players must play heavy weight graphite shafts will also change.

If there was a disappointment, it was with the wedges. Distance seemed to be lacking. It may be that the shorter irons absolutely need more shaft weight. When we built out the set, we used 80 gram shafts in the short irons – trying for a little more of a “constant weight” configuration to the set. The next time around we’ll probably go with 70 gram shafts up to the five iron, 80 gram shafts in the six through eight and 95 gram shafts in the nine iron and wedges. That will introduce a little of the “constant weight” feature that’s been traditional in iron sets for over sixty years.

I said at the outset, the questions have not been fully answered yet but look for those answers in the Golf Equipment Chronicles.

My Own Set of “Crazy Idea” Clubs

I was convinced that John had an idea that was worth verifying. As Clint and I worked on John’s set, we also put another set into production for me. And that’s where I reminded myself of the way golfers stick to what they already know rather than go with an entirely new idea.

If it was my goal to check out John’s set you would have thought I’d have built my own set to be identical. Well, not quite. I just couldn’t bring myself to use the 70 gram shafts – so I went with 80’s. Why? I had already built a set of Callaway Tour Model irons a couple of years ago with the Aerotech 80 gram shafts and they worked out well. I just couldn’t “take the plunge”.

That’s the “stupid golfer psychology” that I referred to in my opening paragraph. Even though I wanted to test the exact same configuration that John dreamed up for himself, I still went with a familiar set of shafts. How dumb was that?

So I ended up with a nice new set of Bridgestone Combo iron heads shafted up with Aerotech 80 gram graphite shafts in the short and mid irons and 95 gram shafts from the eight iron through the wedges. They were set to a PCS Equalizer 5.5 flex value – a flex that also was very comfortable because I had used it many times before.

My driver got an ACCRA T-40 shaft, untipped. That yielded a 252 CPM reading on the PCS Equalizer system. The head was an Adams 460 D, 9.5* at a total weight of 193 grams. I used the 30 gram B-C Shaft Stabilizer. I was afraid that the shaft would turn out to be a little soft.

With only two days to go before press time, I spent three hours testing different combinations of shaft weights and butt weights with the Achiever launch monitor. Ball speed increased 2 MPH from my current “gamers” the same Bridgestone heads mounted on 110 gram Aerotech Steel Fiber shafts.

On the Course

I played one eighteen hole round and one nine hole round with the new irons. My very first shot was a knock-down five iron into a three club wind on the first hole at Metropolitan. Three feet. There’s nothing like that to get you in the right frame of mind.

On the seventh hole, I hit one of those shots that will stick in my mind for months. It was a little six iron into a strong left to right wind to a back pin, over a rise. Perfect. Four feet. That was the shot that made me a believer that the lighter shaft weight permits a little more finesse.

On the tenth, I drilled a five iron into a three club wind that went thirty feet past the hole – I expected to come up short. No problem delivering power.

I won’t bore you with more play-by-play. Suffice to say that I’ve already got the next set of irons on the bench, this time with 70 gram shafts in the 3-7 irons. I’ll have that report next month.

The “Next Big Thing?”

It’s every club maker’s dream to have a hand in inventing a new golf club that earns a place alongside the “ideas that worked”. I’d love to proclaim victory. It’s a little too soon for that. It could be that this is just the common “honeymoon” phenomenon that seems to accompany so many new golf clubs. Time will tell.

Golf Lab customers will surely help. In November we’ll start another “Donate Your Swing to Science” program. We’ll get plenty of player testing to see if these new ideas really work or if we were just a little lucky the first time around.

Leith Anderson is a Partner in the Golf Lab, Palo Alto, CA.
He will answer any and all questions about club fitting and club making. Contact: Leith@calgolftech.com. Or by phone (650) 493-1770