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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2009 (Part 8)

Does He or Doesn’t He?

by Leith Anderson

Regular readers of the Chronicles are expecting my annual record of exploration at the PGA Merchandise Show. Alas, I changed my plans at the last minute. One of my goals since day one has been to cover PGA Tour events as a member of the “Establishment” – as a card-carrying, official, industry reporter. Thanks to my long-time association with Golf Today, that finally happened. Look for the first installment of my new adventure “Inside the Ropes” – in the April edition of Golf Today. I will be covering the Northern Trust Open (formerly the Los Angeles Open) at Riveria CC the week of February 16-22. Since I can only afford a few days a month away from the Golf Lab, I made the choice to go to the PGA Tour – inside the ropes.

The Incredible Story about Tiger and his PUREd™ Clubs

It was a blockbuster article published February 9th in Golfweek Magazine. One of the most respected reporters in the golf industry – James Achenbach – in a story about Strategic Shaft Technologies (SST) – reported that Tiger Woods was able to pick two sets of PUREd irons out of 12 sets that he was testing. His source was “Nike insiders”. Achenbach reported that those two sets are now Tiger’s primary and backup set for his return to golf – hopefully in a few weeks.

I write one or more electronic newsletters each month that are distributed to the Golf Lab customer list, vendor contacts, competitors and anyone who wants to keep abreast of what’s happening on at the “bleeding edge” of club fitting. I don’t restrict distribution. Registration through www.calgolftech.com is open to anyone who wants to get my stories. I don’t go looking for readers.

I thought that Achenbach’s story was big news. Anything about Tiger is always big news – maybe the only truly big news in the golf industry. So, I wrote a newsletter about the SST article and about Achenbach’s scoop that Tiger Woods not only plays SST PUREd ™ golf clubs but that he could feel the difference between PUREd ™ and “other” clubs. You can find the full article on the Golf Week website.

Before the earth circled the sun one time, I was contacted by the Nike PR department and informed that the information in my newsletter and Achenbach’s article was incorrect. The “correction” was unequivocal:

Tiger did not test 12 sets of Nike irons and then pick 2 sets that were PUREd. He has never done a blind test of PUREd versus non-PUREd iron shafts in Nike clubs, and he has never asked us to put PUREd shafts in his irons. – Nike PR.
That got my attention. The quicker the denial, the more interesting the reason for the denial.
The story wasn’t really about Tiger in the first place. It was about Strategic Shaft Technologies and their quest to improve consistency and feel of golf clubs by analyzing and then re-orienting the shaft in a club. The Tiger brouhaha obscured the real point of the story.

The Achenbach article was about the “new” SST PUREing machine that is automated, accurate and lightening quick. If there is a problem with the SST PURE technology today, it is that PUREing a shaft is a meticulous process that requires a trained operator. The first generation PUREing machine can be temperamental. The process takes several minutes to complete. All of those factors have worked against acceptance by mainstream manufacturers who are not interested in adding time and expense to the process of building golf clubs. Strategic Shaft Technologies hopes if they can take the time, cost trained operator out of the equation, the PUREing process could be offered as an option by companies that build hundreds of thousands of golf clubs a year. That’s their holy grail.

Strategic Shaft Technologies - the Company

SST PURE ™ has a long and controversial history. The roots go back well over ten years to a time when Howard Butler was working for True Temper. The fundamental question: “Is there a way to optimize the consistency and feel of a golf club by orienting the shaft in a specific way?” That quest was joined by Dick Weiss who founded Strategic Shaft Technologies and has been the champion of SST PURE ™ development – guiding the company, patenting the technology, and (no small investment) defending the patents.

An early hurdle was to get past the USGA. Seeking approval, SST was devastated when the USGA declared that orienting a shaft in a club to influence performance was against the rules of golf. Most people would have been daunted by such a setback. But eventually Weiss and SST prevailed – by arguing that PUREing ™ a golf shaft eliminates inconsistencies and that all shafts are imperfect anyway.

Trying to get the SST PURE ™ understood and accepted has been a long and expensive slog. Despite the fact that hundreds of PGA Tour Professionals have had their clubs PUREd ™ in the SST Tour Van at tournaments over all these years – there has always been that nagging question: “If it’s so good, why doesn’t Tiger do it?” It’s like the only opinion that counts on the PGA Tour is Tiger’s.

Since that’s the key question in the golf universe, that’s undoubtedly why Achenbach tried to answer it. Hence, putting the question to “Nike insiders”.

That’s also what made the Golf Week article so surprising. If Tiger really uses PUREd™ shafts it would be an extraordinarily valuable endorsement – potentially worth millions of dollars in business to SST. Alas, that just doesn’t happen in the golf business – at least not for free.

Endorsement Contracts

Nike pays Tiger tens of millions of dollars a year to endorse Nike golf clubs, shoes, shirts, balls and anything else that is big enough to show the “Swoosh”. But Tiger is just at the head of the class. Any PGA Tour Professional with a good chance to get on television Sunday afternoon (and show the company logo) commands a million or more a year just to play a manufacturer’s clubs. Extra credit for wearing their hat, playing their ball, walking in their shoes and keeping dry under their umbrellas. Also-rans pick up a few hundred thousand a year on the outside chance that they’ll make a cut once in a while.

Some parts of a player’s bag may not be covered by the equipment contracts. Except for Taylor Made, companies don’t really care too much what shaft a player uses in his clubs. Taylor Made insists that their Tour Players use shafts that are painted with the official colors.

Every Monday morning companies large and small that survive on the fringe of the Tour fight for a little recognition in the wire services.

If, just by chance, a player happened to finish in the top twenty or thirty with a certain shaft in his driver or irons, the lucky company buys a press release on “The Golf Wire” to trumpet the fact that the “tenth place finisher in the XYZ Open played our shafts.” It is strictly forbidden to actually name the player – that requires a contract and a payment.

Here’s an example of an amusing press release from the recent Buick Invitational.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Despite a dramatic backdrop of cliff top views and the Pacific Ocean, all eyes were on the True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue shafts which won the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines Golf Course. The win marked the fourth week during which shafts designed and manufactured by True Temper delivered victory on the early 2009 PGA TOUR.

That’s a nice piece of writing that doesn’t give Nick Watney much credit for swinging the clubs. The shafts did the work by themselves? Now we know, when you tune in to the tournament it’s to watch the shafts, not the player. The ridiculous prohibition against saying who uses what equipment is an example of how “play for pay” has impeded the free flow of information. Why is it that if a player used a product, and everyone knows because it was on television, you can’t say it in print?

My opinion? The side effect of endorsement contracts is that players look a little bit greedy. But maybe it’s not the players. Maybe it’s that the rich companies that pay millions for those few minutes of airtime and don’t want anyone else butting in on their investment.

SST PURE ™ - the Process

Golf shafts are imperfect objects. Cosmetic finishing hides manufacturing irregularities. It is a simple process to reveal those irregularities. All shafts exhibit a “hard side” or “spine” that is the point of maximum resistance to bending. The SST PURE ™ process finds that point with sensitive instrumentation. For maximum shaft stability, the “hard side” is located on the leading edge of the shaft at impact – the 9 o’clock position.

A second operation tests the shaft by horizontal oscillation to find the exact point – within the window of stability – where the shaft oscillates in the most stable plane. That position is then marked and the shaft is installed in the club.

Independent testing, funded by Strategic Shaft Technologies and performed by Golf Labs in San Diego showed that SST PUREd (clubs) produce longer and straighter shots. The fact that SST funded the research invalidates the results for anyone who believes that testing should be totally independent. But SST was stuck. What independent company or person would step forward to pay for the testing?

Ten years ago, if you talked about “spines”, “flo” and “shaft orientation” in a group of club makers you would have been laughed out of the room. Only the polite club makers called it “voodoo”. Over time, small groups arose – connected by the Internet – to develop, test and understand the “art”. One of the original groups was “Spinetalkers” – still active today.

In 2009 opinions have changed dramatically. Shaft orientation has gained a strong following among club makers. Now, it’s only the minority that eschews shaft orientation. Some claim that they can achieve results similar to SST PURE ™ by hand and by eye. I disagree. The SST PURE ™ process requires sensitive electronics and sophisticated software. If you want to judge for yourself, visit the SST website: www.sstpure.com and find a licensee near you. All are happy to demonstrate the PUREing process.

Powerful Enemies

The reason that SST has had such a hard time gaining acceptance is that there are powerful constituencies that don’t want to admit that any kind of shaft orientation is necessary. Who are they? Well, all shaft companies and (almost) all golf club manufacturers.

It should not be surprising that any company that manufacturer shafts doesn’t want to admit that their product is imperfect. Companies are fond of saying that their products are built to very tight tolerances and don’t need any special tweaking. Sometimes they boast about plus or minus one CPM (cycle per minute) of oscillation frequency in any position.

The same goes for golf club manufacturers. It would not be a welcome development if it became a common belief among golfers that the first thing that you need to do after you buy your new golf clubs is to take them apart and rebuild them.

The “party line” has always been against shaft orientation of any kind – and especially against a proprietary process that requires costly equipment and the payment of a royalty. You won’t find a golf club manufacturer that will admit that their factory processes could be improved. The reasoning behind that fiction is that the companies want buyers to believe that the clubs you buy at Golfsmith or Dicks Sporting Goods are just the same as their PGA Tour players play under their endorsement contracts.

If you truly believe that, I’ve got a bridge for sale.

The only player that I’ve ever heard of that gets a box of off-the-rack clubs from his sponsor and puts them straight into his bag is Craig Stadler. Some players take their clubs very seriously. I’ve read that Tiger has a fully-equipped club making shop in his house. The tradition of constantly buying, testing, and tweaking golf clubs is a tradition among professionals that goes all the way back to Arnold Palmer, famous for his collection of golf clubs. With Tiger’s respect for tradition, it’s not hard to imagine that he has a pretty substantial collection himself. The action on the range and Tour Vans at every tournament suggest most players are looking for something a little better all the time.

So why is what Tiger does with his clubs more guarded that a nuclear secret? The obvious theory is economic – but that’s a little too simple. Maybe the real reason is that Tiger - in his quest to be the best in every respect – from preparation and concentration to conditioning - has taken the same deep interest in the tools of his trade. Could it be that Tiger knows more about clubs and how they work than any other player – as he knows more about winning than any player - and considers his clubs to be yet another competitive advantage? Why not? Such a conclusion would certainly be in character.

Optimistic Allies

Just the same way you can draw conclusions about a companies’ enemies, you can also check out who’s in support.

There is one golf club manufacturer that PUREs ™ every club it builds. That’s Henry Griffitts. They’ve long been a strictly custom operation – relying on PGA Professionals and teachers for their sales. Since every club is custom built for a specific customer, it’s not too hard to put a cherry on the whipped cream by offering SST PUREd ™ shafts.

A while back, UST took a flyer with SST and offered a certain shaft model – “pre-PUREd”. UST gave up selling that shaft after a few years. My view is that the reason is that clubmakers came to believe that any kind of testing aimed at shaft orientation should be done with the shaft at playing length. The theory is that the correct alignment may move after the shaft is trimmed. It may also be that UST just had a hard time selling a premium product. UST couldn’t give ACCRA shafts away and then a couple of Canadians transformed the ACCRA line into the premier custom shaft line in the world. Go figure.

One of the most telling endorsements is the recent licensing of the SST PURE ™ system by Art Sellinger and the Long Drive Association (LDA). At the Golf Lab, we’ve had quite a record working with LDA competitors, including Eric Jones the 2003 Senior Division World Champion. We spent weeks tweaking Eric’s competition clubs and he tested every shaft in every orientation. In the end, he decided that all of his competition clubs would be SST PUREd ™. For the leading supplier to long driver competitors to license the SST PURE system shows that there’s a demand among a very discerning clientele.

And then there’s the “man on the street”. In seven years as an SST Licensee, we have seen players return time and again to have their brand new clubs “retro-PUREd ™. They don’t do that because they like to waste fifty dollar bills.

Optimizing Performance - Blueprinting

A term that is gaining recognition among golfers who what to know the exact specifications of the clubs that they’re playing with is “blueprinting”.

At a physical level, blueprinting golf clubs involves taking them apart, weighing and measuring all of the parts, checking flex, orienting the shafts, adjusting weights and balance and installing grips.

The final step is to adjust lofts and lies to a player’s swing.

The essence of blueprinted clubs is that the specifications have been verified. The reality is that commercial sets are mass produced. They are built in a factory where the goal is speed, efficiency and cost savings. When speed is the goal, precision is always sacrificed. Blueprinted golf clubs are what you would get if factories operated in slow motion and employed skilled club makers who checked all of the components in advance and tested and measured their completed work. Alas, no time for that.

Optimizing Performance - Tuning

There’s another aspect that goes “beyond blueprinting”. A good description is “tuning”. Tuning is only going to be interesting to a small percentage of golfers. For those who are willing to go through the testing, the results could yield measurable improvement.

Changing Weights and Balance

For over a year, we’ve been working with a variety of counterweights that used to be located near the butt of the shaft. Recently, new designs permit locating the weight at a position down the shaft. The most notable example is the Balance-Certified Shaft Stabilizer. Tour Lock recently entered the market with a weight that can be located at any point down the shaft.

Why? Launch monitor testing shows that players frequently increase ball speed a few miles per hour by counter weighting their golf clubs. More importantly, launch monitors can measure and compare swing path, face angle at impact and a variety of factors that indicate consistency such as variance in launch angle. For most players, consistency improves in measurable ways by re-balancing both “woods” and irons.

So, you ask, if counterbalancing your golf clubs is such a good idea, why aren’t the PGA Tour professionals doing it?

To some extent they are. Balance-Certified lead the movement toward adding weight to a putter – the company’s very first product – on Tour. They attracted Scott Hoch as an endorser and V.P. of Sales John Cranston has personally fitted hundreds of players with Balance Certified putter weights. There’s the other example of changing weight theory: Heavy Putter. Steve Bocciari introduce the Heavy Putter (really, really heavy) four years ago and gained a following. In 2009 Steve came out with the “half heavy putter” to very positive reviews. Changing weight and balance has also been slow to catch on but is gaining momentum.

Tour professionals have less incentive to change their equipment in radical ways. Most of them have achieved success by doing exactly what they’re doing. Even a little change might require recalibrating a very sensitive system. Most amateurs are way more open to changing their equipment in the hope that a miracle is always possible. Tour Pros don’t believe in miracles.

Moment of Inertia Matching

Among the “old ideas” that are under attack is balancing clubs by swingweight. The concept of swingweight was “invented” in 1922 and never changed. How about that for sticking with tradition in golf?

A significant minority of custom clubmakers has moved to matching clubs by “Moment of Inertia” (MOI). Customer satisfaction with the new technique seems to be high and many club makers are using MOI matching as a differentiator for their business.

The essence of matching by MOI is that an electronic gizmo is employed to measure the clubs while they are in motion. You place the club in an arm and rock it back and forth. A number pops up and you’re there. Conversely, swingweight matching is accomplished by laying a golf club on a scale.

There is some good logic behind MOI matching. To begin, many players including Tour Players (I wonder about Tiger? LOL) seem to play with heavy wedges. It’s not uncommon to see wedges in the D-6 to D-9 swingweight range. Well, if a heavy wedge feels good, how about your nine iron? Do you want a feel gap between your iron set and your wedges?

What’s the difference? In an MOI matched set, each club will increase in swingweight approximately half a swingweight point through the set. If you like your three iron at D-1, you would see your swingweights rise gradually to D-4 for your nine iron and D-4.5 for your pitching wedge. When you see Tour players with lead tape all over their irons to try to get the feel they want, you wonder if they haven’t accomplished the same thing by feel alone. Anyway, MOI matching is another idea that’s on the rise.

Shaft Tuning - Length

Length, weight, flex and bend profile are the key variables in shaft tuning.

For many years, the concept of standard length has been just that – standard. From club to club there was a half inch progression in length. Well, not always. Many club fitters found that players got better results if all of their wedges were the same length, then Dave Pelz joined in and decreed that the progression should be ¼” from wedge to wedge. At the other end of the set, many players got better control over their long irons by trimming them a bit from the standard. At the Golf Lab, it’s long been our practice to build out long irons on a ¼” progression from the five iron. There is no longer a standard length.

Now there’s a new idea that’s been endorsed by the Association of Golf Clubfitting Professionals (AGCP) as the best idea that’s come down the pike in the last year. It’s “True Length Technology” (TLT). TLT is a mathematical model for club length fitting and length progression that promotes a more consistent stance from club to club. There goes that old ½” from club to club standard. Will TLT become a new “standard?” Probably not. It’s a little too fussy. But there’s no doubt that players will pay a lot more attention to finding the length that works the best for them.

Weight

Not long ago, if you wanted a steel shaft in your irons it was going to be a Dynamic Gold from True Temper and it was going to weigh about 130 grams. Then Rifle came along and the weight dropped to 115 grams. Some players grew to like Rifles – especially the Project X that became the darling of the European Tour – and Phil Mickelson.

For amateurs, the weight range that works best for all but the strongest is a little lower – 105 grams for the Nippon 950 and all the way down to 70 grams for players who are looking for a little spice in their life. The benefit? Most players think that lighter weight equals longer distance. It turns out that the main benefit of lighter overall weight in an iron is better control of the club.

Flex

One of the other standards – this one for setting flex – has been to relate swing speed to some kind of flex measurement technique. Originally, players trusted the “A,R,S,X” designations of the manufacturers. Now everyone knows that the letter for flex doesn’t matter. Then, the method switched over to trying to match swing speed to a frequency measurement – cycles per minute or CPM. Now, even that technique is highly suspect at a minimum and probably also obsolete. Clubmakers with a lot of experience know that some players do very well with CPM readings that don’t match their swingspeed. Whether the advanced test is load, tempo, torque or some other invention, the only reliable way to know what club works for any player is to build it and test it. When you find the specifications that work, figure out how to match the spec.

Bend Profile

In the last few years the ability to measure and test shafts has improved a lot. Some club fitters have electronic gizmos that can tell the “bend profile” of a shaft that will work best. The Max Out Shaft Max is the best example of that technology. How do you know if you’ll do best with a very stiff tip Project X in your irons or if you might do better with a softer tip Matrix 30+?

Same goes for drivers. Some players need the very stiff tip Mitsubishi Diamana Whiteboard. Others will do better with the Graphite Design YS – 6+ series. When you find your fitter, ask him how he can determine the best bend profile for your swing. That is a key question.

Bottom Line

In the so called “Big Picture” what difference does it make what Tour Players do? Each one of them is a rare species. To compare any amateur game to what happens in the Big Leagues requires a controlled hallucination. Log into Bombsquadgolf.com and see the frenzy to buy a driver head that’s been “hot melted” for some Tour Player. Why would you want that? The fact that it’s for sale tells you that it didn’t work. Then, why buy a driver head that was hot melted for someone else who didn’t like it?

Sooner or later, amateurs are going to face the fact that they’re amateurs. If an amateur buys a “Tour” club, there is a high probability that it won’t work for him any more than the guy who gave it back to the Van – and then the guy who sold it out the back door.

If you want to try to figure out what specifications will work for you, you’re better off to find a guy that you trust to analyze your swing, measure and test your clubs, and then give you a bag full of demos to take to the range or your course so you can figure out for yourself what works best FOR YOU.

That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

Does He or Doesn’t He?

There is no subject that inspires more emotion that an argument about what Tiger does and doesn’t do. In seven years, I’ve not had more feedback on anything that I’ve every written than the email about whether Tiger PUREs ™ his irons or he doesn’t PURE ™ his irons. It got so ridiculous that I received an anonymous, threatening, phone call warning me to “check my sources”. What was that about? Who was that guy?

For his part, Jim Achenbach has said all he intends to say.

Now, I know one thing. The only person who knows for sure what Tiger is doing is Tiger. And he’s not telling. He’s the “Phantom”.

Ask yourself. Why do you care?

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