California Golf Technologies

What's new on the West Coast

Golf Equipment Chronicles 2009 (Part 8)

A Brief History of Balancing Golf Clubs

by Leith Anderson

Where do new ideas come from? Cynics snarl that there are no truly new ideas in golf equipment, only reinvented and recycled old ideas. But one way that reinvented old ideas make it back into the mainstream is when they become easier to understand and to adopt.

That is exactly what has happened with balancing golf clubs for an individual player’s swing in the last several months. The term “counterbalancing” is a popular way to describe adding weight to the butt end of a golf club. I prefer to take a broader view, including shaft weight, head weight and now weight that can be located at the butt of the club or at any point down INSIDE THE SHAFT in the discussion.

Most of the historic conversation about balancing golf clubs is hearsay. Hogan’s clubs were said to be extremely stiff and heavy. Nicklaus reportedly counterweighted his clubs by applying lead tape under the grip but maintained swing weight by increasing head weight. Does that mean extra heavy clubs work? Arnold Palmer became a club maker and collector. Bobby Jones acquired his tournament set one club at a time but apparently could never find the perfect eight iron to match the rest of his clubs. Now Tiger is reputed to have a complete club shop in his basement and test his new irons a dozen sets at a time. With all of the interest in the equipment used by the “Greats” to achiever their success there is very little published information about their equipment.

Maybe that’s why Tiger Woods – who studies at the feet of the masters – decided that he should keep what he knows about how golf clubs work to himself. Who would know better that “magic” golf clubs, if you can find them, lend a competitive advantage?

Ask yourself: are your golf clubs helping or hurting your game?

In the early days if you wanted to tinker with your clubs you had to develop your club making skills. Some players searched far and wide for their clubs or retained a personal clubmaker. Jack Nicklaus relied on Jack Wulkotte in a relationship that spanned over thirty years from MacGregor in Cincinnati to Nicklaus Golf in Palm Beach. Tools were primitive. The most advanced gizmo on the bench was a swing weight scale and that was invented in 1922. Trial and error was the rule. “Feel” and “ball flight” were paramount.

Head Weight, Shaft Weight and Balance

Today’s golf industry is based on standards that allow the equipment manufacturers to assemble a “one size fits all” product and sell it efficiently through mass distribution.

Iron heads are based on a standard weight range of a 255 gram 5 iron with each successive iron increasing or decreasing 7 grams through the set. The standard shaft weight is 125 grams – True Temper Dynamic Gold. The standard length is based on a 38” five iron, increasing or decreasing by half an inch. If you put the standard set of irons together and add a 52 gram rubber grip, you will end up with a set of irons that weighs D-1 on the swing weight scale. If you are a 5’9” standard American golfer, with standard length arms, standard strength, standard tempo and a standard setup, the standard set might be quite OK.

The same goes for drivers. Driver heads are targeted to 200 grams, shafts to 65 grams and shaft length to 45”. Swingweight? The old familiar D-1. The big difference between irons and drivers is that 45” and longer drivers are very difficult for even standard American golfers to control.

That’s what for sale in the golf stores.

The “One True Fact”

If there is one specification that golfers think they understand, it is swing weight. In light of the very limited ability to test golf clubs with known characteristics, and the fact that most standard golf clubs are practically identical, it is no wonder that most golfers think that they like golf clubs with D-1 swing weight. Why wouldn’t that be true? They have probably never hit anything else in their lives. And neither have their ancestors. The swingweight scale was invented in 1922 and never changed.

Swing weight “measures” the relative balance between the handle of a golf club and the head. Swing weight is described as measuring “heft” or “head feel”. In launch monitor testing at the Golf Lab, we very rarely find a player who performs best with standard, off the rack specifications in his golf clubs. If you try to find your “perfect” swing weight by gradually adding weight to your iron head and watching ball speed increase, you are likely to find that your own best swing weight is heavier – in the D-4 or 5 range.

The absurdity of the obsession with swing weight is evidenced by some manufacturers who build their iron sets with graphite shafts an inch longer than their steel shafted cousins so that the swing weight will come out the same. Rather than obtain heavier weight heads, the manufacturers take the easy way out using the same heads with the lighter shaft – just longer. That inch of extra length brings the swingweight up six points – enough to compensate for the lighter shaft. I think that’s a serious mistake. The right club length for a player is the same whether the shaft is steel or graphite. Players would be better off playing the correct length at a lighter swingweight. But the Manufacturers know one important fact: the clubs wouldn’t sell.

My generalization about swing weight only holds true for relatively strong men in good condition. Seniors, women and especially junior tournament players do better with swing weights in the high C range.

Seniors, women and juniors have the most to gain from radically different golf clubs. It is relatively common for a junior tournament player to increase swingspeed ten miles per hour by moving to a driver with a lighter weight, shorter shaft and a very lightweight head – in the 192 gram range. The swingweight of that “featherweight” driver might be C-2 or C-3 – a measurement that any traditionalist would scoff at.

That’s why hundreds of custom golf shops are in business around the United States – serving clients who are hoping to improve their performance by tweaking their clubs – pursuing their desire to at least improve their game a little if not “buy the game of their dreams”. The old days of tedious trial and error are over – today comparing club performance with a launch monitor is relatively painless.

If you want to experiment with swingweight yourself, you can buy a roll of lead tape and head to the range. Hit a few shots, add a couple of strips of lead tape and hit a few more. That’s a popular method with Tour Professionals. If you peek into bags on the range, you’ll see a lot of lead tape, applied, scraped off and applied again. Sometimes you can’t tell the brand of irons under all of the layers. Be sure that you use enough tape. A single swing weight point requires four inches of tape. Most do-it-yourselfers don’t use enough tape to make a difference.

The Wonderful Ubiquitous Launch Monitor

There is true technology in the golf industry – supplied by the real high technology industry – a wide range of relatively inexpensive launch monitors. The launch monitor is the true hero in customizing golf clubs to an individual player’s swing. The reason? If you try to compare the performance of golf clubs by hitting range balls and relying on what you see, feel and remember, you are trying to discern differences that you cannot possibly see, feel or remember. The effort is futile without your electronic buddy and the organized memory of the computer that drives it.

The launch monitor is a friendly assistant. You can make small, incremental changes and detect differences in performance measured by ball speed, swing path, face angle at impact and indicators of consistency. Most of the time, improved performance comes a little at a time. A couple of MPH for shaft length, a couple more for shaft weight, a couple more for head weight, a couple more for center contact and the last increment from back weighting. We’ve been using a succession of launch monitors with ever increasing accuracy to make changes in head weight, shaft weight and balance to achieve surprising improvements in golf club performance.

Backweighting, an Introduction

Golf folklore gives credit to Jack Nicklaus as the early “true believer” in back weighting his golf clubs – with the help of Jack Wulcotte. Who knows how many times Wulcotte stripped the leather grips off of Jack’s irons and replaced a few strips of lead tape under the grip? Tedious experimentation.

The modern champions of back weighting are a trio known as the “Balance Boys” – two former NASA engineers – Jeff Lindner and John Cranston – joined by John’s son Michael who handles back office operations – doing business as Balance-Certified Golf. They’ve been in the game for six or seven years that I remember – starting with a weight installed in putters to make it heavier. The putter counterweight was quickly followed by lighter weights that could be installed in irons, drivers and fairway metals.

The first Balance-Certified counterweight required a club maker to install. It consisted of an aluminum sleeve, supplied in several sizes that was fitted to the internal dimension of the shaft. The sleeve then accepted an interchangeable weight which also came in several sizes. Installation required wasting the grip, cutting the shaft half an inch, gluing the insert, selecting the weight and then regripping the club. Overall, it took half a day to install a complete set of counterweights. The operation was irreversible. If you decided that you didn’t like the weights, your shafts were half an inch too short. Out of luck. That wasn’t exactly a user friendly experience. If you wanted a complete set of counterweights in your irons, it cost you about $70 per club. There weren’t many golfers who were willing to add that much to their investment in golf clubs – especially because the weights were difficult to reuse in another set of irons.

We were “early adopters” of counter weighting at the Golf Lab. With our Achiever launch monitor we could “prove” that performance for most players got better. Improvement was measured by ball speed and indicators of better consistency. Unfortunately, proving that counterweights worked was one of those activities that cost a lot more to fit than it was worth in profit. Testing a driver for the perfect weight required a return visit to the shop by the player because of the tedious installation. We needed at least a half hour on the launch monitor. All that for a $20 profit on the weight. When we were hungry and thirsty, we convinced our clients that the effort was worth the result. Sometimes we were just happy to make a driver sale and move on.

The first big breakthrough in “ease of use” was the invention of the “drop in” weight by the Balance Boys. Now, all it took to test for performance improvement was a special saw to cut a neat hole in the top of the grip. The B-C counterweight “dropped in” to the top of the shaft and was secured by a few twists of an allen wrench. That innovation made it possible to install and test counterweights in a player’s own clubs in a single visit and brought the cost of counter weighting a set of irons down to about $50 each. It became a relatively simple operation to test different weights in a single session. It was no longer necessary to make irrevocable modifications to the golf club.

Even so, testing and adding counterweights to a golf club was still “spendy”. Even at the lower price, not too many amateur golfers were ready to add $500 in counterweights to their investment in golf clubs.

About two years ago, a new player entered the game. John Johnson, a former Mini Tour player, founded a company he named Tour Lock. He invented a much simpler and cheaper weight. The Tour Lock counterweight did not have the engineering elegance and sophistication of the B-C competition, but it did have a price advantage. It was now possible to counterweight a set of irons for $20 each. The Tour Lock system became the “best seller” for players who were motivated by cost. At the Golf Lab, we added a “free weight fitting” to our services – relying on the near certainty that a player who tested counterweights would understand and be satisfied by the improvement in his performance measured by the launch monitor. Tour Lock also became the system of choice for most of the distributors due to the price advantage.

The key to effective counter weighting a set of irons is careful testing to find the weight that “works” the best. We focused on ball speed, swing path, face angle at impact and indicators of consistency. Counterweights come in 8, 12, 16, 20, 25 and 30 gram weights. Working through a complete test with each weight still took upwards of half an hour. With improved efficiency and lower cost, the price of counter weighting a set of irons came down to $20 per club – including testing. That was enough of a difference to open the flood gates. Since the counterweights are reusable and there’s nothing to wear out, there’s not much downside.

I follow the online posts about club making daily. I think that most do-it-yourselfers who try counter weighting without the benefit of easy to install weights and launch monitor verification choose weights that are too heavy. In our experience, if you feel the weight it is probably too heavy. I have read a lot of online posts suggesting that 40 and 50 gram weights – even up to 100 – are the way to go. I have seen weights up to 60 grams produce good results in drivers but iron performance is rarely improved with weights more than 16 grams.

Balance-Certified struck back with another invention at the end of 2007. They named it the “Stabilizer”. It was similar in concept to the drop in weight design except that it was extended to 7” long with half of the weight positioned at the bottom. That put more of the weight under the player’s lower hand. WOW!! The concept was an engineering and performance breakthrough. For some reason, distributing the weight down the shaft was much more effective than locating weight at the butt end of the grip.

Once we understood how effective the Stabilizer was in increasing ball speed and helping a player control his driver, we included a Stabilizer fitting with every driver fitting. The Stabilizer almost always produced significant improvements in ball speed, consistency and feel. In a small shop we were amazed to look at our sales records and find that we have sold almost 400 stabilizers in less than year. Virtually every driver that leaves the Golf Lab is fitted with a Balance-Certified Stabilizer. In a “satisfaction guaranteed” world, you have to look at returns. Only one or two players decided that they liked the feel of “natural” clubs better.

At the beginning of 2008, Johnson responded with his own new invention – the “Opti Vibe” – a weight that could be located at any point down the shaft and combined with a butt weight to give the same performance improvement as the Stabilizer, but with a little advantage in that more or less weight could be located wherever the player felt was right. He paired the Opti Vibe with a unique extra gizmo that permitted locking the weight in place instead of relying on a force fit for position. Tour Lock regained the lead in customization.

For a while, that was good for the lead in the race.

It was not long before Balance-Certified responded with an improvement to their Stabilizer. The new version, named the AMT, now included to moveable weights on the Stabilizer rod to permit moving the weight up or down the shaft. They recommended ways to position the weights to influence ball flight. Move the weights up to fight the “lefts” and down to fight the “rights”.

Balance-Certified and Tour Lock – neck and neck.

The ball moved back to the Tour Lock court. Johnson cut a deal to put his name on a Tour Van and take it to the Champions Tour. The first week out, he installed his Opti Vibe system – aimed at putters - in over twenty player’s putters. You can find a complete list of those players by logging into the Golf Lab website. The list is complete: Name, weight installed, position installed and model of putter used. www.calgolftech.com.

It’s not like Balance-Certified has no Tour presence. John Cranston has spent seasons working with players on all Tours and the company has even attracted Scott Hoch as company spokesman.

At this point in the great counterweight race I think that the “technology” has reached a peak. Balance-Certified can be described as selling “counterweight systems”. They package a nifty kit that includes the weights and the tools to install them. For golfers who want to “do it themselves” – the Balance-Certified system is much easier to use.

Tour Lock is still more experimental. You need a special tool to locate the weight in the shaft and another to secure it. There are many more options with weight and position but not too enough actual experience with positioning the weights to draw conclusions on the “best” configuration. Players who want to test the limits with Tour Lock will probably require the help of a clubfitter.

Overall, despite the tense competition between the two companies, this is just the kind of competitive innovation that makes breakthroughs. Both companies deserve to prosper. For any readers who haven’t tried balancing their clubs – you’re missing out on one of the biggest breakthroughs in history. For a few bucks and a little time you’ll hit better shots and have more fun. Mark my words: this is just the beginning of a trend that will become dominant in the golf equipment industry.

A Detour to Heavy Putters

Counterweights have been utilized for multiple purposes. The pioneer company on the putter side of the business is the Heavy Putter Company. The brainchild of Steve Bocciari, Heavy Putters are – HEAVY. Bocciari jammed almost a pound of weight into the shaft of his putters. He also provided the option to increase the head weight. His goal was to make his putters heavy enough so that players would have to use their “big muscles” to make their putting stroke. Players who were inclined to get a little bit “wristy” loved the Heavy Putter.

Alas, despite giving away hundreds of Heavy Putters to Tour Players with the hope that they would catch on, Bocciari was left with a single poster child, Troy Matteson, who made it out of the Nationwide Tour and on to the PGA Tour with the Heavy Putter.

Even though Heavy Putters haven’t exactly swept the PGA Tour, over the years I have recommended them as a good alternative for amateurs who were having trouble with their putting stroke. I have never experienced more strangers coming up to me at golf courses, tapping me on the shoulder and thanking me for recommending the Heavy Putter. The Heavy Putter has helped a lot of ordinary amateurs improve their putting statistics.

This year, Bocciari brought out a new model: the “Not So Heavy Putter”. The weight was cut down by half and it proved to be a little more popular with golfers. If you’re thinking of trying extra weight in your putter without a lot of rigmarole, the Not So Heavy Putter could be the way to go. On the other hand, a lot of golfers are going to prefer modifying their own putter – the one that has produced fond memories of rare victories.

If you want to give modifying your own putter a try and want to see if you can feel the difference in locating the weight at varied positions up and down the shaft, you can’t beat the Balance Certified AMT Putter weight as an option. And, if you want to get into more extreme experimentation, you can acquire a set of Tour Lock weights and installation tools.

So What’s the Science?

This is the most difficult question. Why does counter weighting golf clubs work? After spending a lot of time discussing the scientific principles with the inventors, I can say with certainty that no one knows.

There are some theories. Extra weight in the putter is the easiest. Heavy (or heavier) putters require a player to use more of his “big muscles”. A heavier putter makes it more difficult to get “wristy”. For amateurs, extra weight almost always improves results.

Figuring out why counter weighting works in drivers and irons is much more speculative. The best theory is that moving the weight up the shaft toward the handle raised the balance point of the club which gives a player more control over the club. There is some evidence that counter weighting works in irons by simply redistributing shaft weight upward. The success of the KB Tour shafts is case in point.

There is a lot more experimentation to be done with results documented. Today, we have performance improvement for reasons we don’t exactly understand. It is a sure thing that in the future we’ll figure out why certain configurations work better than others.

Why are Tour Players Laggards?

It is axiomatic that avid golfers look to the PGA Tour for their inspiration about what golf clubs they should buy and how those clubs should be fitted out. The old saw goes “What wins on Sunday sells on Monday.” That has been the marketing mantra for the golf equipment companies since the PGA Tour started paying union wages. (Not that long ago. Remember that Tiger Woods routinely exceeds Jack Nicklaus’ lifetime tournament winnings in a single year.)

Times were not always so good.

What motivates a PGA Tour Professional to make a change in his equipment? He has already reached the pinnacle of accomplishment. He’s already a multi-millionaire with lifetime riches – and free golf - assured unless he turns into some kind of sociopath. He has been using his current clubs with extraordinary results for a long time. Why change?

No good reason.

That’s why Johnson’s success in his first week on the Champions Tour is so extraordinary. How was it that twenty Senior Tour Professionals modified the balance of their putters and immediately took them to the course? Who ever heard of that?

Average amateurs are always looking for some miracle that will help them do a little better the next time they have to write their score on the wall for all their friends to see. Not so the professionals.

The gist of this argument is to dissuade amateur golfers from thinking that they have to continually copy what’s happening on the PGA Tour. You might as well think about what life is like on Mars as imagine yourself playing the same game that the Tour Pros are playing. When it comes to adopting a new idea, it is much more likely that a desperate amateur will give it a go than a fat and happy Tour player.

So to heck with all that circular argument, the Tour Players are adopting counter weighting so you should too.

What to Expect

If you are looking for the most cost effective way to install counterweights in your irons, you’ve got to go with Tour Lock. At $20 installed at most custom shops, you can do a complete set including wedges for under $200 – in most cases including launch monitor testing. The Tour Lock counterweights are reusable. We still favor the Balance-Certified Stabilizer for the driver. It is easy to install. The verdict is still out on the new B-C AMT system. It’s not obvious to me that there is a lot of difference moving a little weight six or seven inches. We haven’t had sufficient time for launch monitor testing since the new product came out. Stabilizers cost $50 and up.

Most players can expect to increase swing speed from 2-4 MPH after installing counterweights. But increased ball speed is not the most interesting improvement.

Most launch monitors have the ability to “see” the swing in one form or another. We use the Achiever which records swing path, face angle at impact, trajectory and area of face contact. After a series of shots, averages are presented.

Most of the time we see improvement in all of the indicators of consistency – swing path steadies, face angle at impact tightens up and the launch angle shows less variance. It is not unusual for a player who hits the ball on the center of the club 50% of the time before counter balancing to improve to 100% immediately. The measurable improvements tell only part of the story. Most players also report a “more solid” feel to their shots.

And if you’re wondering about distance, you should gain one club with your irons and 10 yards of carry distance with your driver. Your control of both distance and direction should improve. If that sounds preposterous, the only way you’ll ever know for sure is to take the test.

If you live in Northern California, there’s no better place to take that test than the Golf Lab. In other regions, consult the Balance-Certified and Tour Lock websites for locations of their certified dealers.

I’ll be back next month with a report on the Nabisco LPGA Championship. We’ll see what the best women in the world are playing.

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