Callaway Golfs unwavering commitment to innovation and the creation of new golf technologies is well-established. Shaft Type Project X HZRDUS T800 55 Graphite. Generally, the faster your swing the speed, the stiffer the shaft you will need.Understanding Golf Shaft Stiffness By Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, A Dallas Fort Worth Club Fitter & Club MakerFUJIKURA VENTUS RED 5 (VELOCORE MODEL) great candidate for a fairway wood shaft and those less aggressive swingers of the club, looking for smooth feel and.Project X Shaft Flex Guide: 5.0 Light/Senior 5.5 Regular 6.0 Stiff 6.5 Extra Stiff. Shafts come in five flex categories: extra stiff (X), stiff (S), regular (R), senior (A) and ladies (L). Selecting the right flex for your golf club shafts is key to getting the most out of your clubs. How to Select the Right Shaft Flex for a Golf Club.
The problem was that none of the shaft companies used the same board. This was and still is, an excellent way to rate shafts. The butt of the shaft is clamped, a weight is hung on the tip and the amount the shaft bent was used to rate the shafts stiffness. Club makers have been trying to answer that question for a long as I can remember.I am told the first tool commonly used was a deflection board.
I now have a database containing measurements of about 3000 different shafts. To date, the only standard is confusion.I began my journey to understand the golf shaft about 15 years ago. The club making community made their own attempt at creating a standard. The golfer was and still is confused about these numbers. Brunswick shaft company patented a numbering system 4.0, 4.5, 5.0, 5.5, etc.
Area under the EI curve is a better number. My answer, if you are going to use a number to try to understand shaft stiffness, be it LARSX or 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 7.0. To create a simple index, I divided that number by a common factor to create an easy to compare 2 digit stiffness index.The recent reviews presented here at Golf Shaft Reviews, give a stiffness index for each shaft measured.One of my friends, a fellow fitter who has been working with EI graphs since the very first day I began measuring them asked why I would reduce the elegance of the EI profiles to a single number.
He used a frequency instrument to measure the shafts used by the tour players. In the 80’s he did research on the PGA tour. Joe Braly introduced club makers to using the rate of oscillation of a shaft (frequency) to understand its stiffness.
Software knows as “The Equalizer” was sold to PCS members. They established a standard primarily focused on one of the instruments. It was a time when shaft design was not as complex as it currently is and when frequency instruments were one of the few tools available to club makers for measuring shaft stiffness.The PCS recognized that frequency measurements were affected by clamp pressure, clamp length, weight and the actual instrument being used. The ratio he found was 4.3 CPM (cycles per minute) per one half inch of length of club.Inspired by the research done by the Braly’s, a club makers organization, the PCS, endorsed and taught frequency based club making to its many, many members.
These are 6 iron shafts and were measured with a 261 gram 6 iron head. I use a pneumatic clamp, clamped 7″ from the butt of the shafts. Nor did it inform its membership that the shaft designers and manufacturers primarily used EI for understanding shaft stiffness.Let’s take a look at an EI chart of three shafts with the same frequency.Each of these shafts has a frequency of 354 on my instrument. During its dominance as a club makers organization the PCS did not promote discussion of alternative shaft stiffness systems.
It gave very crude charts of stiffness down the shaft when compared to EI charts. That system was flawed in more ways than I want to discuss here. With that, the term ‘shaft profiling’ was born. That evolved into a system of measuring the shaft with a frequency instrument at different point down the shaft. He measured frequency at several points down the shaft while sorting a box of iron shafts for a set he was building for a PGA tour pro. Tom Wishon, then at GolfSmith, recognized that butt frequency alone did not work.
Frequency profiling and frequency rating of shaft stiffness were an attempt by club builders to reverse engineer shaft knowledge not shared by the shaft companies. They used the frequency instruments they had. As with all technologies, instruments and expertise evolves. The problem for club makers and fitters who recognized the importance of shaft profiling was that there was not an affordable EI instrument until I designed and manufactured one.
But what you may not realize is that there is no standard for assigning these labels to different products made by the same manufacturer. As we all know, there is no standard for assigning stiffness between manufacturers. These labels are referred to as LARSX by club makers, Ladies, Amateur, Regular, Stiff, X-Stiff. Shaft Stiffness Labels – LARSXMost shafts have a stiffness label.
It was a detailed system for relating swing speed to shaft stiffness. Shaft Stiffness Labels – 4.0 ~ 4.5 ~ 5.0 ~ 5.5 ~ 6.0 ~ 6.5 ~ 7.0The Rifle shaft produced by FM precision/Brunswick/Royal Precision (different names, same company) introduced and patented a numeric stiffness rating system. To make any sense out of shaft company labels you must recognize that LARSX refers to shaft stiffness of that particular model and weight, It does not apply to shafts of different models or weights.What you might have started to notice here is that Jeff Meyer’s system, area under the EI curve, as a single metric rating system, actually makes some sense. KBS shafts were at hand when I was measuring and creating charts for this article, they are not unique in this practice, all shaft companies do this. The 110 gram C-Taper Lite also labeled S flex is much softer throughout the shaft.
The EI measurement clearly shows these shafts have different stiffness. Here is a look at how that system is currently applied.Two shafts, the Project X and the Project X LZ are both labeled 6.0. There are many club makers that still use the Rifle system or variations of it.The Royal Precision shaft company was purchased by True Temper and with that purchase was the numeric stiffness rating patent. The first systematic attempt at shaft fitting. It was revolutionary in its day.
ConclusionBack to the question posed in the opening sentence of this article, How stiff is this golf shaft? The systems we have to rate golf shaft stiffness do not work across brands or even across models within brands. Most experienced club fitters use their experience to understand golf shaft stiffness. And once again, take note of the EI area rating of these two shafts. They are quite different in the mid zone. Notice how the Project X 5.0 and the Project X LZ 6.0 are similar in the butt area, having the same butt frequency.
Then with that rating in mind, they test golfers performance and reaction to various shafts.
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