HCL Concord Golf

Custom fitting/trimming of shafts, graphite or steel

  - Shafts are the engine of the club and proper matching of them to the player is crucial to performance.

   Flexes and flex points:-

    In general shafts come in a variety of flexions (both steel and graphite) from the shaft manufacturers to the club manufacturers. Typical stiffnesses would be - extra stiff (XS), stiff (S), firm (F), regular (R), seniors (A) and ladies (L) - a total of 6 flexes altogether. Often there are less to choose from.

    Top notch shaft makers such as True Temper have carefully located the flex point in each model of shaft to correspond to the type of player who would use any given flex rating. The stiffer shafts have the flex point relatively high on the shaft, towards the butt end, for players with higher swing speeds. Such players have the power to get the ball airborne easily. Too much tip flexibility would create too high a launch angle and a whippy tip that is hard to control. For the slower swingers who would use more flexible shafts the flex point is carefully located down towards the tip end so the shaft provides more lift and snap at the bottom of the swing. The lowest flex point is found in ladies' shafts.

   Unfortunately 4 to 6 flexes are simply not enough to fit the entire population. People are more varied than that.

  Trimming instructions:-

   - The shaft manufacturers also provide trimming instructions with the shafts. For example, the trimming for a set of woods may be :-
          driver   - zero tip trim and butt cut to length
       # 3 wood - 0.5" tip trim and butt cut to length
       # 5 wood - 1.0" tip trim and butt cut to length
       # 7 wood - 1.5" tip trim and butt cut to length
       # 9 wood - 2.0" tip trim and butt cut to length

    ( irons have a similar pattern of trimming ). If the clubs are being sold as already made and on the shelf, this is what the consumer is likely to find. The clubs in the set will reasonably match one to the other and tend to feel the same while swinging.

   Problems:-
      
     1- 4 to 6 shaft flexes are just not enough, as said before. Many players fall in between these ratings.
     2- There are no agreed upon standards for shaft flex ratings. Relative stiffness varies greatly from one supplier to the other. One company may say "firm" on their shaft but measurement may show it is the same stiffness as a second company's "regular" shaft. The consumer doesn't know what he or she is getting.
     3- The length of the club will change relative stiffness. An extra long club will be more flexible than the same club at standard length. Likewise a short club will be stiffer than the same club at standard length. Unless something is done to modify the trimming to compensate for length, the club will not match the player.
     4- Swing speed is not the sole factor in determining the proper shaft flex. It is not a matter of how fast you swing but a matter of how you swing fast. That is, tempo and swing plane also load up the shaft during the swing. This must be taken into account for an accurate pick to be made.

  For these reasons, among many, we have found over the years that the consumer has about a 15% chance to find off the shelf clubs that fit his swing. Most custom fitting is not that much better. It is often determined by swing speed charts and length of club by measuring how many inches the players wrist is off the ground. This is simplistic and ignores the full dynamics of the swing.

  Our Practices:-

   - We design our own proprietary graphite shafts, both for woods and irons. Each desired flex is given a target deflection board reading and a natural frequency target. We then specify a plus or minus tolerance band around each target value. As the shafts are received we separate them into 3 catagories- stiffer than target; target; and more flexible than target. This then fills in much of the gaps between flexes and enables us to fit players more precisely.

    - We order our heads in the same fashion - slightly overweight; on target; and slightly underweight. Coupled with the shaft sorting above this allows us to be more precise yet, especially with clubs longer or shorter than standard.

    - On irons where steel shafts are the better fit we use True Temper models. While True Temper does provide standard cutting guides, their shafts are very versatile and can easily be trimmed to fill in the gaps between standard ratings. For example, their TT Lite XL shaft, say the R/S model, has a 5 iron tip trim of 3" to make it regular and 5" to make the shaft stiff. There is much room to do something different. If you tip trim 4" you get a nice "firm" rating, exactly in between the R and S values. A senior who finds R to be a little stiff can be fitted very precisely with less than a 3 " tip trim. Or we can go to the A/L shaft model and trim that tip more than standard. Likewise a powerful swinger who needs more than the stiff rating can be fitted with a shaft cut more than 5" to make it extra stiff. Naturally the balance of the iron set would be trimmed in kind so the set is fully matched.

    - We find the True Temper shaft flex ratings, both on the deflection board and on the frequency machine, to be solid and properly differentiated so a player can feel confident the shaft flex he wants is really what he is getting. We use the same ratings for our shafts. No macho games are played, no labeling shafts stiffer than they really are to feed some egos.

   Actual fitting examples of real people:-

   Doug G. of Connecticut is 6' '3", around 30, and has recently taken up golf again. He has a very upright swing path and driver swing speeds of around 103 mph. His tempo is unhurried and he slowly builds up acceleration. His old driver had a stiff shaft that was leaving the ball to the right, often with a fade or a slice. He had to work hard to square up the clubface and found this often pulled him off the ball. Standard swing speed charts say he is a stiff shaft player but the results show this is wrong. The shaft does not fit his tempo or his upright swing that has low torque in it. For his height we made his club 45.5", 1/2 inch more than standard. We selected a firm shaft, slightly stiffer than target. This shaft has a sligfhtly lower flex point than stiff, which he needs to snap better through the ball. To compensate for the extra length, we then tip trimmed the shaft 3/8's of an inch more than standard to get back to "normal". A standard weight head was then used, at a 9.5 deg. loft. The problem was solved. He can now hit draws and fades at will, with about 15 yards more distance. His 3 wood was to be standard 44" in length. Here we used a standard tip cut of 1/2 inch and used a head 3 grams less than target to slightly stiffen the club and have it swing the same as the driver.

   Don T of Buffalo, NY. is a former marine sargeant, now over 65 but with very strong hands. He is only 5" 7" but is over 200 lbs.
His naturall swing path is quite flat which means he puts a lot of torque on the shaft. The backswing is quite short and the tempo is very fast. His irons were R flex and gave him pop fly slice hits. He had to hit a 5 iron from 150 yards and was frustrated. He filled out our fitting form and gave us extra details in the comments section that were very clear. We fitted him in offset irons, 5 thru PW, to fight the slicing. Although standard charting says he should play an R flex shaft, the tempo and flat tourqy swing indicates he needs a stronger shaft to respond fast enough to keep pace with his quick swing. We ended up using TT Lite steel shafts (for better control) tipped 1/4 inch more than firm. He also could not take a consistent good divot with long irons. We made the 4 iron with a hybrid head to allow him to attack the ball with a more sweeping action. He now hits a 6 or 7 iron from 150 yards and when a slice occasionally appears it is just a gentle fade.

   In my old Square Two days I had the good fortune of playing with many LPGA Tour Pro's. DM had a driver, 43" long (in the days when that was standard) with a stiff graphite shaft and wanted more distance. We agreed that the solution was to make a 44" club - my calculations said this would produce a good 8 or 9 yards more. The problem was with the heads. They were weighted for 43" clubs and were too heavy to swing at 1 inch longer. At that time heads were filled with foam to reduce the clanking sound from metal woods. It was considered a big annoyance. But the foam weighed 10 to 12 grams and contributed nothing to the hit except noise reduction. What we did was carefully grind off about 7 grams of weight from the outside of the head using a Scotchbrite wheel. Beyond that and the walls of the head would be too thin and might collapse during play. This still left us somewhat overweight but now we could compensate for that and the length by cutting her stiff shaft 3/8" more off the tip and stiffen it just enough so the head would not careen out of control. It worked as planned. Right after that episode we got rid of foam which freed up enough weight such that larger heads could now be made; and lighter heads as well so longer clubs would be practical..

   Sue K of Huron, S.D. sent us an unsolicited order for a Synchron II # 11 wood. She specified ladies standard length but with an R shaft. We sent her an e mail questioning her selection of a strong shaft ( we do this routinely when something appears out of line ) and asked what she was trying to do. She responded that she has been replacing irons with woods ( she finds them easier to use ) but the ladies' shafts are just too flexible for her. She was dissatisfied with the 3 thru 9 woods she had but did not want to spend the money on an entire repacement set without trying out something different economically. This makes good sense of course - many people just buy one initially to see if it works. She was unaware that A flexes existed but her details showed that L was too flexible but R was a bit too stiff. She heard the story and changed to the Seniors shaft. Her ball flight data showed we had to tip the shaft 1/4" more than standard to be a proper fit. Once she received it and tried it out, she replaced replaced her entire set, 3 thru 9, with these Synchron II clubs. She reports that she has gained 15 yards per club at an average.
      The interesting thing here is that the clubs she had are what we consider very first rate. They just didn't fit.

    In the mid 1990's Black Rock was approached by JS of the Senior Tour to see if they could make him a 3 wood. He was commited to a different manufacturer to use only 10 of their clubs so he had room to add something else to his bag. As their consultant, I was asked  to custom make it. I did not know JS and was not really certain of his swing - his acceleration ramp. So I asked questions which he responded to clearly. Since the model being considered was a very strong lofted 13 deg. 3 wood what was critical was the ball flight he wanted.
    He is a big fellow but has a gradual, smooth and unhurried acceleration. He propels the ball a long way with a fine "late hit".
    I decided to make two clubs for his testing - one with an XS shaft and one with an S shaft tip cut more than normal. The XS shaft selected was on the softer side of specs. to help get the ball up at a good launch angle and compensate for the strong loft. The S shaft shaft selected was a little stronger than specs. and was tipped 1/4" more than standard. In both cases we used on spec. heads. The shafts were of very high modulus, light weight construction. We used the heaviest ones in stock to increase the swingweight to something he could feel and be comfortable with. He liked them both but settled in on the S shaft. He said he had to work fractionally harder with the XS shaft and felt it might induce him to breakdown during the pressures of competion.
    People at their level have very fine tuned physical feedback systems that they have refined over years of practice and play. If something doesn't "feel" just right, no matter how good the design, they cannot trust the club.

  Summary:-

    Technically the shaft can be considered as a spring that can store energy and release it at a given rate. Since the shaft is not completely symmetrical but is tapered it is fact an irregular system of springs coupled together. Response is a function of many things such as how the walls are constructed, what materials are used, what the geometry is, and the head weight. ( Spring equations are difficult to do to create proper designs but must be done if the results are to be gotten ). Most important is how the player actually swings, uses it.

    Manufacturers have been at this for a long time and many produce fine shafts. While it is quite possible for the consumer to find a product he likes, the odds are against it happening to fit his swing without custom fitting