Changing Shafts: The Latest Gimmick?

Filed in archive Golf Equipment on January 20, 2008

Last summer, the USGA announced a rule change that allows recreational golfers to interchange shafts on their clubs. Essentially, the USGA wants duffers to have the advantages of the tour pros - minus the equipment van.

That rule change spurred club manufacturers into action and the results of their efforts were on display at the just-concluded PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Florida.



The ruling effectively allows a golfer to pop off one shaft - with its characteristics of length, flexibility and swing weight - and pop on another shaft with entirely different characteristics if the golfer so chooses.

The jury is out on whether this particular rules-driven technology change will benefit golfers or not.

Certainly, the new interchangeable clubs shown at the PGA show are a boon for retail golf shops. A golfer can now try out not just an off-the-rack club in the demo area but he or she can also try different clubhead and shaft combinations in the store.

That will allow the club buyer to optimize the equipment choice. And it breaks the habit of buying "off the rack".

Custom club fitters have already been using this sort of equipment for several years, now; Both Callaway and TaylorMade have been offering club sets tailored this way for awhile, as well.

But here's where the rubber meets the road: the onus falls squarely on the consumer's shoulders to know something about club fitting.

Ask most golf consumers what the most important part of the club is and they'll tell you what they've heard from tour pros and golf retailers: it's the shaft.

Yet, the guru of club fitting and design, Tom Wishon, says in his book The Search for the Perfect Golf Club, "the golf shaft is, I believe, one of the most fascinating design and research areas within all of golf. Why? Because it is, without question, one of the least understood and most confusing components of the club".

He goes on to say, "when it comes to ordaining the ball speed, launch angle and back spin - the three elements that determine how far and how high every shot will go - the clubhead is far more important than the shaft".

Yet we now have a USGA-endorsed technology push that will serve only to confuse golfers even more. When the USGA is trying to grow the game and maintain recreational involvement, making the equipment confusing doesn't help. The game is hard enough as it is.

Tom Stites, Nike's chief club designer, probably puts the industry's position best with this remark: "It's exciting and it has potential. We're selling hope in this industry, so we need excitement".

Yes, it has potential. In club fitting. And once fitted properly, the vast majority of recreational players have little reason for changing shafts.