Getting the shaft - part 2-ish or "Giving the Indian a crooked arrow"

I posted a couple weeks ago about OEMs and their shaft offerings when getting fit for a club. With all the shafts out there and most of them for no upgrade charge "I'll just get the most expensive because it's the best, right?"  Seems to be a common occurrence.  Well, yes - and no.  Recently, a client of mine - we'll call him Smashy -  was having troubles with his driver. He bought it, and hits it good sometimes but remains very inconsistent so he gave me a ring to see if there was something in the equipment. "Chris, it's not the arrow, it's the Indian"  ----- Native American, please Dude. Still, i don't care if you're Robin Hood:  If your arrow isn't right, you're not hitting a damn thing.

Well, Smashy is kind of a big dude. The kind I wouldn't like to meet in any sort of alley, let alone a dark one. Big hands, oversize grips, taller than me (not hard to do, but still), and when he takes a cut at the ball he can exceed 121 mph.  Smashy is currently gaming a Stiff flex in his driver.  But Chris, you said flex isn't standard over all manufacturers, that could be ok right?  Yes, thanks for paying attention!! Still, when something is very very wrong, it's good to check it out to pinpoint the issue.

Well, we put Smashy on the Flightscope and found out some things about his swing. Overall, it's very repeatable and VERY hard. Gosh it makes my back hurt thinking about it.  So we warmed him up, and put some good swings on his current driver to get the numbers. Spin was high at 3100+, launch was OK, but AOA at -3 and AOD at 56 degrees was a real issue.  I checked out the flex profile and saw that he was FAR out-swinging the current shaft and the tip was way too active.



Note the squiggly lines on the left side. Layman's terms, this is how the shaft is loading and accelerating the head before impact (0). Orange is the current shot at screen grab, but all the shots are represented in gray. Take note at how some of the lines start high and then decelerate, then accelerate again. This is common in every shaft. It doesn't just bow and unload at one point. The bad news here is that while it kicks HARD, it can't handle the energy store for his particular swing and while it was kicking hard relative to the flex, it wasn't hard enough - note 107mph swing. In addition, the lines are not relatively close to each other or at the same shape - indicating that it's loading faster or slower by quite a bit, and sometimes it even decelerates before impact because of how aggressively loaded the shaft is.  Not a terrible shaft - but not at all a good fit. We want everything going in the same direction and consistently.  Smashy - being a fade/slice player - needed something that would accelerate quickly and help close the face, but be able to handle his aggressive transition and even give him a little bit better of an attack angle.  So, we put him in the budget-friendly Vista Pro 75  X flex.

A little about the Vista Pro - it's the basic end of Fujikura's offerings. It was originally released about 3 decades ago (?) and dominated then - so they re-engineered the materials and tech to re-release this year, replacing their EXS line of shafts.  FYI it has the same bend profile as the Tour AD DI shaft - for $280 less....



10 shots with the Vpro shaft, and notice how much more evenly the lines mirror each other. A few outliers on awkward swings, but the shaft helps out and loads/ unloads much more consistently for Smashy than his original shaft. This X flex and lower torque rating is much more able to handle his aggressive nature and perform consistently so that he can hit drives in a repeatable fashion.  Only one swing failed to produce good acceleration in this instance.  Taking this information - there was nothing else at this pricepoint that could take the kind of swing he had, so for fun I pulled out the HZRDUS black 6.0 (6.5) which active flex rates between stiff and X... Just for fun, to see if we could squeeze a little more consistency... Remember, this shaft is rated LESS flex than this X.....



As you can see - experiment failed.  While he could load the shaft well sometimes and it performed fairly consistently for him - it was just not a good fit for the swing. HZRDUS is TOO aggressive and TOO STIFF for the way Smashy swings, so could not effectively load and unload for him consistently..... We even hit the LZ, with the same results.... just not as good as the Vpro for Smashy Smashworth. Two high-end shafts knocked out due to fit. Now he has a great fit and saved a boatload to spend on lessons if he needs!!

But wait --- H Black is more expensive than the Vpro!!! It should be better!  Truth is that yes, it is "better" in it's numbers - lowering spin and launch - but it is not better for this player because it doesn't fit his swing. When he hit it, he bombed it but the consistency is not there and we all know in golf it's less about how good your good shots are and more about how bad your bad shots are. I've had fittings already where this scenario was 100% reversed! Fitting needs to happen properly!

The moral of this story - don't buy something because it's expensive or "included". Pros use stuff because they have a team of people that sit and stare at every ball hit, analyze it and build them a new golf club in between each bucket. The shaft they have fits them, and know what --- manufacturers will paint whatever they want on it for them. There is nothing "stock" about a club if you see a pro playing what you see on the rack, trust me.

This is what a competent fitter brings to the table. Find your local guy - NOT someone on a sim at a box store but someone who does building and fitting. Someone who has no one else besides you at your appointment and isn't going to leave you or hurry you so he can go sell some girl a new golf skirt in the next department over. There are plenty of small shops and guys squinting at fulcrum scales, agonizing over the last few grains of lead to put into a club head to make it exactly what they need for their client. Sit down, have a beer, and discuss - you'll make a friend and have a great guy just like the pros do, and lift your game up another level.

Golfers, growing the game, and the whining.....

I've been playing golf for over twenty years and something has increased every single year. Not the length of the tee shots, not the courses.  Nope all that pales in comparison to the whining that is taking place all over the golfing world. The ball goes too far, the hole is too small, we're losing people, why can't I wear a t-shirt, why are there so many rules?  It's enough to make a sane person's head explode.

The beauty of this great game is two-fold:   First, it allows you to be your own referee. You are the person who assesses your own penalties for wrongdoing. There are a set of rules and you are expected to follow them as a gentleman (or lady) and in not doing so, you're doing  a great disservice to yourself. Of course, should you be found to have broken the rules, the consequences imposed by a committee could be dire, depending on the infraction  - but even that is dealt with as gentlemen (or ladies) should. With class.   Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the game demands an unattainable perfection. That in itself can bring about great joy or incredible anger depending on what has happened. There is nothing about golf that should be easy. It's a game that molds and brings out the best in a person, and sometimes the worst. That being said, all of your shortcomings come to the forefront and the game allows you to address them. Afterall, if someone takes liberties and breaks the rules in an inconsequential little game (in their eyes) what's to keep them from following the rules in your business dealings (or the rules of dating your teenage daughter?!).

The more recent knee-jerk reaction to "losing players and interest in the game"  - which they're calling footgolf - is really nothing short of a pathetic attempt to be "in" and "cool" with the kids. Why in the name of all that's reasonable would anyone think there would be any increase in activity if it is fundamentally changed and merged with a completely different activity?

Why footgolf won't work in making more revenue and interest in golf:

1. requires another completely separate area of play from regular golf.
2. requires more to maintain the area and causes more irreparable damage to the area of play (ever try to put back a divot from cleats?)
3. no one will pay to play something that they can do at any public park in the USA. Get a wash basin, use sandals for tee markers.  Lowest score wins.
4. the few young people that do take interest will then go towards Soccer (or football if you're not in the USA) because it's not boring as piss, uses the same equipment, and they can actually make something of themselves in the sport.
5. it just...fucking.....won't.

Interestingly enough, there's other talk of how to "grow the sport". Two of these are: changing the rules and making the hole bigger.  Let's address the rules issue first, shall we?

Once again,  part of the beauty of the game of golf is in the rules. It's in being your own person and referee. If you remove or change those rules "because they're too hard" then you're taking away part of the core of the game. Memorizing and understanding the rules of golf is an exercise in mental capacity as well as common sense. The vast majority of the "major" rules in golf end up being common sense once you read and understand a few of them. Differences include the color of stakes in the ground - woooooooo don't let your head explode -- and the number of strokes taken as a penalty --- *POP*!!  You can do X and Y if the stakes are this color, and X, Y, and Z if they're this color.  HOLY SHIT!!! I'm confused adding one more option!! Give me some common core to learn this stuff!!  When you're playing for fun, anyone can tell you the rules are liberal as fuck. Go out on any golf course and you'll see people who have been playing for years kicking balls out of sand traps or away from trees, or rolling it over.  They're not going to be on tour any time soon but I'll bet you they're having fun and know the rules. They just don't give a rats ass to follow them. If you made the rules easier, they wouldn't follow those either.... but they're still having fun and they're not bothering or making things confusing for those of us who take the game seriously.

Now onto making the hole bigger..... Do I really need to explain this? OK... so go ahead and make the hole bigger. I'm instantly a +3 handicap from my -3. Now I can apply for the US Open and try to make my way onto tour--- wait -- you mean they're not going to make the hole bigger for everyone? Just the recreational golfers? Really? Oh... so how do I keep a handicap? What if the course I want to play doesn't use regulation holes? Do you see where I'm going with this? No? Let me hit you with a frying pan and then ask again...

Growing the game should not entail changing the game. If you look at all the other sports and the popularity thereof you'll notice some things - sex, the peak of physical performance, and advertising. Advertising in everything... from beer commercials to toys, to playing cards, to trick shots and special games.  Not saying that golf should have caddies in bikinis, but they're starting to get it. There's some good looking ladies on tour and man do they have the game to go with it!!  But seriously, what did golf do? From the beginning it has put all it's eggs in one basket. On one set of shoulders except once - when there were the big 3.  Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Gary Player grew the game like no one before them or since. They were good people and they were normal people. Whatever they did, good or bad, it was out there and people at it up. Tiger Woods is not a role model. He's an athlete. When he does something bad, the tour covers it up.  He's the golden boy. He's exempt from disqualification because he's Tiger Woods. He's exempt from penalty. Same now with Rory... Would the tour have forced Phil and Ricky to let anyone else hit up? Maybe Tiger, or Maybe Phil himself. Someone with star power.  How does a guy who has saved his whole life to get one shot at greatness compete with that? Now they've changed Q school and made it even harder to get on tour. There's no dream, now it's about a career. Golf has dug it's own grave. It's given in to, and continued to show that they care about the upper crust, not the underdog.   If you're nobody, then you'll never be somebody until you show you can be - we don't even want to hear it. You don't get a shot. Unless you're this good, you can't even attempt competition. Unless you've got this amount of money, you can't even get on a golf course.  It's an expensive, and elitest game in the eyes of many. Tiger Woods changed that when he came on the scene. People saw him as blue-collar just as they saw Arnie.  He got successful and pompous and aloof and people started to drop off the bandwagon and there was nothing to catch them. No redeeming quality. Sure the game has kept some people but he made fair weather fans, not life long nuts who will teach their children and friends and fathers and spouses the game.

Stop whining about how hard the game is. There's nothing wrong with this game, there's something wrong with the people who manage it. There's something wrong with the portrayal of the game and the type of people that should play. Put more emphasis on the type of person it MAKES YOU when you play the game, not the type of person you need to be before you start playing. Don't lower the bar to gain the masses, raise the masses to that level. Learn something, teach something, and maybe you'll get the numbers back and not just for a short time... for life.  Just maybe you'll get more people that embody the kind of love of the game that was shown in, arguably, the best golf movie of our time: