By Sam Johnson with a whole lot of help from Michael R. Guerrette
Last week I conducted a focus group for a client. We were looking for top of mind awareness information and other secret handshakes of the marketing world. The participants had handicaps from 3 to 15, and by most measures, were fairly serious golfers. What surprised me about the interview was how little each one of them knew about their equipment, especially the shafts they play. With that in mind, I called a friend of mine, Michael R. Guerrette, Senior Director Research and Development at UST Mamiya and asked if he had any information that the average golfer might find helpful. He didn’t have the secret handshake that I was looking for because it really doesn’t exist, but he had some interesting insights that I thought you might find interesting.
He calls it Shaft DNA and here’s what he says:
Having spent the last ten years of my life designing and developing golf equipment for the best players in the world, I have come to realize that shaft fitting is the most important and overlooked aspect out on tour. I have worked with players on all the worldwide tours - PGA, Nationwide, Champions, LPGA, Japan, European and Euro Asian. And there is one thing they all have in common: the desire to find a product that will bring them victory. Considering that this is what they do for a living, Touring Professionals are very concerned with the products they put in their bag. Much like a surgeon who wants to make sure the instruments will not fail him during his surgery procedures, his/her life/livelihood depends on it!
Until about ten years ago, I rarely saw a launch monitor at a PGA tour event. The ball development engineers occasionally brought one to the tour for ball testing, but that was about it. Then came the advent of “COR” (Coefficient of Restitution, aka. ball speed) relative to driver heads. What happened between 2000 and 2004 was amazing. PGA players started increasing their driving distances by twenty yards, year over year. This was due in part to better ball and club head designs, but I would submit that the majority of their increases in distance came from better fitting.
By June of 2000, I began seeing launch monitors on tour on a weekly basis. Players were looking for speed, “how can I get my balls speed up”. The launch monitors helped tour players identify which OEM club manufacturer had the fastest driver. Coincidentally, there was an added benefit that came with the launch monitors, Launch Angle and Spin Rate, which are the other two most important variables in the distance equation. In essence, players were finally being fitted properly for their drivers, optimizing not only ball speed, but also proper spin rate and launch angle for maximum distance.
So what does all this have to do with shafts or shaft DNA? Well, no matter what head or ball a player uses, the player must have a shaft that will deliver the club head to the ball in a consistent manor according to each individual player’s swing. The player can use the greatest ball or head ever designed, but if he doesn’t have the proper shaft, he will struggle to achieve optimum launch conditions. Just to clarify this statement, if the shaft does not fit the individual’s swing style, he will constantly fight to get the head back to the correct (square) position at impact, which is necessary to create the optimum launch characteristics.
Tour players have the opportunity to test different balls, heads and shafts on a weekly basis. They pretty much have their favorite ball and head figured out via a contract or just personal preference. The tour player will experiment with different drivers and shafts when they start hitting it sideways (“it’s always the club, it’s never the player”)! In any case, we spend hours working with players, helping them find “lightning in bottle” when it comes to a head and shaft combination, where some work and some don’t.
Each week at any given tour event on Monday through Wednesday, the driving range is like a circus. Tour vans from shaft, ball and head OEMs pack the range in an effort to get players into their equipment with hopes of increasing their usage on the Darrell Survey count. The Darrell Survey is a service that keeps track of what each player uses in each equipment category. Golf equipment manufacturers (clubs, shafts, grips) use the survey results in their marketing as “bragging rights” in order to tout that their product is Number One on tour. In the process, players are confronted with new products every week. If a player wins the previous weeks’ tournament with a new shaft, on the following Monday morning, you can bet that a half dozen guys will walk into the tour van asking to try that same shaft. A player may have hit his driver fine the previous weekend, but he’s always looking for that “lighting in a bottle magic”, in hopes that a new shaft will bring the magic. Unfortunately, many times the “hot new
I conducted an experiment about seven years ago with one of the top ten players in the world. Having experienced the stated scenario, my goal was to put some data behind this “tour fitting voodoo”. For about a year, I tracked every shaft the player tested and recorded how long it stayed in his bag. During the year, I measured the specs on each shaft and documented the results. A pattern began to surface between the shafts he liked and those he didn’t. Basically, the shafts he preferred had similar, if not identical specs. By specs, I mean Torque, Butt Stiffness, Mid Stiffness, Tip Stiffness, Weight and Balance Point. Although there are many different shaft manufacturers, they often develop shafts that have similar specs, i.e. a shaft from company Y may be almost identical to a shaft from company X, and this is done by design. If a particular shaft is having success on tour, you can bet the competition will dissect it to see what makes it special, and then create their version with similar specs. The
So why are there so many shaft designs? Well, just stand at the end of any driving range and look down the line; you’ll see just about every swing type imaginable. Yes, that’s right - DNA! We are all different because of DNA. DNA gives us our individual identity, and yes, DNA also gives us our swing style. Every swing coach will show you the perfect model of a golf swing, but not many people in the world will ever achieve that criterion, even the guys on the PGA tour.
My favorite is the Champions tour because you see just about every move imaginable in a golf swing, but at the end of the day, these guys can go out and shoot 65 at the drop of a dime. Why? Because they have talent and they have been fitted with shafts that meet their particular demands or swing DNA. If all players used the same shaft (as they did 50 years ago) only a few players would benefit, those that had swings which complimented the equipment available at that time. Today, we have technology on our side with carbon fiber aka. graphite shafts. Carbon fiber material gives us the capability to design and develop hundreds of different shaft combinations to fit your specific swing DNA, which is one of the reasons you see so many different players in the winner’s circle on Sunday. A Proper shaft fitting gives a player a better chance to allow their natural talent to surface. This is no different than Olympic sprinters. If one guy has shoes that are too big or too small, do you think he’ll perform up to his maximum potential?
Many of you have experienced nirvana with certain golf shafts but were never given the opportunity to understand why or how to find it again. Custom shaft fitting is critically important if you want to maximize your golf game. There are several swing variables that must be taken into consideration when being properly fit, swing speed is just one of them. Just like the tour professionals, you should be fit by a professional club-fitter who understands shaft specs and how the shaft profile relates to your golf swing. It doesn’t matter what your handicap is if you play golf on a regular basis you should find that shaft profile that is best for you.
The most important factor is that you don’t change your swing to compensate for the wrong shaft or bad fitting. The proper golf shaft must compliment your action. There is one caveat here - if you never practice, and don’t have a somewhat repeatable swing, then you will always be fighting an uphill battle in trying to get the club-head square at impact. But if you play golf often enough, practice a little and have a swing motion that is somewhat repeatable - there is a perfect shaft out there made just for you.
At UST Mamiya we understand both swing profiles and shaft DNA. 40 years ago, UST Mamiya was the first company to ever develop a carbon fiber shaft. During these past 40 years we have studied, experimented and engineered some of the finest shafts ever produced in the golf industry. We understand shaft performance and how it translates to different swing types. We have done innumerable experiments to understand the player and shaft relationship and we offer a complete matrix of shaft models to fit every swing profile imaginable.
Visit USTMamiya.com today, profile your swing characteristics with our online fitting guide, Swing Fit, and find the shaft that is right for you.
Michael R. Guerrette
Senior Director Research and Development
UST Mamiya
