NatesGolf

As a builder/fitter, the best thing anyone can do to make their game more consistent is to get the loft/lie angles on your irons checked (dynamically), and adjusted by a good fitter. It'll cost you about $5 a club. When the irons are nicely graduated, I can almost guarantee your GIRs will improve dramatically!

The easiest solution is to have someone bend the 52 degree wedge you already have down to 50 degrees, then bend your other wedges equal distant degrees of loft apart. Typically 5 to 6 degrees. Most wedges are soft steel and can be bent +/- 3 degrees in loft and lie. If they're a cast 431 stainless then you're limited to about +/- 2 degrees. That'll cost you a total of about 5 bucks a club. Making your 52 a 50 should render the 10 yds. you need.

I just recently had a client bring in an R-Flex SteadFast driver shaft. He is a 6 handicaper with a nice moderate swing tempo. He didn't like the very high launch angle the shaft was rendering with his Maverik 10.5* Driver, but thought the nice high launch would work well on his Mavrik 4W. I measured the shaft by putting one of my Epic driver heads on it, and set the weight in the head to 200g (club length was close to 45", 44.875"). The freq measured in at 205 CPM, WAY too flexible for this guy. He did confirm that it took a little adjustment on his part to hit it, but he said he hit it pretty straight, just way too high (now we know why, VERY tip flexible). So the plan was to put this on his 4W (the 4W weighed in at 215g a pretty std 4W head weight), but after removing the grip, tape, and shaft adapter the raw shaft weight was about 47g. I was concerned about the light weight and flexibility for a FW metal, and also concerned after reading that they don't recommend tip trimming the shaft. I then measured the tip diameter to see how much of a parallel tip I was dealing with, and got kind of a shocker. The tip diameter for the 1st 3.5" of the tip section measured in a .310" - .314". A far cry from .335". The tip didn't reach .335" until about 5.75" into the shaft. Now we know why the shaft adapters are falling off. The reason is not bad epoxy it's the small tip diameter. I also discovered that this shaft is in no way shape or form "spineless" (360* pure). It wobbled all over the place with the driver head on it, until I rotated the shaft to a pure point, where I marked it for later. So then I reached out to the manufacturer, and their response was very quick. They reaffirmed that they didn't recommend tip trimming and putting it on the 4W, but they never answered my question as to why, or if doing so would be detrimental to the shaft. The initial response was to simply trade it in for the heavier 3W or 5W shaft, and that the FW shaft would render a lower launch angle. Um, but the higher launch angle was the reason my customer wanted it on the 4W in the first place right? In any case I was then directed to the owner, and asked him very specific questions about if we could tip trim the driver shaft to make it work on the 4W, and would doing so be detrimental to the shaft. I also asked about the bend profile of the 3W shaft, and what the relative launch angle difference might be between the 3W and driver shaft. The owner simply responded with a short reply about how tip trimming the driver shaft would change the balance and feel, and the response to the launch angle difference was, "well it is hard to know for sure, because golfers with different abilities have different swings". So much for their marketing paragraph about thousands of hours of launch data testing, and that there is no difference between a robot and golfers of any ability. Anyway, I realize that they really don't know me from Adam, and that they are probably flooded with questions from allot of people, but it would have been nice to get a more specific and technical answer. So my customer (who is also quite technical), decided to simply try the tip trim, and to put it in the 4W. After trimming it 1.25" and having a finished club length of 42.75", we ended up with a freq of 220 CPM and a swing weight of D1. I will say this however, carbon fiber does have some advantages, because it is incredibly strong! So strong in fact that my 14" chop saw had trouble cutting the tip, and the butt. It almost stopped, and I had to cut it gingerly in small steps. We will see how the 4W experiment goes, but after hitting a few shots in the cage it seemed to launch quite nicely for him. My conclusion is, while initially not being that impressed with the quality of the shaft, or the answers from the company, the carbon fiber idea does have allot of potential. SteadFast is in the early stages of proving out the concept in a golf shaft. They are making some strides forward, but are still in a discovery stage. They have a few things to iron out, but I think they are on a good track to offer something unique and innovative. The shaft is incredibly strong, and will probably never ever break (you might break a chop saw before breaking a shaft). I think that once they iron out some of the shaft tolerances, flexibility, and graphic issues, that they will have a pretty good product. For now though, you're going to have to use allot of glass beads in your epoxy to keep it on a club, but I would keep an eye on them.