Steve Long

That's difficult to answer. I didn't play for some months and I changed the iron's "swingweight" and I changed my swing and I practiced more than usual and I changed my putting stroke. Nevertheless, I did have some lowest scores since many years.

The weights were made from a stainless steel shaft cut to the right length for the needed weight, and a washer welded to the end so as to keep the weight from sliding down inside the shaft.

I have been playing for a few months now with my butt weighted irons which as described above were all given the same total weight. I can report that the experiment has results. I cannot tell any difference in the performance or feeling between the clubs, except of course my swing plane is inclined differently for each club, which creates some differences. But the downswing resistance to acceleration seems the same, and the release pattern seems the same. It should be noted that my irons (and woods) were all adjusted for equal MOI, by adjusting the shaft length. The equal MOI also contributes to the feeling of sameness. I can't say for sure which is contributing more, the butt weighting or the MOI, but they both have an effect.

I added home-made butt weights to my irons so as to create the same total weight in each club, for pitching wedge through 2-iron. I added a two gram weight in my pitching wedge, a seven gram weight in my 9-iron, 12 gram in the 8-iron, etc, until a 43 gram weight in my 2-iron. They are inserted into the end of the shaft and held by the grip. The weights get heavier as the clubs lengthen because standard unweighted clubs get lighter as they lengthen. It’s a simple matter of weighing the pitching wedge and using that weight (plus two grams) as the target weight for the other clubs. Then a butt weight is calculated, constructed, and added to each club to bring it up to the target weight. The result is that the total weight or dead weight of all the irons are the same. Why did I do it? Normal club weighting gives a faster acceleration of the longer (lighter) clubs, at least in the first half of the downswing. This means adjustments to the swing have to be made. I want to have only one acceleration rate for all my irons. I don’t want any adjustments in my swing. I’m not going to weight my driver because the butt weight in a driver would be very heavy, much heavier than the butt weight in the 2-iron and I don’t want to sacrifice distance in my driver. I’m not sure what I’ll do to my 3-wood yet; I’ll probably try a weight just to see what happens. I don’t know yet if I lost any distance with my butt-weighted irons. I don’t see why it should be more than a few yards with the longest iron, and less for each shorter iron. Actually I don’t have any exact data on the carry of my old irons other than the rough numbers I use to pick the right club for approach shots. I have only tried my modified irons on the range so far. And so far they seem to do what was intended—make the irons feel and act more alike. The true test will be in the playing when spring arrives. With a flight monitor I could do a comparison test using any normal 2-iron and then adding a 43 gram weight to my wrist and comparing the carry. But I don’t care really if I lose a few yards. I wonder who has tried this weighting idea before. It’s seems pretty obvious as something to try. Also, why it didn’t it catch on. (p.s. normal swingweight matching makes the longer clubs release more slowly than the shorter clubs. MOI matched clubs have the same release, so I used MOI matching instead of swingweight matching.) (p.s. 2, Swingweight scales don't work with butt weights installed, but MOI is measured with butt weights installed.)

I just joined. I'm stuck in Germany near a village called Issum. My wife is German and inherited the family farm, so we moved here from California in 2002. Luckily we are next to a golf course. I'm retired and 72 now. I've been playing golf most of my life. I have been trying to invent golf products since 1975 and so far have no real successes. I made a few putters, a laser device for putting, some golf mats, and recently a butt weighting system for my own clubs, which I will disclose in the DIY section. I also concoct and copy exercises for my golf, with the favorite being swinging with the feet close together. My wife has a bed a breakfast here called Pauenhof.