No Putts Given Podcast..."Made For" Shafts

[GolfSpy AFG]

Not sure how many members here check out the podcasts, hopefully most, but I highly recommend the most recent one entitled "Has Callaway Golf Lost Their Mojo?"

The Callaway discussion was interesting on its own, but for me the real jewel of the discussion is found in the overview of the shaft survey results and the "made for" shaft issue.

If you're unfamiliar, here's a link to a 2017 article MGS released (by Chris Nickel) that I hope opened a lot of eyes...it certainly did for me.

https://mygolfspy.com/made-for-shafts-a-closer-look/

There are a few outstanding questions the discussion leaves me with. 

1) Outside of the general emotional reaction to a company attempting to dupe the consumer, should I care from a performance perspective?  I get that a "made for" performs differently than the family of shafts it's painted to look like (see T800 vs T1100 in my Epic), but does different necessarily mean inferior?

2) Is every OEM doing this right now, or are there currently off-the-rack offerings that are giving us the real deal?

Thoughts/insights anyone?

[cnosil]

1) Outside of the general emotional reaction to a company attempting to dupe the consumer, should I care from a performance perspective?  I get that a "made for" performs differently than the family of shafts it's painted to look like (see T800 vs T1100 in my Epic), but does different necessarily mean inferior?
2) Is every OEM doing this right now, or are there currently off-the-rack offerings that are giving us the real deal?
Thoughts/insights anyone?

1). I don’t think it means inferior just different and designed to fit a wider range of golfers. Club manufacturers are providing a lot of high quality shafts as standard offerings.

2). Depends on what you mean by the “real deal”. No one offers a real deal Ventus as a stock shaft but you can get lots or real deal shafts for no upcharge. As long as the name, designation, or designation is different than the high end aftermarket then it is a real deal shaft made to some specification.

[RickyBobby_PR]

1 hour ago, Getoffmylawn said:

Not sure how many members here check out the podcasts, hopefully most, but I highly recommend the most recent one entitled "Has Callaway Golf Lost Their Mojo?"

The Callaway discussion was interesting on its own, but for me the real jewel of the discussion is found in the overview of the shaft survey results and the "made for" shaft issue.

If you're unfamiliar, here's a link to a 2017 article MGS released (by Chris Nickel) that I hope opened a lot of eyes...it certainly did for me.

https://mygolfspy.com/made-for-shafts-a-closer-look/

There are a few outstanding questions the discussion leaves me with. 

1) Outside of the general emotional reaction to a company attempting to dupe the consumer, should I care from a performance perspective?  I get that a "made for" performs differently than the family of shafts it's painted to look like (see T800 vs T1100 in my Epic), but does different necessarily mean inferior?

2) Is every OEM doing this right now, or are there currently off-the-rack offerings that are giving us the real deal?

Thoughts/insights anyone?

1) it doesn’t mean inferior. Each shaft is designed to produce a certain feel and launch. The shafts that end up as stock offerings are generally designed to provide a softer feel with mid-high launch and mid-high spin as most amateurs need help with this. But they also offer x flex and heavier options for the amateur that needs something stiffer and doesn’t need spin or launch. This design amazing with the cost allows the manufacturer to to use lower cost materials. By using various layers of graphite as well as the orientation and length of each piece the manufacturer can achieve their end goal. The club manufacturer then offers multiple different shaft brands to allow an easier fit for stock shafts, for one person the fujikura 2.0 might not be as good a fit as the atmos or the px evenflow as examples.

2) not every manufacturer offers made for shafts. UST, Accra, Graphite Design for example are usually all upgrade options. Yes there are some real deal shafts that are stock options. The PX hzrdus smoke line and their evenflow lineup are all real deal shafts. Aldila is offering their new shaft as free upgrade in Callaway. 

[heavygolffeels]

Alot of companies are doing this right now. Look at the success of the SIM and the cough.cough Ventus wink, wink.

Some manufactures still get it right. Look at the 785 driver, which is an absolute beast by the way, with a handcrafted hzrdus black. You see alot of those hzrdus shafts as stock offerings, but not many OEMs offering the handcrafted version. 

[RickyBobby_PR]

36 minutes ago, scooterhd2 said:

Alot of companies are doing this right now. Look at the success of the SIM and the cough.cough Ventus wink, wink.

Some manufactures still get it right. Look at the 785 driver, which is an absolute beast by the way, with a handcrafted hzrdus black. You see alot of those hzrdus shafts as stock offerings, but not many OEMs offering the handcrafted version. 

Well the handcrafted doesn’t really exist anymore and especially the handcrafted in San Diego. 

[heavygolffeels]

5 minutes ago, RickyBobby_PR said:

Well the handcrafted doesn’t really exist anymore and especially the handcrafted in San Diego. 

Whys that? Now it is small batch? The trick has always been making the same looking shaft but have the real one marked in some fashion. Maybe it has a logo in a certain spot ala handcrafted or velocore, or it has a pattern run wider or further up the shaft. always tricks to fool the uniformed consumer. 

[Guest Delete]

1 hour ago, scooterhd2 said:

Whys that? Now it is small batch? The trick has always been making the same looking shaft but have the real one marked in some fashion. Maybe it has a logo in a certain spot ala handcrafted or velocore, or it has a pattern run wider or further up the shaft. always tricks to fool the uniformed consumer. 

Are we talking about whiskey now?

[RickyBobby_PR]

3 hours ago, scooterhd2 said:

Whys that? Now it is small batch? The trick has always been making the same looking shaft but have the real one marked in some fashion. Maybe it has a logo in a certain spot ala handcrafted or velocore, or it has a pattern run wider or further up the shaft. always tricks to fool the uniformed consumer. 

There was never a difference between the handcrafted and the non other than where they were made. Now all of the PX shafts are made in their china facility including the small batch. 
 

The handcrafted was more marketing than it was design or materials. 

[ZenGolfer]

That was certainly an enlightening episode and made me kind of angry about the bait 'n switch that OEMs do by thinking that you are getting a high-end shaft but youre really just getting a cheap shaft with a fancy name.

[RickyBobby_PR]

21 minutes ago, Pingistheanser said:

That was certainly an enlightening episode and made me kind of angry about the bait 'n switch that OEMs do by thinking that you are getting a high-end shaft but youre really just getting a cheap shaft with a fancy name.

It’s not really a bait and switch. The vast majority of golfers aren’t into the shafts specs, who makes a shaft which even for their followers who are more educated than the general golfer didn’t know who made Diamana or speeder shafts. Take away golf forum members, Facebook Golf groups, those on team titleist or Callaway community members and golfers that walk into a golf shop to buy clubs go to the brand they want find the loft in the head they want them find the one one with the sticker that says S, R, X and but it. They don’t know if the shaft is low launch low spin or high launch high spin. This type of golfer doesn’t know tm has a ventus without velocore or that the atmos blue isn’t the same as the atmos blue tour spec. 
 

Now for the educated golfer whether they are on forums or just a club junkie they will have somewhere between some knowledge to deep into the ei profiles of each shaft and tweaking the shafts to their liking, those on the lower end of the knowledge spectrum may get fooled if they aren’t paying attention but things like price will be a good indication of real deal or not. Like any consumer product it’s on the buyer to do whatever research they feel is needed to may as much of an informed decision before a purchase.

As they talked about in the podcast the club oem needs to sell product and they need a shaft in their head, the shaft brands need to sell product and work with the club OEMs to find a combo that fits the vast majority of golfers as they know a large portion just buy off the rack. 

[heavygolffeels]

3 hours ago, RickyBobby_PR said:

There was never a difference between the handcrafted and the non other than where they were made. Now all of the PX shafts are made in their china facility including the small batch. 
 

The handcrafted was more marketing than it was design or materials. 

Design maybe. materials maybe. but the word on the handcrafted was always that they were made in cali to super tight tolerances. the price was double the regular shaft. hzrdus shafts are popular on tour but I dont recall every seeing a bag with a non handcrafted shaft. I wont pretend to be the player that can pick out the tiniest different in weights and torque and flexes, but i will say that I have owned an evenflow black and hzrdus yellow in the regular and handcrafted versions and in each case the handcrafted version stuck around. Possibly mental. Possibly placebo, like I said I make no absolute declarations, but the handcrafted shafts felt and performed better for me. I dont doubt it's any different for the vents or Mitsubishi shafts that are so popular right now. 

[RickyBobby_PR]

8 hours ago, scooterhd2 said:

Design maybe. materials maybe. but the word on the handcrafted was always that they were made in cali to super tight tolerances. the price was double the regular shaft. hzrdus shafts are popular on tour but I dont recall every seeing a bag with a non handcrafted shaft. I wont pretend to be the player that can pick out the tiniest different in weights and torque and flexes, but i will say that I have owned an evenflow black and hzrdus yellow in the regular and handcrafted versions and in each case the handcrafted version stuck around. Possibly mental. Possibly placebo, like I said I make no absolute declarations, but the handcrafted shafts felt and performed better for me. I dont doubt it's any different for the vents or Mitsubishi shafts that are so popular right now. 

The difference between being made in San Diego and being made in China is the number of people that make them. San Diego has 5 or 6 people making the shafts and could only produce a small number of shafts per day. In China they run a factory on a 24 hour production schedule so thousands can be made a day. Limited supply, higher cost of labor lead to higher costs. There’s going to be tolerance difference between the people making them in San Diego as there would be between San Diego and China. Don Brown the head of design at PX has confirmed on several forums and in videos as well as to myself and six others in person there is no difference in performance between a handcrafted and a non handcrafted. I have played or tested all the hzrdus lines in both handcrafted and non and compared numbers on a monitor and there is no difference in numbers outside of the result of a swing.

I have also played a shaft made by one of the shaft rollers in San Diego and one I rolled with the same specs and again no difference in performance between the two.

[storm319]

9 hours ago, scooterhd2 said:

Design maybe. materials maybe. but the word on the handcrafted was always that they were made in cali to super tight tolerances. the price was double the regular shaft. hzrdus shafts are popular on tour but I dont recall every seeing a bag with a non handcrafted shaft. I wont pretend to be the player that can pick out the tiniest different in weights and torque and flexes, but i will say that I have owned an evenflow black and hzrdus yellow in the regular and handcrafted versions and in each case the handcrafted version stuck around. Possibly mental. Possibly placebo, like I said I make no absolute declarations, but the handcrafted shafts felt and performed better for me. I dont doubt it's any different for the vents or Mitsubishi shafts that are so popular right now. 

The perceived difference was all in your head based on confirmation from Don Brown himself, but if the HC stamp gives you a higher level of confidence carry on.

Also, I do not believe that Fujikura nor MItsubishi Rayon have ever done anything like True Temper’s HC approach (USTs TPX program was similar).

[Grit Golf]

TO BE CLEAR, the t800 and the t1100 are different shafts. Different in everyway, most notably the t1100 gets its name from the carbon fiber pre-preg used to give it it's stiffness and resistance to hoop deformation (t1100). That material is super expensive, so in the "made for" Callaway used a lower modulus carbon, called t800. If you are a member of Russ Ryden's golfshaftreviews site you can see the EI curves, they perform quite differently. It's a members site, so I won't steal his IP by posting it here.

1) Now on to your question, does that make it worse. In the t800 vs t1100 example (GBB Epic), the t800 is a better shaft for MOST golfers. It's higher torque which helps close the face, and it promotes a dynamic upward angle of attack while stabilizing the head well for a light shaft. T800 fit me better than the t1100, I tried both when I was gaming the Epic. Golfers at the elite level will likely feel differently. It's also helpful that it's a cheaper shaft to make (helpful to Cally and to the consumer so they don't have to spend $799 to get the driver that fits them).

2) There are OEMs selling "real deal" stuff. But for most oem offerings, there is a super premium version of that shaft from the manufacturer that you are not getting. A good example is MRC Kuro Kage, they put a KK "silver" in alot of OEM clubs, but there is also a $350 version of that shaft called KK ti-ni that uses exotic premium materials and performs differently.

To me, Callaway isn't one of the worst in "duping" customers, I think they give enough info to know the shafts are different and they emphasize being fit into the right shaft. Taylormade/Cobra have pushed the limits of good taste in the past. I like Ping's approach of private labelling shafts from other manufacturers and working with the manufacturer to design the shaft around their head and performance goals. It's impossible for a customer to confuse a PING TFC80 shaft with a UST Recoil shaft (both made by UST but different), and the Ping TFC and really all of the private label stuff performs really well. I know alot of GREAT golfers fit into ping "made for" options above all else in the cart. I've even put pulled ping fairway and hybrid shafts into other MFG heads because I like em that much and they go for a song on eBay. I think Ping has it right.

[RickyBobby_PR]

59 minutes ago, Grit Golf said:

TO BE CLEAR, the t800 and the t1100 are different shafts. Different in everyway, most notably the t1100 gets its name from the carbon fiber pre-preg used to give it it's stiffness and resistance to hoop deformation (t1100). That material is super expensive, so in the "made for" Callaway used a lower modulus carbon, called t800. If you are a member of Russ Ryden's golfshaftreviews site you can see the EI curves, they perform quite differently. It's a members site, so I won't steal his IP by posting it here.

1) Now on to your question, does that make it worse. In the t800 vs t1100 example (GBB Epic), the t800 is a better shaft for MOST golfers. It's higher torque which helps close the face, and it promotes a dynamic upward angle of attack while stabilizing the head well for a light shaft. T800 fit me better than the t1100, I tried both when I was gaming the Epic. Golfers at the elite level will likely feel differently. It's also helpful that it's a cheaper shaft to make (helpful to Cally and to the consumer so they don't have to spend $799 to get the driver that fits them).

2) There are OEMs selling "real deal" stuff. But for most oem offerings, there is a super premium version of that shaft from the manufacturer that you are not getting. A good example is MRC Kuro Kage, they put a KK "silver" in alot of OEM clubs, but there is also a $350 version of that shaft called KK ti-ni that uses exotic premium materials and performs differently.

To me, Callaway isn't one of the worst in "duping" customers, I think they give enough info to know the shafts are different and they emphasize being fit into the right shaft. Taylormade/Cobra have pushed the limits of good taste in the past. I like Ping's approach of private labelling shafts from other manufacturers and working with the manufacturer to design the shaft around their head and performance goals. It's impossible for a customer to confuse a PING TFC80 shaft with a UST Recoil shaft (both made by UST but different), and the Ping TFC and really all of the private label stuff performs really well. I know alot of GREAT golfers fit into ping "made for" options above all else in the cart. I've even put pulled ping fairway and hybrid shafts into other MFG heads because I like em that much and they go for a song on eBay. I think Ping has it right.

Torque has nothing to do with opening and closing the face. Torque deals with the twisting of the shaft and how it feels at impact. There are plenty of videos around that talk about this. UST, PX and Fukijura have also said that torque isn’t one of the characteristics of a shaft people should even look at when thinking about buying a shaft. I’ve seen in person a shaft with 2.1 torque wiggle like a wet noodle and be almost uncontrollable when trying to swing it.
 

As for ping they have designers that come up with the specs them work with UST and Aldila. The Ping Tour shaft has been made by UST and is based off their elements chrome shaft and the design hasn’t changed but they have the heavier version in recent years

[Grit Golf]

For me, I was leaving the face open with the t1100 and I often do that w other low torque shafts, especially if the flex is too stiff in the mid section of the shaft. It was plainly visible on trackman.

I think there's value in using torque and EI curves to narrow the field so to speak.  My fitter was talking to me about torque, so right or wrong he was using that number as one data point. I'll have to educate myself on why you shouldn't look at torque? That's new information to me. Up to this point I've trusted Russ Ryden's site for that info because he measures all shafts he reviews the same way on the same equipment.

Regardless of what the ping shafts are based on or who makes them, Im saying it's my opinion that it is refreshing they don't call it some made up name like "Elements Chrome Xtra Bling" - they call it ping tfc419. That's more honest. I also think ping does a great job of collaborating with their suppliers on design, I see a disproportionate amount of people happy w ping "made fors". To me, that adds to the value of the brand and removes confusion. Just my 2 cents.

[RickyBobby_PR]

26 minutes ago, Grit Golf said:

For me, I was leaving the face open with the t1100 and I often do that w other low torque shafts, especially if the flex is too stiff in the mid section of the shaft. It was plainly visible on trackman.

I think there's value in using torque and EI curves to narrow the field so to speak.  My fitter was talking to me about torque, so right or wrong he was using that number as one data point. I'll have to educate myself on why you shouldn't look at torque? That's new information to me. Up to this point I've trusted Russ Ryden's site for that info because he measures all shafts he reviews the same way on the same equipment.

Regardless of what the ping shafts are based on or who makes them, Im saying it's my opinion that it is refreshing they don't call it some made up name like "Elements Chrome Xtra Bling" - they call it ping tfc419. That's more honest. I also think ping does a great job of collaborating with their suppliers on design, I see a disproportionate amount of people happy w ping "made fors". To me, that adds to the value of the brand and removes confusion. Just my 2 cents.

The ei profile has way more to do with it than torque ever will in how one swings the club and especially since torque like many other aspects of the shaft have no industry standard and is measured not only by different machines but in different ways between brands it’s not really important.
 

Anyone that talks about torque in any aspect other than the feel of the shaft it’s just spouting off. 

Here is from one of the best in the industry in a very short and simple video

Edit: I can attest to what he is saying about ball flight because I told him I liked everything about the evenflow blue shaft other than the feel of it. He took that information plugged it into their design program and built me a shaft that maintained the same wi profile and performance and softened the torque by about .5 degree

[RickyBobby_PR]

Another video just out from true temper on torque