Tom Wishon Shaft Myth #2

[RickyBobby_PR]

Don’t want to link an article from another site so posting some of the interesting myths and his response to them. These are some of the ones that seem to pop up constantly on forums

The shaft is the most important component of the golf club

Sorry, but when you’re talking about ALL golfers, the shaft is not as important to the actual performance of the shot as is the clubhead. I’ll give you an example of when this was actually “tested and proven” in the golf industry by a huge number of golfers. Back in the early 1970s when PING golf company moved to the front of the golf industry through the introduction of their deep cavity back original Ping Eye model irons, the standard shaft installed in every set of Eye irons was a 125 gram X flex steel shaft.

Ping’s founder Karsten Solheim used these shafts in his irons because he believed a heavier and stiffer shaft would help all golfers hit the ball straighter. Literally millions of sets of PING irons with X flex heavier weight steel shafts were sold throughout the 1970s and you know what? Literally millions of golfers liked their new PING irons more than their previous irons. Why? Because the original PING Eye irons were the very first irons with a deep cavity back design AND lower lofts than what had been the norm for irons – this meant the moment of inertia (MOI) of the Eye irons was FAR higher than any previous iron model yet designed. This in turn gave golfers such a huge improvement in off center hit performance as well as on center hit distance over the irons they previously used that this big leap forward in head performance completely overshadowed the potentially bad effects to golfers using a shaft that was too heavy and too stiff for their swing.

Of course, we know today that playing with too heavy and too stiff of a shaft can rob the golfer of clubhead speed and shot consistency and make the feeling of impact become “dead and boardy.” But the point shown by the PING example of the 1970s is that if the clubhead’s improvement is great enough for the golfer over what they used to play, the shaft does not have to be accurately fit for the golfer to still realize significant game improvement.