Unofficial and personal: Search for the holy grail part II - Project X HZRDUS Smoke im10-mid 50 Stiff (6.0) Shaft

[pakman92]

My journey in finding the ‘perfect shaft’ for my Callaway Mavrik Driver (Feel free to skip)

I was fitted for a driver in August of 2020 at a local golf store that offered several different fitting experiences.   One of the options available to me was using their Callaway Performance Center.   The retailer was named one of America’s 100 Best Club fitters for 2021-2022 by Golf Digest.   Driver + Iron fitting took around 60 minutes and costed $150.  I was able to use $75 of that as a credit toward the recommended clubs.  I won’t go on about the fitting experience other than saying that it was mediocre.  I didn’t have the know-how at the time to know what a good fitting experience should entail.   At any rate, I was recommended a Callaway Mavrik Driver 10.5 turned up to 11.5 w/ Aldila Rogue 130 MSI 60 in stiff which was one of the stock shaft offerings.   

I’ve played rest of 2020 and 2021 season with that configuration.  However, in the back of my mind, I was always wondering if I have the best head/shaft combo available to me.   Since purchasing and trying new heads can be an expensive venture, I decided to experiment with various shafts that can be gotten at reasonable prices.  There are many reasons I am second guessing the shaft choice from the fitting.

• My swing has evolved in two significant ways during last two seasons.   My miss has changed from pulls and slices to pushes and hooks.   My ball speed has increased by from mid 130 mph to low 140mph thanks to Swing Speed Training.
• During my fitting, I tried only two different shafts and was quickly fitted into the Rogue MSI 130 60 Stiff.  The fitter only seemed interested in seeing me hit 140mhp in ball speed.   Although I did hit better during the fitting with that shaft, I didn’t feel like I hit enough drives.  I’m just NOT GOOD ENOUGH to hit 20 drives each and arrive at a statistically meaningful difference.
• It seemed like a fun, relatively cheap and productive endeavor to try different shafts.  With CallawayPreowned.com, you can buy “used” shafts with Callaway adapters quite cheaply.   You can expect to pay around $50-$80 for stock shafts and $220-$350 for premium shaft such as Graphite Design Tour AD.  You can expect to recoup most of that cost by selling it back on Ebay.   All the “Like New” shafts from CallawayPreowned.com has been indistinguishable from new shafts with labels still on them.

Like I mentioned before, at my skill level, hitting 20 balls with each shaft may or may not present reliable pattern in ball flight and dispersion.   It may, but I don’t have enough faith in my driver swing to feel comfortable that the perceived tendencies/patterns are not simply variance playing tricks.    In short, I’m not a robot, I’m not Matt from TXG. I also know that my swing is good enough that with 100+ shots, true patterns/tendencies would emerge.   I’ve hit each shaft at least 100 times before deciding to keep or ditch it.

The First shaft to get the boot was Project X Evenflow Riptide 60 Regular (5.5) Shaft (Click for review).  The next shaft I’m giving up on is Project X HZRDUS Smoke im10-mid 50 Stiff (6.0) Shaft.  The experiment with this shaft was slightly more expensive.  It cost $84.81 including shipping and I sold it on EBay for $68.89 with fees.  The net cost was $15.91.   Running total so far for the 2 eliminated shafts is $23.36.

Company line and spec

HZRDUS Smoke im10-mid 50/60 is one of the stock offerings for Callaway Epic Max and Epic Speed drivers (2021).  Below is the spec published by Callaway. 

 

Below is the Spec from TrueTemper.  Note that these shafts come in mid and low spin variety.  Callaway version is the mid spin version.  You can see the discrepancy between the weight published by Callaway and TrueTemper.  When I weigh it and compared it with other shafts of known weight, the weight was close to TrueTemper’s number of 57g.   This is a lightweight mid launch, mid spin counterbalanced offering.

 Why I tried it

• I have never tried a 50g class shaft before.  I was intrigued to see it as a default stock option for Callaway Epic Max drivers. 
• I wanted to see if lighter shaft would result in increased ball speed.
• When I tried it at a box retailer the shaft felt OK.  Wasn’t too whippy and I wasn’t seeing ton of shots to the right which has been my experience with lighter and/or flexible shafts.

Why I'm giving up on it

• Feel: Out of the 8 shafts being tried, this one felt the lightest overall.  Starting with the transition to downswing, I felt uncertain what the clubhead was doing.  After the impact, there were instances where the ball moved the opposite way of what I thought it would do.   
• Dispersion:  As you can see in the numbers below offline #’s were quite a bit worse than the current front runner.  More concerning was that I had ~15% shot blocked way to the right.  This is the miss I’m trying to get rid of.   Standard Dev for carry was also the worst out of the remaining 7 shafts.   After around ~200 drives with the shaft, I can conclude that the dispersion data should be representative of what I am able to do with the shaft with this head and my swing.
• Ball Speed:  I was hoping to see greater ball speed from this shaft vs the others given the lighter weight.  It did not turn out to be the case for me.
• Spin and other #’s:  Back spin was also around ~200 rpm higher than the current leader with 2600.   It’s not far off from the average of all shafts @ 2650.

Numbers

First row shows the average of 194 shots taken with HZRDUS Smoke im10 mid 50 S.  Second row shows the average of 319 shots taken with the current keeper Evenflow Riptide 60 S.  The last row show the averages of 981 shots taken with all 8 shafts.   Backspin, offline std dev and carry numbers are all worse than average.

 Below are stats for shots that hit the fairway (25 yard from center and min 225 yards of total distance).  Second column represents the FW hit %.   You can see that I 40% on target compared to 45% on average with all shafts.

  Thanks for reading.   I hope it provides some value to someone.  Part 3 will come soon, almost ready to give up of 2 of the 6 remaining shafts. 

 

[cnosil]

Enjoy reading your reviews of products.   Great write up. 

 

What I am kind of seeing is that you are maxed out and shaft will only tweak what you are getting out of the driver.   Hitting 20+ shots with a shaft is way too many to determine fit;  you are better off with 5 or less since you will adapt your swing.     If you are trying to learn dispersion tendencies that would be hundreds of shots over a week or so of time;  hit 20 a day for a week and see what the dispersion and shape patterns look like.  

[RickyBobby_PR]

Good fitters only need a handful of shots to see what a shaft and head combo. They watch your swing and how you deliver then club. Since you were doing a fitting indoors they don’t have the ability to watch ball flight so they have to use the launch monitor numbers to see how the ball reacts. A good fitter can get a golfer dialed in with 20 swings and at least half way decent feedback from the golfer.

Without seeing your numbers from the fitting we can’t see if you are going in the right or wrong direction with your shaft choices.

Shafts aren’t going to be the magic bullet most golfers think they will. They aren’t going to add significant amount of ball speed or change launch and spin. All of that I on the golfer.

You don’t hit the ball high enough. 22 yards is low and therefore you also have a low descent angle. 

 

[pakman92]

25 minutes ago, RickyBobby_PR said:

Good fitters only need a handful of shots to see what a shaft and head combo. They watch your swing and how you deliver then club. Since you were doing a fitting indoors they don’t have the ability to watch ball flight so they have to use the launch monitor numbers to see how the ball reacts. A good fitter can get a golfer dialed in with 20 swings and at least half way decent feedback from the golfer.

Without seeing your numbers from the fitting we can’t see if you are going in the right or wrong direction with your shaft choices.

Shafts aren’t going to be the magic bullet most golfers think they will. They aren’t going to add significant amount of ball speed or change launch and spin. All of that I on the golfer.

You don’t hit the ball high enough. 22 yards is low and therefore you also have a low descent angle. 

 

All true, no doubt.  This is a fun experiment for me.  If there is no holy grail, fine.   I think I'm learning something in the process and it's getting me to the range often which is also good.   My swing is evolving through lessons and Speed Training.    I'm enjoying the process of evaluating shafts more than anything else.  Of course, all feedback and suggestions on improving my swing based on the numbers I published is very welcomed.

Below are my numbers from this past week lessons in December / January.

 

[RollingGreens]

Are you measuring height in feet or yards?

[RickyBobby_PR]

1 minute ago, RollingGreens said:

Are you measuring height in feet or yards?

It’s measured in yards. If it was 22’ it wouldn’t carry 215 yards 

[RickyBobby_PR]

16 minutes ago, pakman92 said:

All true, no doubt.  This is a fun experiment for me.  If there is no holy grail, fine.   I think I'm learning something in the process and it's getting me to the range often which is also good.   My swing is evolving through lessons and Speed Training.    I'm enjoying the process of evaluating shafts more than anything else.  Of course, all feedback and suggestions on improving my swing based on the numbers I published is very welcomed.

Below are my numbers from this past week lessons in December / January.

 

Defining not going to recommend anything swing related since you are working with an instructor. 
 

Whatever combo this one is from is a better fit than the previous two. It looks like your swing and this combo are a better fit. Height and descent angle are still not good tho so you hit a lower flighted ball that runs a lot. 

[pakman92]

2 hours ago, cnosil said:

Enjoy reading your reviews of products.   Great write up. 

 

What I am kind of seeing is that you are maxed out and shaft will only tweak what you are getting out of the driver.   Hitting 20+ shots with a shaft is way too many to determine fit;  you are better off with 5 or less since you will adapt your swing.     If you are trying to learn dispersion tendencies that would be hundreds of shots over a week or so of time;  hit 20 a day for a week and see what the dispersion and shape patterns look like.  

No shaft was hit more than 10 times a day.  I generally swap shafts after 5 hits.  Generally, 50 drives each time I'm at the range (indoor).   The 194 shots taken with this shaft was spread over 6 weeks.