Shaft Dilemma

[Dewdman42]

Ok, I have a few days to decided on a shaft dilema. I bought n R9 460 recently after going to a demo day and having Taylor made measure my swing. On that day I swung as fast as 105mph, but I don't usually swing quite that fast. Probably I should be swinging closer to 90mph, which is right on the border between a Regular and Stiff shaft, by the specs. I've never used stiff before. The Taylor Made guy seemed to think I would like that Matrix Xcon 5 stiff shaft, which he affectionately called "soft stiff". Supposedly it has a very low kick point which kind of compensates for the stiffness a bit. I hit it a few times and they liked what they saw. I liked how light it was.

So I bought one. Stiff Xcon5 with 9.5 face.

Played a few rounds. My shots were not any more accurate than normal and I easily lost 30-40 yards from what I was doing with my old R5 10.5.

I talked to the shop, they loaned me a Regular flex shaft to swap back and forth, since this head has the fancy adjustability stuff. So I've been at the range going back and forth between the two shafts and trying to decide which one to keep and I'm having one heck of a hard time deciding.

I'm going through a of changes in my swing right now too, which is making matters more difficult. Its hard to tell for sure when the good shots are good because I did proper technique or the bad shots are bad from poor technique or whether its one shaft or the other.

I will say, at first I thought the stiff shaft just had a harder strike feel to it that I didn't like at all. But now I think both shafts are rather strong that way compared to the R5. The R might be slightly softer.

I think in general, I hit further with the R shaft than the Stiff xcon. I can't really say either is any more accurate than the other because of my swing flaws. Every once in a while if I hit the stiff Xcon perfectly it sails perfectly, but the rest of the time it tends to be way short. The R flex can go pretty perfectly too when I hit it perfectly, but when I'm off, it seems like its still hitting further than the stiff. What I notice though is I get a bit more balooning with the R shaft then with the stiff.

Is a little bit of ballooning a good thing or bad thing? I wanna make sure I get enough roll to get 250-260 yards on most drives. I tend to carry about 220-230 on my good shots, but not as often with the stiffer shaft. It doesn't balloon a "lot". It floats with a pretty low to medium trajectory and then right near the end of the flight it seems to float up a a bit and then drop like a rock, which I think probably means its not gonna roll good. Maybe I can fix that with technique too, but I wanna make sure its not the shaft. It should be noted that my old R5 had a R flex shaft that seems even softer, with 10.5 and I never had ballooning at all with that one. So maybe I just need to hit around instead of down more, I'm not sure.

Anyway, I'm leaning towards the R flex at this point and just toning down my swing to stay within the 90mph range instead of trying to swing over 100. Funny thing is, when I swing right, without trying to swing fast, it goes over 100 anyway and probably I want the stiffer flex on those. But I swing wrongly often enough and those tend to be 90 or less no matter how hard I think I'm swinging. I have until Monday to decide which shaft to keep. I'm really torn on the issue. The Xcon shaft does feel tighter and more accurate in some way. The R flex just feels looser goosier. But overall, I think I'm hitting further with just as much accuracy/inaccuracy as I am with the stiff one...so....

What what you guys do?

By the way, I am not consistently hooking or slicing. I'm doing both and many straight shots too. When I execute proper technique, I'm getting a nice slight draw with either shaft. All I can really say is that the mishits on the stiff one lose a lot more yards than the Regular.