Effects of Shortening a Driver Shaft

[saevel25]

I found this video online. My current driver is at about 45.25 inches long. I am thinking about shortening it.

Now shortening a shaft will make it stiffer, but the guy took a shaft from 45.5 inches down to 43.5 inches. Basically it made it 2 cycles stiffer, so basically a cycle per inch.

For that driver and shaft, they needed to at about 15 grams to the clubhead end to get the swing weight back to its original measurement.

What I didn't know is that adding weight to the clubhead lowers the frequency by a full flex, or 10 cycles.

So basically butt cutting the club by an inch will stiffen it by 1/10 of a flex. Adding weight to the end will make it less stiff by a lot more. In the case of the video a whole flex less stiff.

Though I am not sure about the comments on the flex, as per the Mark Crossfield videos the flex doesn't matter as much as people do make it out to be.

Though I do have reservations about tip trimming a driver shaft. Certain shafts are not very good for tip trimming because they might have an extreme bed profile near the tip, and cutting too much off can change the whole dynamic of the shaft.

Not sure if I want to cut down my driver or not. I might just grip down on it for now. I had my Ping G10 driver cut down and it just felt weird afterwards.

[iacas]

Grip down.

The end. :)

[Ernest Jones]

I didn't watch the video but that's the head fitter for Don Trahan's (D.J.'s dad) swing method. Don Trahan is the creator of the Peak Performance Golf Swing aka PPGS. It's an extremely vertical swing method, no comment on the method but you might want to keep that in mind as the fitter's advice is likely geared towards people who swing using the PPGS method.

I believe the PPGS driver swing is similar.

[saevel25]

I didn't watch the video but that's the head fitter for Don Trahan's (D.J.'s dad) swing method. Don Trahan is the creator of the Peak Performance Golf Swing aka PPGS. It's an extremely vertical swing method, no comment on the method but you might want to keep that in mind as the fitter's advice is likely geared towards people who swing using the PPGS method.

I believe the PPGS driver swing is similar.

Not to sure about that. I would say he was talking in standard golf fitting lingo there. He is correct about swing weight getting lighter, and he fact that you would need to add weight to the clubhead end. If you add weight to a clubhead, then the club would flex more during the swing, hence it would have a frequency that is less stiff.

A frequency machine basically measures the oscillations per time unit. So adding weight to one end should make it oscillations at a slower rate.

My point being, it looks like a hassle to try to get it back to it's original swing weight and/or frequency.

I will go with Erik's advice, just choke down on the driver.

[Ernest Jones]

Not to sure about that. I would say he was talking in standard golf fitting lingo there. He is correct about swing weight getting lighter, and he fact that you would need to add weight to the clubhead end. If you add weight to a clubhead, then the club would flex more during the swing, hence it would have a frequency that is less stiff.

A frequency machine basically measures the oscillations per time unit. So adding weight to one end should make it oscillations at a slower rate.

My point being, it looks like a hassle to try to get it back to it's original swing weight and/or frequency.

I will go with Erik's advice, just choke down on the driver.

Yeah, like I said, I didn't watch it. Just thought you should know his background, and again, that doesn't mean the information isn't good, just that you should be aware of where he's coming from because there might be some information that's specific to a vertical swing method.

[Dave2512]

Buying an after market sleeve, some quick set, tip weights, shaft cutter and decent cheap shaft is easy enough if you want to experiment. I've never found any stock shafts I couldn't live without and sometimes it's nice just to start fresh. Use a swing weight calculator and play around with the numbers. Personally I can't feel a difference between D0 and D4 or whatever most modern drivers spec to, the static weight could still be close depending on what shaft, talking about grams here. I never feel like I have to add so much tip weight it will make the shaft whippy and completely change the way it feels. Though it's easy enough to find a heavier shaft that's stiffer at the tip to minimize how much weight needs to be added, can use lighter grips etc. If you don't like it there will be plenty of buyers on eBay willing to pay enough to break even on the parts for a short driver shaft.

The couple of times I was at a club makers shop he demonstrated how much variance there is in raw stock shafts. He put a couple of pullouts on the frequency machine and deflection board and they weren't dead nuts to specs anyway.