Keeping the Same Shafts

[Foot Wedge]

Every now and again I'll see something about a club, be it irons or woods, that's along the lines of "I put XYZ shaft in since I know those work for me" or "I suspect they'd be much better with shaft ABC".  That got me wondering, how many of y'all have been fitted for clubs and just end up changing heads?  Or ordering a new club with a shaft you've been previously fitted for?  Obviously the head will impact the performance and all this goes out the window if you've had a drastic swing change, I'm just wondering how many out there stick with something tried and true.

[WUTiger]

Whether last cycle's shaft will work again for you depends on two things:

• Is your swing basically the same.
• Are you in the same physical stage of your life. On irons I got fitted for Dynalite S300 shafts at age 44, but opted for lighter regular shafts when i got a new set at age 58.

For most golfers, you do OK if you have rods from your shaft band, a cluster of shaft models that tend to fit your swing on fittings. The last four years, my shaft band seems to be: NS Pro 8950GH (R) or 950 (R), KBS Tour 90 (R or S), KBS Tour 105 (R), Ping AWT 2.0 (R), Recoil 95 (F3).

[Foot Wedge]

22 minutes ago, WUTiger said:

• Is your swing basically the same.
• Are you in the same physical stage of your life. On irons I got fitted for Dynalite S300 shafts at age 44, but opted for lighter regular shafts when i got a new set at age 58.

Right, this is what I meant in drastic swing changes throwing the topic out the window.  Thanks for the input.  The shaft band piece makes sense.  I take it this would generally apply to woods too?

[WUTiger]

6 hours ago, Foot Wedge said:

The shaft band piece makes sense.  I take it this would generally apply to woods too?

Especially for woods. Because of the hundreds of varieties of graphite shafts, trying to find that one single wonder shaft will drive you crazy.

Happy shafting!

[Foot Wedge]

8 hours ago, WUTiger said:

Especially for woods.

I figure with the adjustability of woods now you can fine tune it to get the most from a shaft that already works.  Thanks for the tips, I'm just toying with the idea of getting a new head to pair with an existing shaft.  Not for now, but maybe down the road.

[Pretzel]

Every time I get fitted I get fitted for the best combination of clubhead and shaft for me, and what I'm looking for is generally the tightest dispersion pattern without sacrificing a ton of distance (5-10 yards is ok if the dispersion is significantly better). It's just worked out nicely so far that every time I've been fitted the KBS Tour X-flex shafts have been the best performer for me. 

Since that is the case I've kept the same set of shafts through 3 sets of irons now. Ordered them originally to install in my s55 irons, then installed them in some 716MB's that I was testing head to head with MP4's, and then I stuck them in the new set of MP4 heads that I ordered when I determined the MP4's worked better for me than the 716MB's. The two performed about the same as each other and so it really came down to personal preference and comfort.

That said, I would switch to a different shaft if I could find one that made an improvement on the launch monitor for me.