- Staff
- #76
lol that is putting it nicely.
Golf Shafts: Does price reflect quality and performance in your mind?
lol that is putting it nicely.
- Admin
- #77
I will say that segment is at least growing now with places like Club Champion and others. It’s nice to see golfers taking advantage of high technology that can help.
I also want to add that I am not saying there aren’t shafts made specifically for a manufacturer. A good example of that is the T700 that was in the Epic. The T1100 was red hot on tour and had the perfect color scheme. That shaft for every day golfers would have made very little sense. So they created a version called T700 that fit a rather large curve, because they knew they had a big selling product on their hand. Both of those names refer to a portion of the pre-preg used in the manufacturing of shafts. T1100 being extremely strong, T700 more normal (not poor).
Go back a bit and Matrix had some doozies when CE ran the company. Them and in my opinion Fuji were the worst offenders at this and both were standard in TaylorMade products.
I apologize if I am missing your point with the italics.
Can you further explain what you mean by what I underlined?
Very true you will get zero argument from me. Also, and please do not think me as being argumentative or combative in any way. I am not.
I am simply discussing for my personal education as well. I am well aware you have much more access to the industry than I do and would live to tap into your first hand knowledge more. I agree the bolded are not real numbers, but to use Fuji as a further example. Do you think you will see the Ventus red/blue/black (their current hot model) as a standard no upcharge option in a driver next year? No I do not think you will.
Now I now a variant of a shaft with that name appear next year with one OEM, but it is not the same shaft as what is currently available. It is simply piggy backing off the power of that name.
Can you expand on this a bit? Are you speaking to just the cost of materials? Or the cost to operate a company as a whole?
- Admin
- #81
Of course, conversations are good. The rest of that paragraph with the bolded sums it up. If you buy one orange it might by $99. If you buy a bag of 12 oranges, it might be $6.99.
Do I think we see a Ventus in 2020 as a standard option? Yes at some point in 2020. Will it be Red/Blue/Black? Possibly. 2 year run is pretty standard in golf shafts before they start hitting OEMs.
Golf shaft hits tour. Golf shaft hits aftermarket. Golf shaft becomes popular. Golf shaft goes to OEM. It is a fairly standard timeline and runs about 2 years with some aftermarket only exceptions. There was nothing in shafts hotter than HZRDUS when it came out. Nobody thought it could be in an OEM with in a few years, let alone the HandCrafted version. I said it would be and was told I was crazy. Low and behold it was not only in some, it was in all and the HC version was stock for Srixon.
- Admin
- #82
Not entirely...
But I would still love to hear the answer to the above question about the executives from OEMs and shaft companies. If you dont want to post publicly, please send me a PM.
I agree there are getting to be more and more exceptions. What Srixon did was wonderful!! About a year from now I agree the Ventus will be old news and maybe a stock option for some OEM. I would love to see made for and watered down or alternate OEM products go completely away.
As a fitter it is kind of frustrating to have to explain what the shaft is in the driver when it is not a standard on the website option for whatever company. Or that the shaft the customers are purchasing and that it is not the same as X tour pro and if he wants that one it is a $350 upcharge.
- Admin
- #84
I get it, but should you have to? As a fitter, let them hit stock, let them hit others. The numbers and feel should dictate what is best.
Chisag
Active member
... Tricky subject because there are some Made For shafts that are less expensive and use cheaper materials or production, but much more often than not the Made For shaft uses the same materials and manufacturing to produce a more golfer friendly shaft. Titleist and Cobra did more than a few times. Thy wanted a quality shaft hat good golfers could use just a touch more friendly to lower swing speeds as well as swing flaws. It was explained to me that most average golfer needs a softer tip as well more torque for better feel so usually an aftermarket shaft is modified to accomplish this. What made sense to me is the Cobra VP of engineering said many better golfers will most likely purchase an upgraded shaft or install an aftermarket shaft anyway so it makes sense to offer a shaft that the average player is going to play better with. And this is not done in a vacuum, they do extensive testing to see how average golfers perform with the shaft they are considering and then make the modifications.
... So while I have no verifiable proof for across he board, I think the days of cheap Made For shafts in better performing clubs is long gone. If there is a Made For shaft, you can bet it is the same as the aftermarket with tweaks to the tip and torque. Obviously cheaper clubs will have cheaper shafts.
... So while I have no verifiable proof for across he board, I think the days of cheap Made For shafts in better performing clubs is long gone. If there is a Made For shaft, you can bet it is the same as the aftermarket with tweaks to the tip and torque. Obviously cheaper clubs will have cheaper shafts.
I would say that sometimes it holds true and sometimes it doesnt. I would say that at some point you reach the point of diminishing returns, to where spending a lot more doesnt really gain you much.
Id compare it much like I would a shaving brush like you would use if you do traditional wet shaving. You can go out and buy a badger hair brush of a lower grade for $20 or $30 that works just fine but isnt the softest thing in the world. You can spend $70-$100 on a higher grade of hair that is softer, holds more water and will make a better lather more easily. Or, you can go out and spend $150-$300+ for a really high grade of badger hair that is a bit softer still but really doesnt hold any more water or make any better lather. You kind of reach a point in the mid grade where you spend a lot more but dont really get a lot more.
IMO, its like this with some of the higher end shafts. Im sure they are higher quality but I dont see where theres a much greater level of performance than something that is more in the middle price range.
Id compare it much like I would a shaving brush like you would use if you do traditional wet shaving. You can go out and buy a badger hair brush of a lower grade for $20 or $30 that works just fine but isnt the softest thing in the world. You can spend $70-$100 on a higher grade of hair that is softer, holds more water and will make a better lather more easily. Or, you can go out and spend $150-$300+ for a really high grade of badger hair that is a bit softer still but really doesnt hold any more water or make any better lather. You kind of reach a point in the mid grade where you spend a lot more but dont really get a lot more.
IMO, its like this with some of the higher end shafts. Im sure they are higher quality but I dont see where theres a much greater level of performance than something that is more in the middle price range.
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I would like to think performance trumps all with me, but I generally start by looking at the shafts I can afford and working my way through them.. The cheapest shafts are ones I probably don't even think to try (because I'm so tired by then)...so I suppose price does have an affect in the range I think I can afford without getting in too much troble
DG_1234
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I expect that so long as the largest brand names are able to sell Made For shafts in their woods lines, they will do so.
But for a brand that has not been able to achieve much sales volume of finished drivers-fairways-hybrids with Made For shafts, I think a heads-only component sales strategy might be worth trying.
- Admin
- #90
Can you please answer the question from above? Asking genuinely and it keeps getting skipped over.
DG_1234
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Sorry, naming names would not be respectful or fair to the people I've spoken to.
But I think anyone who has monitored the golf industry for awhile and, or, tried lots of shafts should be able to form their own conclusions. For example, Japan production is much more expensive than China production. And, the aftermarket shafts available through major OEM custom departments are significantly higher priced than that brand's stock shaft offerings, sometimes an up charge of hundreds of dollars. Also, some (if not most ) players who have swung stock "Made For" shafts as well as "Real" aftermarket shafts find a noticeable difference in how the club feels when swung, including impact sound/feel.
I understand that the major OEM's usual company proclamation is that their volume buying power allows them to offer stock shafts made of the same materials, workmanship etc... as the more expensive aftermarket shafts. So, it's up to the consumer whether he/she believes/buys the company line or not.
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- Thread starter
- Staff
- #92
I would bet a significant amount that if we had a bunch of golfers hit a “stock” vs “aftermarket” version of the same shaft with no paint they would NOT be able to tell a difference. Most golfers only do because they know going into the swings what is what.
- Admin
- #93
This is super confusing.
Its genuinely shocking to me that major company executives are speaking of something that is so factually inaccurate, but its becoming a bit par for the course.
Oh well, back to the discussion.
So a lot of TX shafts have a different profile than their retail counterparts.
Famous examples being kuro kage with such an esoteric naming convention/etching, tensei AV, adila rouge, and project x (hazardous smoke green and yellow are different from their 6.5 counterparts)
Are they better? Maybe for the swing and feel they are designed for. I know I have a hard time separating price from quality, but at the same time my self fits weren't beat by Club Champion or any other fitting I've done.
Famous examples being kuro kage with such an esoteric naming convention/etching, tensei AV, adila rouge, and project x (hazardous smoke green and yellow are different from their 6.5 counterparts)
Are they better? Maybe for the swing and feel they are designed for. I know I have a hard time separating price from quality, but at the same time my self fits weren't beat by Club Champion or any other fitting I've done.
I'd agree with this statement. But as a counter point, I would say that if you looked at the numbers ( once you got past feel ) once you get enough of a sample size, you'd be able to hint at which ones were "stock" vs "aftermarket" by analyzing the results. My frustration in past fittings ( previous to the last one that is ) was that you hit 5 or 8 balls and anyone trying to sell you an upgrade or a new driver is going to say "Doesn't that feel better than what you hit now?". That's a very different experience than going to a fitter who is focused more on the fit than the upsell. I believe that most head purchases are done on feel/looks/immediate results from a low sample size of hits. Shaft purchases however its harder to do that effectively and frankly, shouldn't be easy. The decision on shaft options should be looked at over large sample data and then add feel to the equation. Unfortunately for a large number of us non-elite golfers, the "hit 5 balls with one of 4 shafts and buy it" is far more common. It's one of the reasons the "Made for" market and the "stock" options fit such a wide variety of types of amateur golfers.
From a business perspective, the impact is obvious. If I am a driver maker, I want to sell as many drivers as possible. To do that, I need to be able to fit as many swing types as possible. That means either make tons of different head types ( and have to teach fitters which ones go to which swing type ), make heads that are more and more adjustable ( which you see a lot on the market today ) and/or customize the offerings by adopting a "stock" variety of shafts to support those swing types. Like I mention above, a guy off the street sees a head and loves the look and wants to hit it. But when he doesn't hit it well, it may not be because of the head, but because of the shaft pair. Now it takes that out of the equation a bit which gives an upside on sales.
I don't have near as much insider information or relationships as others on this thread so I may be WAAAAAY off base but that's my 2 cents on how I see the marketplace . Especially from a point of view of someone who has done both the "buy what the clubs came with" approach and now have dabbled in the "buy what works/fits/performs best" approach.
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- Admin
- #96
There is an assumption that numbers would be better with aftermarket. A great example of how the opposite can take place is take 20 golfers and any weekend course and give them a project X T1100 shaft. Then give the same golfers a T700 shaft and see which one works better for them.
Yhe good news, fitting is growing and at theend of the day will only help golfers in multiple ways. Especially as fitters finally start getting better too.
KingSinghUNLTD
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- #98
Both handcrafted PX shafts were used as stock, as mentioned above.