Iron shaft weight question

[rizzo269]

Hey THP, question on shaft weight versus feeling the weight of the iron club head. I've been taking lessons for almost 3 months and went through a pretty substantial swing change which is showing some great improvements. When I got fit for my apex 21's early last year the KBS $ taper in stiff flex was the best performer.

I was at the range with a buddy who has mavrik irons with the stock elevate 95 shafts in regular flex. I tried his 6-9 irons out and was amazed at how I could feel the weight of the head more than my apex. Granted this is a sample size of 1 day but my contact with these seemed very consistent which I struggle with at times. So my question is if you lighten the shaft profile does that give you more feel of the head weight possibly? Do I just slap a couple grams of lead tape on my 7 iron and test it out? Also thought about ordering another apex 7 iron with a stock shaft just to see the difference.

My instructor has brought up before that I may see a benefit from a heavier head iron. I was just curious as to how the shaft weight could change the feel of club head weight regardless of the overall clubs weight.

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[alistaird]

Small sample but when I was trying some shafts in Apex Irons (coming from Big Bertha Gold with RCH 55 graphites) the 120s were horrible as I couldn’t feel the head at all, but the 95s felt great.

So IMHO, yes shaft weight can make a big difference.

A


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[GraniteRoost]

Yes, that sensation of feeling the head you are referring to is swingweight. Swingweight is a measure of the mass balance point of the club. A higher swingweight will have a relatively heavier head, and a lighter swingweight has a relatively lighter head.

Swingweight is not a measure of overall mass, but the balance of mass along the length of the club. You can have two clubs with different overall weights, that have the same swingweight. Both overall weight and swingweight are important.

All things being equal, if you put a heavier shaft in the same iron head, swingweight will go down. If you put in a lighter shaft, or put lead tape on the iron head, swingweight will go up.

 

[TheLetterSee]

An easy way to think of it is to think of the head and shaft weight as a percentage of the total club weight. With the head being the same, a lighter shaft will make the head have a higher percentage of the total weight making it feel heavier. A heavier shaft will cause the head to be less of the total weight so it will feel lighter.

 

[rizzo269]

An easy way to think of it is to think of the head and shaft weight as a percentage of the total club weight. With the head being the same, a lighter shaft will make the head have a higher percentage of the total weight making it feel heavier. A heavier shaft will cause the head to be less of the total weight so it will feel lighter.

This was exactly how I was thinking about it and prompted me to ask others. I'm going to try and take my current 7 iron to a local store and hit some balls against a lighter shafter version of the same club and see how the feel is.

Appreciate the comments. I'm not looking for yards or speed, just consistency on solid contact. It will be interesting to see the differences.

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[Mack Daddy]

You should try to get the swingweight of your friends club and see if a lighter grip could increase your swingweight to match. If you don’t have a swingweight scale you could always calculate the swingweight with a tape measure, $10 gram scale off Amazon, and the website that I’ll post below. I compared this method to my swingweight scale and it’s pretty accurate.

Assembled Golf Club Swingweight Calculator

www.hirekogolf.com

 

[Evolvingwildes]

All things being equal, if you put a heavier shaft in the same iron head, swingweight will go down. If you put in a lighter shaft, or put lead tape on the iron head, swingweight will go up.

Totally agree with everything you mention up to this point, however I've found that putting in a heavier shaft almost always increases the swingweight of a golf club. This is due to where the balance point on the swingweight scale is - it's relatively close to the butt-end of the golf club. So an increase in weight of the shaft usually means more mass beyond the balance point = higher SW (feels heavier to swing).

@rizzo269 So lowering the shaft weight will likely have the opposite effect and lessen your ability to feel the club head in the swing. In the example you provided, there are a few reasons the SW could feel higher: the actual irons could have heavier heads, or they could be a bit longer than your current irons, or the balance point of the shaft could be different. I think the $-taper shafts are slightly counterbalanced, so they might SW similar to the Elevate shafts with everything else being equal, even if the Elevate shafts are ~25 grams less (which again points to one of the other factors increasing the SW over your irons).