Reshafting irons w/ consistent length?

[Colt]

If I were to shaft all of my irons 4-9 with the length shaft in my 8 iron would it be seriously detrimental to distance ie. 9 iron long & 4-7 short or would it just be a minor adjustment for me? I am the most comfortable with my 8i and choke up on longer clubs to get that feel anyway, so I was thinking why not. Opinions?

 

[JB]

There have been iron sets that have all the same length. Normally its a 6 iron. It goes back as far as John Hoeflich's EQL designed irons way back when. It would mess with your distance quite a bit I would think. Loft is not the only thing that causes distance. Length does too.

 

[CharlieMoy]

I would think so. I know someone who as done this, with 4/5/6 and 7/8/9 and pw/sw/lw. Then fiddled with the lofts to get better distances, gap-wise. He seems to like it. I never played enough with him to know how it works

If I were to shaft all of my irons 4-9 with the length shaft in my 8 iron would it be seriously detrimental to distance ie. 9 iron long & 4-7 short or would it just be a minor adjustment for me? I am the most comfortable with my 8i and choke up on longer clubs to get that feel anyway, so I was thinking why not. Opinions?

 

[Colt]

Maybe I will try that instead 4-6 shafted to 6 length, leave the rest alone. Pick up a hybrid to fill in the gap in a few months when that Mashie comes out. That'll give me enough time to see where I'm at.

 

[c_ault]

I thought I had heard about this in the forums here at some point but cannot find it with the search feature. This clubmaker has an interesting idea about shaft lengths:

http://www.danscustomgolfshop.com/index.html

His idea is to adjust the shafts and lies in such a way that you don't have to change you stance/swing angles between clubs.

The science sounds interesting and if I had the money I'd give it a shot (but that would be after having a custom fitted normal set.)

 

[Clintk55]

1 iron golf makes complete sets at whichever length you are most comfortable with. I've never tried it though.

 

[jnug]

Maybe it is just me but I am having a real hard time getting this one, at least one length for every club. It sounds like the idea hopes to get the golfer more comfortable with his clubs faster. I think I would have as much trouble getting used to seeing small, flat club heads at the end of short shafts and getting the length of shot that I would expect from them as I have going from one length to the other progressively. It would certainly leave a big gap in club length between all of your irons and your fairway woods.

As for the guy with his new formula for progressively changing length and lie angle, well I would think that you could get a custom fitter to look at your lie angle vs length of shaft twice instead of once maybe splitting the long and short irons to see if there was a rational for modifying the lie angle at some point in the progression. That is one thing a custom fitting is supposed to address. Till now I guess the industry has decided that once the right shaft length and lie angle characteristic has been determined (I think using a six iron to represent the middle of the set), fitters would use one progression through the whole set. I don’t think there would be that much resistance to using one progression for long irons and one for short or skipping making a lie angle change for one club so that the fitter caught up to whatever anomaly might be at work. But I think if it made sense it would be because as the fitter worked through the progression for you, your physical numbers for height and arm length suggested that the “normal” progression resulted in an anomaly at some point.

If you think about it if someone wants to argue that the standard progression is wrong how far off can 1* of lie angle be? 2* can’t be right. Imagine what the clubs at the ends of the progression would look like if you changed lie angle by 2* for each club? I suppose you could look at length the same way. I guess the fact that someone hasn’t as yet developed a dynamic chart that used a different progression for both lie angle and length depending on a person’s physical numbers is something of a surprise especially in this day of massive computing power.

 

[Guia]

There is a golf club manufacturer who does all the clubs the same length, I believe the name is "1 iron" (meaning all are the same length. I have never tried them and knows of no one who has, to me I think you would be unable to finesse shots. Who knows?