For those who know lots about shafts, at what handicap should a person be (roughly) before considering anything other than the correct shaft flex?

Depends how much money you would like to waste

This is an interesting read on shafts from, imo, a respected authority.

http://www.golfwrx.com/6419/tom-wish...-help-you-all/

NXT what do you think about spining a shaft? I don't know if that's still a thing as I've been out of the business for a while.

Using the same weight and flex the difference is very small, you know like when I said flex and weight are 95% of the equation.

Would love to see some actual proof, this is assuming all variables like AoA and centeredness of contact are the same? I'm highly skeptical shafts with the same weight and flex could erase the 2* difference in the loft of the club.

No doubt in my mind you did this testing with tour quality golf balls on a trackman or flightscope as opposed to your club/local driving range with crappy range balls, so lets see the data?

I have done my part and showed you a fitting where someone tried 9 different shafts in the same head and had a total distance dispersion of 7 yards as well as a quote from a person involved in R&D for testing golf shafts who says once you get flex and weight correct everything else is pretty meaningless.

Totally worthless nowadays. Shafts are much better now.

Cliffs from JAAASH article

The bolded is my reason for skepticism that shafts of equal flex and weight could produce a lower more boring ball flight in an 10.5* driver than a similar shaft in 8.5* driver.

When he says 2-3 degrees at most im assuming this is the difference between 2 drastically different shafts not very similar shafts.
Manufacturers that are moving the center of gravity down and forward in the head of drivers say "hello".

There is zero chance you can attain the a lower flight with a true 10.5 vs. true 8.5 with the same flex shaft and all other variables being equal. Kick point makes a mild difference, generally less then a quarter degree of launch angle and a hundred or so RPM of spin.

Of course actual shaft flexes vary pretty greatly in relation to how they are labeled, and there are several shafts that play one or two flexes weaker or stronger (usually stronger) when tipped according to manufacturer specs and put on a CPM machine.

Golf rules question:

I found myself in a fairway bunker the other day, and it was completely filled with water. I dropped out of the bunker no closer to the hole, but a guy I was with said it's a penalty. Why would I be penalized for the bunker being flooded?

He's right - you are not allowed to drop out of a bunker without penalty even if it is flooded.

Bunkers that are completely flooded can be marked as 'ground under repair', but if this isn't done, you can't drop out of it (without taking a penalty). Using the 'abnormal ground conditions'-rule, you can drop out of it for a one stroke penalty.

And you're not penalized for the bunker being flooded - you're penalized for hitting your ball into a bunker

No. I used 2 dozen ProV1's. I only have 2 adapters for my Titleist driver so I was only able to try 2 shafts at a time. I went down to my local club late when it was dead and teed up on a hole with a nice wide fairway. Hit all the balls with 1's and 2's with one shaft and then switched and hit all the 3's and 4's with the other and then repeated the process so I hit 24 shots with each shaft total. I did this with 8 different shafts of the same flex and weight. Basically my results were that the balls all came to rest in the same genral vicinity. ~90% were with within 10-15 yards offline and almost all were within 5-10 in total distance. The different balls were fairly equally mixed in with each other with the exception of one shaft that all the balls were 5+ yards farther than the rest which I attribute to my swing just fitting the feel of it better.

I don't know the caliber of player that your results are from, but with a clubhead speed under 100mph he is far less likely to notice a difference from one shaft to another compared to me. I am confident that my swing is quite consistent with a driver as per my results, but the one thing that differs from your results and mine are the fact that I was able to watch my ball flight as I hit each shot rather than watch them bounce off a screen. (I'm assuming your guy was hitting balls into a screen and I could be wrong so correct me if I am)

From one shaft to another the biggest difference I noticed was a couple had a ball flight apex much higher than the other. ~30 feet higher if I had to guess. That is a lot to me and IMO at least equal to what you'll find from going from one driver to another with 2* more loft depending on AoA. I hit up on the ball more than the average player and I can only imaginge the results would be more drastic from someone that has a downward AoA with a driver as more spin equals higher ball flight and more drastic change from one loft to the next would be noticed because of spin.

I did not have a trackman to tell me the launch angle and spin which are the 2 most important things IMO when trying to find the right driver/shaft combo, but there really is nothing better than being able to test each one on an actual golf course watching each ball flight and picking the one that feels the best combined with the desired ball flight.


I'll note that the shafts I used were not tested for freq. to be sure they were the exact same flex since I don't have access to such equipment. This could account for all the difference for all I know. As stated in the quote below there is a possibility for one shaft to be quite a bit different in terms of flex from another that has the same flex marked on the shaft.
I believe that 2 shafts with the same flex can actually flex differently. One may be more flexible in the tip section and less flexible in the butt section compared to the other and still will test out to the same frequency on a CPM machine. This can have something to do with the ball flight.

I'll leave it at that because we could debate about this til the end of time and since shaft companies don't have any standard for testing the true flex of their shafts as compared to how they label them I'm going to assume that is where the majority of my different results came from.

I'm just going to mention that all the shafts he tried were different weight(60-70g) and flex(S-X). This just proves my point that with his slower swing speed he is not capable of getting a huge variance from one shaft to another. Those numbers would be much more widely spread out if it was me swinging the same shafts and driver.

When I first got my driver it came with one of the stock offerings which I think was a Project X of the same weight that I use now and it was a stiff flex which is the same as I use now and that thing ballooned up into the air so ridiculously high I puked in my mouth. I bet it was at least 40 feet higher than the one I'm currently using.

I have neither the time nor the requisite skills to create it myself, so I'll just say I'd like to create a Lost Club app. Make it easy to send a notice to whatever course you were playing, and for them (or persons finding clubs) to find you.

(I haven't lost a club in many years but I find them pretty often. Some days, like today, the person who lost it comes looking. Other days I just turn it in at the pro shop and never have any idea what happened)

Isn't this standard? 50% of time one of the groups ahead comes back in their cart looking for the PW they left by the green; other 50% I end up leaving it at pro shop.

I think the protocol people really need to follow is when you see a club by the green, pick it up, FFS. It sucks when people are having to backtrack 4, 5 or 6 holes to get a club.

I have never lost a club that a group behind didn't have or didn't show up in the pro shop before end of day. Never lost one when travelling - that would be more complicated.

Playing in a scramble tomorrow that I played last year. The one odd rule they use is that you get 18 feet of string and you can use that to 'make' putts of up to 18 total feet throughout the round. ie. you hit/putt the ball to 2 feet in 3 then you may either putt out for a 4 or cut off 2 feet of string and count it as a 3.

My question is how much string should we be willing to use on the early holes? My team last year made natural birdies on the first 5 holes and had a handful of others inside 6" plus 1 hole out and ended up with about 8 feet of string facing back to back par 5s to close. We couldn't get within 8 feet in 3 on our 17th hole and made an easy 4 from 10 feet and then the same thing happened on 18 so we had like 8 feet left after the round and every other team used theirs to within a foot. I did hear of four teams (of about 15) that ran out between 14 and 16 so that obviously has to be avoided.

If you have a 4-6 footer on the 3rd or 4th hole do you save the stroke or the string though?

No clue who I will be playing with as it is a work event so aside from extremes I may not have a good idea on whether guys are gonna be hitting approaches to 15-25 feet (easy make or use <1 foot 95% of the time) or struggling to even hit a green between the 4 of us.

For reference we shot 52 on a par 72 for second last year. 51 won it. only one other team broke 55 so there were obviously plenty of poor golfers out there. I figured we needed 50 to have a chance and could easily see that being the score this year.

Biggest strategy change is not how much string to use but how your team approaches putts and chips. In a normal scramble if you have a tricky 30 foot birdie putt you want the first putter to leave you with a three or four footer or so and then the next three guys can take a good run at it. Makes no matter if you each run it more than four feet by, because you just don't want to be short. You already know you can make the first putt for par if you need to.

With the string, though, the strategy changes in putting and you really don't care if you make the birdie putt. Each player should be trying to leave the putt within 6 inches of the hole. You don't want people trying to make it and running it 3 or 4 feet by. With the string, it doesn't really make any difference whether you make it or have a 3" putt. You still get a birdie.

So, hopefully the first guy gives a good read on line; then for the next three guys it is all about weight and lagging it really close.

If you can get your team thinking about putting it close rather than in, that 18 feet will go along way.

As to your question, and considering the above, I would not use more than 3 feet on any putt until you get closer to the end.

PS. Same for chipping. get your guys to chip close, and not try to chip in. 4 chips 5 feet past the whole is not going to help you. One chip a foot away = 12 inches of string, and you are laughing.

The only problem here is that most maintenance crews won't take the time to go around the entire course to properly mark those types of things as ground under repair.

Unless your buddy is a complete *******, I think he should recognize that in a tournament the flooded bunker would clearly be GUR and let you take a free drop.

It's ok to drop in the bunker nearer the hole if that gives you relief. Otherwise one stroke penalty drop outside flooded bunker.

I based my comment on the idea that the bunker was completely flooded and there wasn't anywhere to drop. If there's a dry portion to drop in then what I said doesn't apply.

I based my comment on wanting to follow the rules.

If not following the rules is the idea, then what I said does not apply.

Are you sure about this?

25.1 Abnormal Ground Conditions

b.

(ii)In a Bunker: If the ball is in a bunker, the player must lift the ball and drop it either:

(a) Without penalty, in accordance with Clause (i) above, except that the nearest point of relief must be in the bunker and the ball must be dropped in the bunker or, if complete relief is impossible, as near as possible to the spot where the ball lay, but not nearer the hole, on a part of the course in the bunker that affords maximum available relief from the condition; or

(b) Under penalty of one stroke, outside the bunker keeping the point where the ball lay directly between the hole and the spot on which the ball is dropped, with no limit to how far behind the bunker the ball may be dropped.

http://www.usga.org/rule-books/rules-of-golf/rule-25/

Cool man but you should try be more of a nit next time.

Yeah, I know. When someone asks a "golf rule question" I tend to answer based on golf rules. It's something I need to work on - sorry.

re: string at a scramble

bring two pairs of pliers and stretch that string as far as you can every single time before you cut it...you'll gain more than a few feet by the end of the round.

I was half serious about the pliers. If someone in the group has longish fingernails, that will work to hold the end at the cup, but you should def. stretch it like crazy.

I think the correct rule to look at with respect to his suggestion in post 8716 is rule 1-3 Agreement to Waive Rules.

And loK2thabrain is right. You can be helpful without being a nit.

It would have been more helpful to explain that the Abnormal Ground Conditions rule question was already settled, and that the suggestion that loK2thabrain was making to waive a rule would have opened up another can of worms if the players did this in a tournament.

I have no idea what 1-3 has to do with anything. That rule says that players can not agree to waive rules - not that they can agree to waive rules.

As for being a nit - this (bunker filled with water) is a rule with no grey area. What I described are the only options if you want to play within the rules.

If you don't care about playing within the rules, then obviously you can do whatever you want, but then I would think the question wouldn't be asked either.

I really don't see why I'm getting grief for answering a question that was asked. The only nittery here is from the R&A who actually made that rule and did not give any leeway.