I have been told that the balance point of a shaft is one of the five key characteristics of a shaft. Yet I am befuddled on how to use it. Can someone give me some guidance?
Britt Lindsey Answered question November 10, 2020
I have been told that the balance point of a shaft is one of the five key characteristics of a shaft. Yet I am befuddled on how to use it. Can someone give me some guidance?
I would be interested what you heard were the other 4 keys, and where the information came from. Balance point is a point of measure and varies in it’s effect. We have thousands of shafts in our database and I took a look at the average variance from low to high balance points. L flex woods – 1.25″ //A Flex woods – 2.5″// R flex woods – 2.37″* // S Flex Woods – 1.745″ // X Flex woods – 1.5″. So you can see, not a big difference in the actual measurements. On the R Flex, I did throw out the Bi-Matrix shaft that had the heavy steel tip that was an outlier and skewed the averages a bit. The interesting thing with the Bi-Matrix was that is was incredibly tip stiff, as you might imagine, with the steel tip and the connective engineering required. Generally speaking, many believe that a higher balance point can help increase clubhead speed by raising the cg closer to the hands. Lowering balance points can increase the head feel and thus swingweight (slightly) over shafts with higher balance points, everything else being equal. My opinion, based on many years of testing and building clubs, is that the very subtle differences that actually exist in balance points have a minor effect on performance, and it can vary from player to player as to the difference a high balance point vs. a low balance point will make in performance. The weight, torsional stiffness and overall flex profile from the butt end to the tip end and how that is engineered is what has the major effect on performance. More importantly, how the these factors are fit or matched to the individual, ultimately determine the success (or failure) a player might have with any given shaft.
Britt Lindsey