Are clubs too light today? This is a great conversation in my circle. I’m an old guy, and I like everything heavy – Irons, wedges, putter – even drivers. So, in my opinion, the answer is yes. Am I a rarity? Is lighter better? Let’s do a deep dive into how we ended up here.

When I was a kid, you had the choice of stiff shaft or regular shaft. It was Dynamic Gold. There were a couple other options, but no one used them. No graphite to speak of. No Extra Stiff, or Senior flexes. DG R300 or S300. Regular or stiff? Next person in line, please??

I learned how to play on those – starting at about 13 or 14. As a club head manufacturer, we sell club heads. How can we make the ball go further? In the 50 years that I have been playing golf, things have changed. Boy, have they changed. One thing that we found out is that if we roll out the greatest club in the history of golf clubs, and it goes almost as far as the one we made last year, NO ONE will buy it. Literally, NO ONE. So, it has to go further. We find a way to make sure it does. Technology helps that happen, fortunately. So does length and so does club weight. A couple of grams here or there in the head matters. Shaft weights, on the other hand are significantly lighter.

Dynamic Gold weighs in the 130 gram neighborhood – standard in 1980. 45 years later, we use Vector 80 as our standard shaft in Elyte and DG Mid 90 in Apex Ai 300. The standard shaft is 50 grams lighter. 50… That’s almost 40% lighter.

Across the board, most players will swing a lighter club faster than a heavier one. Faster equals more distance, right? Hold that thought. Since that is the prevailing thought, we manufacturers make them lighter and use lighter components to make them swing faster. Here’s the thing… There is no set formula or equation to determine how much faster a player will swing a lighter club vs. a heavier one – if he even does at all. Hold that thought too. For you math majors, think of it this way – for every 1mph faster clubhead speed we get, that equals 1.5 mph in ball speed, and that translates to about 3.5 – 4 yards. Not insignificant. Hopefully you can see why a club manufacturer would want to push the limits of the weight boundaries. That is obviously the good side of this discussion.

With the good, comes the bad, right? Different shaft weights make the club balance differently. Lighter makes it feel heavier in the head, while heavier makes it feel heavier all over. Lighter makes the club harder to feel in some respects and easier in others. Harder to feel = harder to control, and harder to repeat the same swing. It’s easier to feel because the head is proportionately heavier than the shaft. The overall weight is lighter, so it can be harder to control. This, again, is THE tradeoff in golf. Do you want distance or forgiveness (straight shots)?? Players who hit it short want distance. Players who hit it long want straight. Until… They don’t. Until they feel they always hit it straight or long, and then they start chasing the opposite. You know who teaching pro’s don’t teach? The players who hit it far AND straight. Everyone else is chasing one or the other. In my Callaway world, distance sells. Straight is boring. The good news, is I can use one set of heads to achieve either result.

Up above, I asked you to hold a few thoughts. Faster equals more distance, right? ONLY if the player finds the same part of the club face at impact. If he hits it all over the face (common with a lighter shaft), the swing speed can be faster while the ball speed is lower – meaning the distance will be shorter (Using Smash factor here will be very telling). Not the intended result, right? Lighter equals faster, right? Not always, and generally not. In the few weeks since I thought about writing this piece, I looked at clubhead speed as I changed shaft weight for a player. Heavier was almost never slower for anyone. Then why would a company make their “stock” shaft lighter if it doesn’t matter?” I didn’t say it didn’t matter, but I will say “What’s the difference?” we live in a custom fitting world in this post, so we can put them in anything we want, right? Next week, we can discuss how to fit for shaft weight.

For today, I’ll leave you with this… I mentioned that I played Dynamic Gold in my irons for my whole life – until I didn’t. In about 2017 or 18, I started to tinker. I was north of 50, and thought I’m too old to play Dynamic Gold. You know what suffered? My ball striking. Last week, I did a test. I hit balls with DG Mid 100, DG Mig 115 , and Dynamic Gold – all in S300. My slowest swing speed average was with DG Mid 100. The fastest was with DG. By almost 2 mph. i mentioned Smash Factor above – For me, as my club head speed went up, my smash factor also went up. This means I was swinging it faster AND finding the center of the club face with a heavier shaft vs. the 2 lighter ones. How is that even possible? I repeated the test several times, and it was the same each time. With no way to measure it, I think my arms are swing slower 9 or at least the same), but my body rotates faster due to the extra weight. The dispersion is remarkably better, but so is my club path, and my club face angle – all with a heavier Dynamic Gold. So, I’m weird. I hit it longer and straighter with a heavier shaft. There is less curve, and the ball flies to the perfect apex. hmmmmm…

Are clubs too light? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Every player is different. They are too light for me. I got a new driver head in last week. I changed out the weights to heavier ones before I even hit it. Why waste time? The point is this. Weight is a personal preference, and it needs to be in the discussion now. For you PGA teachers – we have laws, principles and preferences. Put club weight in the preferences section – no right or wrong answer, just something a player may like. Just because Callaway makes clubs with lighter components doesn’t mean they are perfect as is for every player. If you understand weight and weight preferences, you can discuss this with the player you are fitting and truly dial him in for what feels AND performs the best.

Happy Fitting!!!

Jim Yeager, PGA