RLL33

Yeah, I was going to check with you to be sure it was the same shaft. If so, nothing against the Modart at all, but it could be the shaft, man. Lightning in a straw!

3-woods tend to stay in my bag longer than most clubs, even more so than drivers. I just have a hard time settling on one I like and can count on both off the tee and the fairway. It was the last club in my bag to go JDM as I just couldn't let go of a beautiful wine colored TM-R7 (before TM went all white and stupid...), even though discovering JDM had thoroughly changed my game and my bag otherwise. Then along came Kobayashi with his S-Yard XV line, and there was no looking back. Nice soft thwack and unbelievable distance and roll out for me even if the flight was way lower than I was accustomed to. That club has been a solid keeper in my 3-wood slot for as long as it's been out. But then watching as my bag went further and further into A-Grind territory -- everything from irons and wedges to hybrids, and even trying the 440 and Proto drivers -- I finally felt I had to try the DST 3-wood. And whoa, mofo!, am I glad I did! The DST is everything I've loved about the XV -- it's hyper long and delivers precision with that soft thwack I need to hear and feel -- but with one important exception: it flights the ball much higher for me without losing the rollout I so loved with the XV. Beautiful long high arcing shots off the tee have really helped me on one hole on my home course that is a blind tee with a rising hillcrest the first 40 or 50 yards with nothing but an embedded white rock to aim at. Easily up and over with a lazy draw and then past a fairway bunker that sits about 210-220 out on the right side. And also able to lift a shot off a downhill lie on another (too) long Par-4 hole later in the round makes me smile at a shot I just couldn't hit before with anything but a hybrid or an iron (for a layup). And of course that stealth black A-Grind finish that just makes me chill. I don't know how else to put it, but shiny finishes on metal woods just don't do it for me. They look like kids over dressing to make an impression or something... DST is the new 3-wood in my bag. I want to sleep with it at night.

Okay, some like hybrids, some hate them. I've fallen into both camps over the years. For me, most of them are hook machines. The first couple of times you hit them, you get it, they're like easier to hit long irons except they lift higher and land softer. But then you start to go after shots, and... whoa... hook, hook, and snap hook.... WTF...? It goes back in the closet... Previously I had only found one hybrid that avoided that syndrome for me -- the Miura HB with a Project-X Black hybrid shaft in it. And then along came Ako-san with the original A-Grind hybrids. Both of these hybrids are small and shaped like long irons. I keep an 18-deg driving iron in my bag mostly for use off the tee on super tight fairways, and the original A-Grind hybrids are very similar in shape and size. And with their stealthy matte black finish, they slip through rough to generate piercing missiles, or off the fairway, they lift high and land soft. And most importantly, no hooks no matter how hard I swing. So, okay, I've been happy with these clubs, recently playing the MCI hybrid shaft in them and liking its stability and smoothness a lot. But then I decided to try one of the Crazy STP shafts after reading what Chris had to say about them finally being the perfect hybrid shaft. And I have to say, I agree. These shafts are stepped carbon -- a first. And their black matte finish looks designed for the A-Grinds. But man, the performance! I find the same club both longer and easier to flight the way I want. And going after a shot with a clean fairway lie, the most bend I've seen is a sweet baby draw that occurs on the ascent before the shot straightens out and flies and flies. But the killer for me is when I want to use it like an iron for a shot I employ a lot from the rough -- a low trap draw that comes off a 3/4 swing to get out of trouble or fly under a low lying tree limb. I normally have to go to my 5 or 6-iron for this shot. Any time I've tried to use hybrids, they either rise too quickly or I can't keep them on a precise line. But with this stepped Crazy shaft, the ball does exactly what the irons do -- screams out in a low line drive exactly on the line I need it to, the difference being it keeps going, even longer than I can get from an iron. The versatility combination just feels unbelievable. Long smooth swings produce high but penetrating trajectory both off the fairway and off a tee. Abbreviated swings become workable low line drive shots. I don't know if it's the stepping in the shaft or the carbon weave Crazy has come up with, but for me, this shaft in an A-Grind hybrid has produced what I can only call a Lethal Weapon in my bag for multiple situations. I just love it! Thank you, Crazy! And thanks to Chris for calling it to my attention.

I have a review coming of the original A-Grind hybrid loaded with this new Crazy STP ut shaft. I'm calling it Lethal Weapon.

I came across a great interview with Mark Gunther of Mitsubishi Rayon that gives a lot of info about their shafts, but is also a great discussion of characteristics like flex, torque, and the various things that often come up in conversation here and when ordering shafts. Here's the link to it and I'll also paste the copy below if I can for those who don't like to jump to other sites. (Hope this is ok, Chris.) http://www.golfalot.com/equipment-news/mitsubishi-rayon-mark-gunther-graphite-shafts-interview-3595.aspx?Source=RSS I'd also mention that Chris helped me find the perfect weight for me in the OTi iron shafts that are mentioned below and I absolutely love them. Great feel, tight dispersion, long, (and pretty). Interesting that they're seeing tour guys put these in their bag finally, too. Mitsubishi Rayon VP Mark Gunther Explains Graphite Shafts By Martin Hopley Jun 03, 2016 Graphite shafts first appeared back in the 1970's but it wasn't until the 1990's that they took off. They were a revelation as you could have a lighter shaft in your driver which meant you could make it longer and generate more club head speed for more distance. Since then graphite shafts have become common place at the top end of the bag, but how much do you really know about them? I met with Mark Gunther, VP Sales & Marketing for Mitsubishi Rayon to find out. Hi Mark. Firstly can you give some background on Mitsubishi Rayon golf shafts? It’s close to thirty years that Mitsubishi has been making graphite shafts, so our group was really one of the pioneers in graphite shaft technology. We made a lot of private label shafts for the golf manufacturers originally and then we moved into making our own products when the operation went global in 2004 and that is when Mitsubishi decided to develop and launch their own branded products. Two of us were hired in 2004 and we opened our office in California early in 2005 to enable us to launch internationally with our Asia team and on the global Tours with the Diamana Blue. Can you explain some of the background for Mitsubishi in graphite products? Mitsubishi Chemical is our parent company, which is something close to a $60 billion group, and they have a chemical division, a plastics division, a pharmaceutical division as well as the carbon fibre division that we are part of. I think that is what makes us unique as we don’t just make shafts, but we also make all the raw materials that MRC golf use to make shafts. We make our own prepregs we make our own carbon fibre, we make the white acrylic fibre that you turn into carbon fibre, so we do everything within that group. Nobody else does that. Our competitors would go to one of the world’s large manufacturers of prepreg to source the prepreg to allow them to make shafts. So what is prepreg? Prepreg is the sheets of raw material made up of carbon fibres and resin which is the raw material for the shafts. It starts by taking the fibres and you impregnate it into a sheet of resin to make large sheets. They then get cut into the pattern that the shaft is made up from and then roll all of the pieces of the pattern that the engineers have designed. It actually has paper on the back as it is sticky which allows you to adhere it and assemble it together once the paper has been removed. So prepreg is a core component and Mitsubishi is the world’s third largest manufacturer of prepreg and it is a great advantage to the shaft company as it means we can use our own materials. So is prepreg just used in golf shafts? No, anything made out of carbon fibre, for example cars or bikes use prepreg. So there are three core types of prepreg that I am familiar with. There is Uni-Directional prepreg which means everything is going in the same direction and you bind up the carbon fibres as straight as you can and as thin as you can, which is why you can’t really see the fibres as it just looks like flat cloth. The second is called Woven where the fibres cross and woven can give you some of the characteristics of carbon fibre and the strength but there is also a visual aspect. So you see cars and other things use it a lot of the time in areas where they need the function to take weight out of the car, but where they also need some sort of striking visual element, for example on a dashboard or exterior panel. Finally the third is Tow prepreg that is a new cable type application that we are using in the new OT irons series. So when you are designing a shaft how do you decide the profile of the shaft? If we are trying to launch a shaft into the aftermarket it would start with a concept and sometimes that concept comes from us trying to fill a void in our product line. As things evolve you sometimes find out that there is a performance attribute, for example launch or spin, that we don’t currently cover. Is it a constant reaction to ball or head design that requires you to respond with shafts that match the new launch conditions? To a certain extent. At its core Mitsubishi has targeted three bend profiles designed to provide a High, Mid and Low launching product. These three bend profile concepts are most recognized as part of the Original Diamana Series nicknamed Blue Board, Red Board and White Board. The Original Blue Board was mid launching, mid-low spinning, the White Board low launch and low spin and the Red Board higher launch and higher spin. Often we take a similar approach across our other shaft brands with perhaps slightly different nuances, but not always. Occasionally there is a time in the market due to changes in equipment such as heads or balls that we see a void in our line-up of products that we try to fill. Or, there comes a time when a new brand is needed in the market, for example with the Mitsubishi Tensei product that we launched at the beginning of 2016. Blue was the initial Tensei profile because that was the mid launching product and we find that that profile, with its launch and spin characteristics, fits a wide range of players, whether it be Tour or aftermarket, so a lot of times we start there. So you use Blue, White and Red across all of your products? Yes, we try to use those categorisations across all our brands and then there are different nuances where the different brands are designed to different things. So for example, even though we had the three profiles, the Fubuki brand historically all launched higher than the original profiles, but with a very low spin. I would like to ask you about some of the standard terminologies we hear when talking about shafts. Let’s start with flex. There’s no standard measurement for flex, so how do you measure it? It is a little disappointing aspect of our industry that there isn’t actually a standard rating for flex. Mitsubishi from a flex stand point, talking about R, S, X, we have targeted vibration frequency numbers as standards for the stiffness of a shaft. So when I order an S-flex product regardless of the brand it is typically within a very tight range for Mitsubishi. Is that determined by putting the butt in a clamp and then measuring the vibration of the tip end when a weight is applied? Correct. Basically that is how you would measure it, but obviously it is a little more sophisticated from a design standpoint as they are using CAD machines and they are able to dictate what they want that to be and what the materials need to be in order to achieve that. So for us that means we have consistency between our shafts for what R, S and X means in terms of stiffness and obviously club builders and fitters get to know that. Actually some guys don’t actually worry about that and take each shaft individually and have their own way of testing it because how you clamp it and the weight you put on it can impact the frequency. So a lot of times club builders come up with their own measurements, they test every shaft that comes in, they write the number on the butt and then build them from there. Can you explain what torque is and how do you measure it? There are lots of ways to measure torque and we measure it in multiple ways, but it is simply the measurement for the amount of twist in the shaft. So flex is how much it bends in one direction and torque is how much it twists in a rotational way. There is actually a misnomer where some people equate low torque with a better shaft for whatever reason. Historically torque is a function of the overall performance of a shaft and how much torque you do or don’t need is going to depend on the type of player you are and even the head of the club you are using. So on Tour the size of the heads being used has changed tremendously over the last 10 years and I’ve seen even the best players in the world able to use, or maybe even need, a shaft that has a little bit higher torque rating than they might have used 10 years ago. I think that is just a function of club size and centre of gravity location, so it is changing. Will lower torque will deliver less spin than higher torque? In general. But I can have a low torque shaft with a softer tip frequency and that is still going to generate a little more spin. The R-Series is one of those products for us. So the original Diamana Red Board was a unique animal. It was very popular on Tour as a fairway wood shaft, but if you actually go back and look it was actually lower torque than Blue Board, but it had a soft tip frequency so it launched the ball very easily even though the torque was very low. It is actually a very tricky thing to achieve, not many manufacturers can deliver a low torque product with a softer tip frequency and have it be played, but we had a lot of success with that product in fairway woods. We had lot of success with the original Diamana Blue Board and a lot of guys building clubs with it and we were getting a lot of requests for a matching fairway wood shaft, so actually the Red product was designed to be a complementing fairway product to that original Blue Board that was out on Tour. Subsequent models did not follow that theory as we have actually developed dedicated Diamana fairway wood products. It is not as well known as the Tour guys don’t stock it. They’d rather take a 46” shaft and cut it as they don’t want to keep extra inventory. You have mentioned soft, firm and hard tips, so does a softer tip allow the club to add loft? Yes, it is giving a background element of more dynamic loft and it is going to impact the launch and depending on how soft or firm then it has a direct correlation with spin. So it has more of an effect on spin than torque? It’s a combination. Torque is a stability measurement in that torque is trying to fight the club head twisting, but still a shaft that is softer in flex just because the club isn’t moving around a lot it doesn’t mean it isn’t generating a left to right spin or a right to left spin, so that is why low torque with a stiff tip is a very popular combination on Tour. That is because these guys generate tremendous club head speed and they create it due to a very late release so the club is travelling very quickly through the impact zone so they need that stability. And finally kick-point. Would a higher kick-point would give you a lower trajectory and vice-versa? Correct. When it comes to fitting is it a case that we could all play with most shafts, but the key is really how you feel about that shaft and the one that feels best would be the best for you? We are all golfers and we’ve all had those days when we are swinging the club and it is feeling great so confidence in sports and certainly in golf is very important. That said there are a lot of options when it comes to shafts and shaft fitting and a good golfer could probably make a bad fit work as they can compensate, but I think in general you can really do yourself a disservice by not being fitted properly. A simple example is that you are looking to get a new club and your preference is to hit a draw off the tee. You buy something off the rack and you know nothing about the profile that the company has selected for their stock shaft. You get the weight and flex you like but the profile has a very stiff tip and is in fact designed not to draw ball and you can’t figure out why you can’t play your normal draw and you take your normal line from the tee and the ball keeps ending up in the woods. So you may be able to adjust to that but you are doing yourself a big disservice thinking that anything can work. One of the misnomers you hear from golfers is that they say they aren’t good enough to be custom fit when the reality is that it is the other way round and that the vast majority of golfers would greatly benefit from being custom fit. Good players will make a swing fit a club but average golfers cannot do that. Manufacturer’s choose certain shafts as the stock offerings to fit the design of the golf clubs. Is it the case that for a certain head you need a specific type of shaft and if you went for an aftermarket shaft the club wouldn’t perform as well? If you look at the typical manufacturer they will have a number of drivers in their range with each driver being designed for a certain audience, whether it be older golfers, or pro golfers, or improving golfers. They may have a philosophy they are working to, for example they may be saying “Loft Up”. There is a head design they are creating so as they get to a certain point they are typically trying to find a stock option that will maximise the performance of that particular product. So for example for “Loft Up” the TaylorMade SLDR driver was quite a low spinning head so they would be looking for something with a softer tip as it was quite a low spinning head and that would help the loft up option? With the latest Ping G driverthey talked about having a high kick-point in the shaft that allowed them to make the heads a little bit heavier without you feeling it so much. Are these the sort of trade-offs we are talking about? Correct. Different manufacturers have different philosophies and the latter is something that both Ping and PXG do. There is also the question of investment from a stock shaft standpoint and again it comes down to philosophies. For example Titleist has a philosophy of what they are trying to do and they have a pro version and a standard version. They usually have 6 stock options in shafts because they want the consumer to be able to not pay any up charge and have the ability to have the option of high, medium or low with another option in-between. That particular manufacturer has two dedicated shaft engineers inside the Titleist corporate office, which is all they do, test shafts for those specific products. So are they one of the most comprehensive in that respect? In the US they are one of the most comprehensive, yes. That is actually standard for a lot of the Asian companies who are heavily involved in the shaft development. I won’t mention any names, but there are some major equipment manufacturers that have no shaft specific engineer. So those manufacturers would come straight to the shaft companies? Yes, they would rely on us. They would still have a philosophy and say what they want and we’d then submit options and then we would go from there. It is really just different philosophies – they all work. If somebody didn’t want to or couldn’t be custom fitted, is their best option to go with the stock shaft in the knowledge that the manufacturer has picked it for that club? I would disagree a little bit with that statement if we are talking about the US market because to me, and it may be different in Europe, in the US it is pretty easy to get fit, there are just different levels of fitting. At every big box retailer you can go in and hit balls in a little bay and get some level of fitting advice. Even the customer service lines have been trained, so if you called the manufacturer of the club you were interested in you could call them and get some advice. The problem with the majority of golfers is what you want as a player and how you think you swing can be different from what you actually need. I agree and that leads into another thing I was going to ask was about weight of shafts. How should you decide the weight of the shaft you want, given they can feel heavier or lighter than the number written on them depending on a lot of factors, such as kick-point? You typically have a club weight you need to reach. So if the head is really heavy you won’t want a heavy shaft or you will have issues, but I think with weight mostly there is an individual preference. If you don’t know I think you can take some guide from the stock shaft from the OEM’s because they all put work into why the shaft is for the club. There is a reason, usingCallaway as an example, that the Bertha core offering is in the 50g range and that the XR Pro is in the 70g range as standard. Those are targets you can use to guide you a little bit. Is speed an issue as better players may want a heavier shaft partly for speed but also because they may want to feel the head or shaft a bit more? It’s a combination, knowing the type of players that are going to be playing the product; they try to bring you into a group that would typically fit that swing profile. But that is really where you need to get onto a monitor and get somebody to fit you. Twelve years ago the guys out here on Tour were using 80g and 90g driver shafts as a standard, but things have changed and heads have got bigger. Yesterday we built a 60g X Flex for one of the players. Have you been able to maintain or improve the stability despite losing all that weight? Yes, thanks to technology. We are a materials company and things constantly evolve. We have a product called MR70 which is a new fibre that Mitsubishi invented and it is the same size and weight as a traditional fibre that we use across sports applications, but it is twice as strong which allows us to use it to make shafts more stable without adding weight to the club. Mitsubishi's new OT iron shaft doesn’t have a seam that traditionally impacted shaft alignment, so is this no longer an issue? We are trying to invent thinner and thinner materials and multiple-layers to minimise the impact of seams and spines and I think we are one of the leading companies for this. The technology you are talking about doesn’t use the Sheet Prepreg we have been talking about it uses what we call a Tow Prepreg so instead of spreading it we actually bundle it together and make carbon fibre cables. The mandrill goes into the machine and we braid it around the mandrill before cutting it. This braiding technique is a newer technology and we can’t yet make driver length shafts lightweight enough as the material is too big and too thick. At the moment it is better served to iron and hybrid applications but I am sure the technology will evolve. Currently it seems graphite shafted irons seem to be for older players or slower swingers. Do you think we are going to see graphite shafts in irons for more people by getting them to perform to the sort of level for example an X-100 steel iron shaft? Yes absolutely. If I was a steel guy I would be nervous. I think in the next five years graphite iron shafts will be a regular animal on the PGA Tour and I think partly that is because more and more of the graphite manufacturers are now putting emphasis on development of iron shafts. What advantages does graphite bring to an iron shaft? Superior strength, the ability to more and be more precise with things like kick-points because when making a graphite shaft you can be more precise than by pouring liquid metal into a mould. That also means greater consistency from shaft to shaft and a greater durability. We are developing a prototype of that OT product and taper tip for the autumn with 105g and 115g for the Tour. So it is really lightweight steel with the advantages in fine tuning and consistency for players at this level.

The full A-Grind line is top notch. I'm playing many of Ako-san's new designs, including the original blades which Chris finished in TSGworks smoked copper for me, and find them remarkably perfect for my game. I also play the hybrids, wedges, and now the woods. I'll have a review of the DST fairway wood up soon, but bottom line is it's awesome, has knocked the S-Yard XV out of my bag.

Really... If I were MPB, I would have unfollowed this thread and retired to a quiet room where I could just sit and admire this putter. The main reason I'm still hanging is I'd like to know how the 7D shaft performs in a putter. <g>

Thanks, you guys. Personally I agree that most Scotty's I've rolled were more about collector value, ie, so and so once putted witth this putter... Basically stuff I'm not interested in. The nicest Scotty thting I have is a head cover rack I hung on my office wall. When I felt my first Yamada, I sold all my Scotty's. But I admit I've never rolled a $5k putter. What Golds did to my copper Yamada "made" the best feeling putter I've ever felt even better, which kind of blew my mind. But personally, I think Bachman now owns the finest putter I've ever seen.

It's taken me a long time and a lot of clubs to come to the realization that Light is better for me, so I understand. Out of curiosity though, Stew, although I've rolled a lot of putters, I've never held in hand a $5k Scotty... <g> Can you tell me, is there something discernible in the feel that makes you say, "Yeah, it's $5k, but it's worth it."

Nice, D !!

The A-Grind blade PW has turned out to be the most magical iron in my bag -- so much so that I've been able to pull the gap wedge out completely. Don't know why exactly, I always changed a PW for a specific 47 or 48 before. But then I'm playing on Kikuya these days... for which the whole A-Grind line has just plain clicked for me.

Wow, Michael, just wow! Enjoy!

Just shafted an A-Grind 23 (original one) with the MCH and really like it. For me, liking small iron-like hybrids, nothing beats these and the Miura HB3. Straight, long, soft landings, totally hook free.

Beautiful! Enjoy!

Guess I shouldn't even mention that I consider my 64* the most "versatile" of the four wedges in my bag... <g> For me when it comes to the short game, versatility is in the hands of the beholder. (And remember, Seve learned his short game and bunker skills as a kid on a beach with a 3-iron... ;=] )

I put the UST Frequency Filtered shaft in all my putters so I can get a true comparison (for me). And yes, the P3 is hugely forgiving like the woods. It's an odd feeling at first -- softest hit I've ever felt no matter where the ball is touched on the face, but the ball rolls out smoothly in a very quick rebound. Like I said, totally unique in my experience of everything from Scotty's to Yamadas to the Zen. Of course everything is very personal with putters, but I see you also like the feel of A-Grind clubs, so maybe we respond to some things in a similar way...

The Ryoma P3 remains the most unique feeling putter I've ever rolled. It's the one that actually took me away from the Zen and my Golds Yamada. It was love at first stroke, and it's only gotten better from there.

Vic -- only open to a trade on Baby -- for an in-person fitting and set of 7D iron shafts -- and she's yours.

All sold except the Phil 64.

Thanks, nob, I agree, I guess I like to spread the TSG joy... I know I've appreciated it from others here over the years. --RL

Agreed, L. ;=]

SPRING RLL SALE: ________________________________________________________ * EPON ZERO KAI driver head only, 1 round on it, immaculate cond, 10-deg [ SOLD -- $299 PayPal US -- SOLD ] * A-GRIND Y-PROTO driver head only, 1 round on this one too, perfect cond, also 10-deg [ SOLD -- $199 PayPal US -- SOLD ] * SEVEN JAPAN FORGED 64-deg wedge, satin finish range and a couple of rounds, fine cond, Steelfibre i95 s-flex, red & black Iomic grip [ SOLD -- $99 PayPal US -- [sOLD] * CALLAWAY MAC DADDY PM GRIND 64-deg wedge, matte black finish Phil Mickelson grind, range and a couple of rounds, xlent cond, KBS Tour-V wedge flex, Golf Pride grip ( I know this one isn't technically JDM, but since it's such a bold rip of the the BOLD... <g> ) unbelievable stop and drop wedge, grooves cover entire face SOLD -- PayPal US PM me with any questions

Odyssey is offering new putters that are toe up (or heel balanced). Next thing in putters is "adjustable. " Some tour players are already messing with these. All I can say is it does make a lot of difference-- especially, C, for someone who misses to one side consistently.

Another beauty, no question! I'm wondering how the straight vertical milling would feel/perform if you don't have a straight back-straight through putting stroke...

Why does this not surprise me... My kind of guy makes my kind of clubs...