Checking your performance

Each time you play a game take a note of the place you hit the ball.

Sounds simple but it can show up a deficieny in the equipment you have.

Use a simple scheme to determine your 'miss' pattern and what clubs you hit most inaccurately particulalry the scoring clubs, 9-SW. LW.

If you miss the green 10yds left but pin-high with the 9i mark the card 10LP. If you are short and left 10LS and so on. Compare your shots at the end and see if a pattern exists. This is great for distance comparison if you are sometimes 'long' with a club. This process will often produce clues as to set make up issues and is a key component when launch monitors are used to analyse shot dispersion.

Check the trajectory, high or low with the longer irons. Does the ball stop or run? Properly fitted shaft and head design can improve trajectory significantly.

Consider getting a length check for your address posture. Loft and lie of clubs needs checking.

Your Divot

Big beaver pelt or just bruising the turf?

A steep angle of attack will usually cut the turf and produce a big divot particularly for those using bladed or thin soled clubheads. The bad shot will be a fat hit.

The 'sweeper' with a low angle of attack hit will usually just disturb the turf and produce little or no significant cut through it. A 'thinned' or low shot is the bad one here. Clubheads with wide soles promote higher hits and more club bounce. This usually prevents the club digging in. Bladed heads provide crisper strikes with a higher 'workability' but require a more repeatable swing to prevent loss of distance and control. Bladed clubs are much less forgiving on off-centre hits.

Used this shaft in the Wishon 949 composite head Driver. This looks to be ideally suited to big head designs. Made by UST, (same as the Harmon Tour Design below). Very low torque at 2.6deg but soft tip design and low bend point make it easy to obtain a good launch angle even with the R7 loft. In the 949 head at 10.5deg loft, the ball flight is very high and went a long way! Impressive driver shaft worth considering for lower loft heads as well, nice feel about it in S flex too.

Originally used to replace the Blue to obtain a higher trajectory in the R7. Performed very well in that head but proved to be a little less predictable in accuracy than expected. Moved and resized to  3W head, the 515GRT below, and found a perfect match! High trajectory and soft tip produced a high and accurate flight. Looks to be a good fairway shaft.

A real winner in the R7!Low torque seems better suited to the R7 head size. The low kick point doesn't seem to affect the trajectory even with the 8.5deg loft and the accuracy and flight is superb.

I chose the slightly heavier 85 model in and R flex as this shaft seems to as stiff as the S flex in other models and the added weight of the shaft feels much more comfortable with my swing characteristics.

Will do a long term test on this one, looks to well worth the money in most driver heads, be interesting to see the results in a 3W head, maybe next month!

My all time favourite iron shaft. Much better shock absorption than stepped designs I find the lower trajectory this shaft produces ideally suits the newer 'high flight' heads preventing balloning especially in windy conditions.

Low trajectory heads need a good swing to get the landing characteristics and spin rate but overall the Rifle shaft is my favourite.Can't wait to try the Project X and the new X2's

Superb Driver and fairway design although I should have gone for the slightly heavier CB65 or CB70 design as the CB60 feels very light at 60gms.

Very nice shaft for smaller driver heads I suspect where it will produce excellent distance with minimal shot dispersion

The 'hot' adjustable Driver, but does it work? First impressions were that this looked a really nice head as I prefer smaller more traditional shapes. Chose the wrong loft for sure at 8.5 degrees but I also prefer a lower flight if possible so a good trajectory shaft would help. Wanted a big high draw and changed the weights to match. Made little difference!! Oh no, an expensive error perhaps?

Investigated the shaft choice (see Blue above) and realised the shaft was far too stiff for this head design despite being 'S' flex! Tried reshafting with a ProLaunch to raise the flight and that worked fine, higher flight but still no draw bias. Added a loads of lead tape and started to see the flight change.

Summary? Much more weight needs to be added, (more than supplied), to achieve real trajectory changes for the average golfer. Once again the shaft choice is key to most flight adjustment features unless you are a scratch player. See the 715CLC review for an adjustable head with 40gms of weight that can be adjusted.

This 3W is immense. Shaped like an old persimmon head and with a COR of .830, (maximum allowed for Drivers), this head really goes a long way and pretty straight too! Neat a tidy at address this clubs was at least 20yds longer than my (very)old Taylormade Ti2 3W.

It was so good I added a 5W too and removed my old trusty 2i from the bag as the 5W now gave me a high flying long iron alternative. Easy to hit and very high flight with the ProLaunch shafts.

The 'perfect' forged set until the Limited Edition 550M's came along. Not everyone gets on with forged clubs and I have to admit I'm usually one of them. They are more problematic to hit on centre consistently but when you do they feel really good, a nice click off the face.

Having said that, persevere with these and they do gro on yo particulalrly the shorter irons where 'knock down' shots can be easily accomplished. Great for use int he wind

Did I say these were Great, well they are better than that! The finish has to be seen to be believed and when I received my set in a beautiful presentation box, superb.

I built these with Rifles and G8's and left out the ferrule to see if the finish could be maintained. They are clean looking and very effective. Similar in design to the standard 550's Tom Wishon hand ground the prototypes that were subsequently refinished to suit. Only 350 sets worldwide, most now sold.