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Best Driver Shaft Length For Me
The right-sized clubs make the job of hitting the ball far and straight much easier. In fact, if your clubs are too short or too long, expect to spend lots of time in the rough, bunkers and water hazards, if not out-of-bounds. As club equipment guru Tom Wishon explains, the length, loft, lie of your clubs are critical factors in determining how far and high your shots will fly. Wishon writes on his website, 'The most important of these three is club length.'
Charting the Right Height
To determine the approximate length of clubs that are right for your height, you need to know how tall you are and how far your wrists hang from the floor. As Golf Components explains, you can obtain your wrist-to-floor measurement by standing on a hard, level surface in regular shoes or golf shoes. Relax your shoulders and let your arms hang down. Measure the distance from the point your hand meets your wrist to the floor.
The Tall and Short of It
A standard golf industry chart, such as the one found at The Club Shack, applies your wrist-to-floor measurement to your height to generally determine the length of the clubs that fit you best. For example, if you are 6-feet tall and your wrist-to-floor measurement is 35 inches, a standard length driver -- 44 inches for a steel shaft driver and 45 inches for a graphite shaft driver -- would be appropriate. If you are 5 feet 4 inches tall with a 35-inch wrist-to-floor measurement, the club should be one-quarter inch longer.
Drivers and Other Clubs
Clubs other than drivers gradually get shorter -- if a 44-inch steel shaft driver is indicated by the chart, your 5-iron will measure 38 inches and sand wedge 35.5 inches. Graphite clubs are slightly longer, with a standard driver at 45 inches, 5-iron at 38.5 inches and a sand wedge 36 inches. Standard club lengths for women are one inch shorter than for men. Whether these club lengths make sense is another question. Wishon notes that Tiger Woods generally plays a 43.5-inch driver because it's easier to control than a longer club. Wishon writes on his website: 'Now if Tiger and the rest of his pals know they can't control a 45-inch long stick, what are the chances that you can?'
Roughly the Right Height
The height and wrist measurement charts used to determine club length are a crude instrument that doesn't take into account your posture, swing speed or a number of other factors. The best way to get precisely the right length clubs for your particular height requires a professional club fitting. As Paul John Newport explains in 'The Wall Street Journal,' club fitting helps both high-handicappers and low-handicappers and makes the game 'less frustrating because well-fit clubs promote a more efficient swing.'
Just fixed my first non retail shaft. It’s hard to know what length is best without having a place to go try different lengths in the same shafts etc. So I pretty much spent a lot of money (most I have recouped) trying to fit myself as I live in a pretty rural area.
- When I tested my old college driver a few weeks ago my interest was piqued by how close my swing speed with the 43.5 inch club was to my current 45 inch driver. I have heard that altering the shaft length of your driver by an inch can/should alter the club speed by up to 4 mph.
- For the past few months, I’ve knowingly been flouting the 14-club rule by carrying two drivers. In the March HOTLINKS, club expert Tom Wishon wrote that one key to “real improvement with the driver comes from a shorter length”: A shorter driver, he said, encourages center contact on the clubface, which leads to longer, straighter drives.
- Best Golf Shafts for Drivers Picking out a new driver is lots of fun. In fact, 2019 saw the release of the TaylorMade M5 and M6 golf drivers and Callaway released their 2019 Epic Flash Drivers. Last year in 2018, Titleist launched their T2 and T3 Drivers. But one overlooked factor when buying a driver is your golf shaft.
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