New Clubs, Re-Shaft or Both?

2016-stix-0906-pxgSo, your clubs don’t work as well as you want.  Should you buy new clubs, re-shaft your existing clubs or do some of both?  First, let’s talk about how most golfers put clubs in their bags.  Certainly not everyone buys an entire set of new clubs at one time.  Probably less than 20%.  And probably less than that if you have never been through a clubfitting.

Most golfers will buy a set of irons one year, maybe a new driver the next and some wedges thrown in for good measure.  But, if you are really struggling with your game and seriously want to improve, a case can be made for revamping your entire bag.  Any good clubfitter will and should make that recommendation.  Why?  It’s all about performance.  Getting your bag to have consistent club lengths, shaft weights, flexes, lofts, lies and shaft profiles is more critical now than ever.  We have the tools to measure performance (launch, spin, distance, dispersion) so why not have your set built to totally optimize your performance? 

So let’s say you come to us and we put you through our fitting process.  And, let’s say you have Ping G30 driver, TaylorMade RBZ 2 fairway woods, Callaway XR hybrid, Titleist AP1 710 irons and Cleveland RTX 588 wedges.  We check out your clubs with different shafts (yes, we can do that with our extensive set of demo heads, club conex adapters and shafts), and find that we can improve performance (distance, accuracy and consistency) with your existing driver but you can really improve with the PXG 0311 irons.  Our recommendations would be to put new shafts in your driver, fairway woods and hybrids and get a new set of PXG 0311 irons and wedges.  In reality, our business is 40-50% re-shafts and 50-60% new clubs, but it is all based upon performance and customer preference.  It is always nice to give our customers the option of either buying new clubs or re-shafting their existing clubs.  In almost every case, there are clubs in our golfers bags that will have improved performance just by changing the shaft.  And, there are cases where just changing the head and using the shaft that has performed well for you makes a big improvement.  Henrik Stenson is a perfect example.  He changed out his old Callaway Diablo fairway wood for the new EPIC but kept his trusty Grafalloy Blue shaft!

So make sure the clubfitter you go to can offer the options of re-shafting your existing equipment as well as getting you some new clubs that, with the right shafts, give you better performance.  This will also save you some serious bucks!

Dan Sueltz