TrackMan and GEARS Golf Shaft Test Results – Accuracy

One of the major premises of our shaft test using Trackman and the GEARS Golf motion sensing system was that the proper shaft can improve accuracy.  Or, conversely, the wrong shaft can negatively affect accuracy.  In TrackMan’s research, 75-80% of your accuracy can be explained by the face angle of the club at impact and only 20-25% by the club path, or swing direction.  This was definitely borne out in our testing.  With four different test shafts, swing direction or club path variances were insignificant from shaft to shaft.  But, face angle varied as much as 4 degrees which could mean the difference of up to 30 yards on a driver shot of 200 yards.  In fact, the biggest variance we saw with a shaft that was literally 3 flexes too soft was 30 yards EACH DIRECTION, or 60 yards!  Now, not everyone is going to be playing shafts that are way too soft/stiff or  heavy/light, but certainly every golfer can gain more accuracy with properly fitted clubs.  In fact, when we measured the drivers we had fit our testers for, they were the most accurate!  Of course, they had better be or we would not have done our job!