Golf shaft spine aligning

No there is no OEM out there that spines shafts, that being said there are a few shaft manufacturers that have a process of building their shafts so they perform the best with the logo in a certain way. Out of all the ones I can think of the only one shaft that Titleist carries is some of the Matrix shafts that are designed to be played logo down for a right handed golfer. As for shaft spinning, there is a lot of info out there about it but not a whole lot that proves that it works. Being a club fitter and builder myself and access to a spine tool, I am not 100% sure if it does anything however it can't hurt if you have access to it and doesn't cost you an arm and a leg. As for having to do it afterwards I don't think it will be worth it unless the club maker you take them to is very well qualified to put all the clubs back together to exact swingweights as he will have to take your clubs apart from the factory build which could change swingweights and balance and will potentially void your warranty.

Thank you Matthew for your answer

I'm still surprised that in 2012 there is no way to prove such simple laws of physic, there are machines out there that can reproduce the same exact golf swing over and over and in my simplistic mind it would just be fun to see the results.  After all the efforts that companies put in advertising all the qualities of their products, it should be easy for them to get this straight. It's  like putting nice mag wheels on your car without balancing the wheels.

We all know that all the tour pros play with spine aligned shafts, their must be a good reason ?!?

Hi Denis,

Thanks for the great posts.  We've received a few questions about this process over the past several years.

The Titleist Golf Club R&D group has conducted testing with tour and better players to compare performance between shafts that have been PURE'D and shafts that have not.  We have never been able to see or measure any performance difference whatsoever.  Therefore, we do not feel PURING adds any performance improvement or benefit.

We have no plans to offer PURE'D shafts and do not endorse or recommend the process for Titleist clubs.

Tour players can indeed have their shafts pure'd. However, we feel that this process can only make a psychological difference vs a measurable performance difference based on our extensive testing as stated above.  It is also important to note that not 'all' tour players play with pure'd shafts.  In fact, most of our Titleist Tour players do not have their shafts pure'd.

Titleist stands behind the performance of our product 100% with the shafts and processes we have tested ourselves within our own facilities using our own equipment.

We hope this helps provide some feedback for you.

 

All the best,

Mitch D - Team Titleist Canada

 

Hi Mitch,

Thank you for your great enlightening post, I will rest assured that my Titleist clubs are as good as they can be :-))

Cheers!

Denis

I believe the technology involved in having a shaft "Spined" or "Pured" has some merit and that the individual needs to do his/her own research and arrive at their own conclusions regarding whether this technology has any effect on a club's performance. From a marketing point of view, the #1 PURE-ing franchisor has some excellent and rather convincing documentation to back up the advantages of their process. On the other hand, from a shaft manufacturer's point of view, someone is telling them that their finished product needs (and can be) improvement. That's quite a 'slap in the face' especially when you're trying to have your product utilized by the major name brands of golf club manufacterers. In saying this and as my research showed me, there is an industry standard which exists with respect to metal shafts, ie: stiffness, kick points, wall thickness, roundness, etc., however, no industry standards exist for graphite shafts. Some manufacterer's Graphite Shaft with a S flex can be another manufacturer's R flex and so on and torque values can differ greatly, let alone kick points and trimming instructions. And because of the way graphite shafts are manufactured, they end up as an A-Symetrical finished product, coned and tapered. Now I'm no expert on the theories behind all of this, but this is my understanding of the process of having them PURE'd, which simply shows that when the shaft is epoxied to the clubhead in the 'Logo Up Position', where most shafts are placed by OEM's, and then the same shaft gets placed on a PURE-ing machine as a "raw shaft" in the same orientation of 'Logo Up', they oscillate the shaft to get a reading of it's LSI (Load Symetry Index) which measures the shaft's stiffness (or flex), roundness (or symmetry) and staightness. The shaft is then rotated by individual degrees until it reduces the oscillations (which may have been out of plane in the 'Logo Up Position') until they are to the shaft's highest performing LSI. A laser light shows this orientation and is marked and labeled within the grip area of the club, this now is the orientation required when re-assembling the club if you are a right handed golfer, also known as the 12 o'clock position. If you are left handed, as I am, it will be orientated and affixed at the 6 o'clock position. Now, the inferior part of the shaft is away from the target at address and the club will not "collapse" at impact, it is always offering it's very best attributes at address, during the backswing and it's loading and at the downswing and it's unloading to the impact of the ball and down the line to the finished balanced position. It also measures the "Grade" of a shaft, which is it's quality, as there may be several Grades such as "A", "B" or "C" and this is determined by there Symmetry or roundness. A Grade "A" shaft may only need to be rotated 7.73 degrees to improve it's performance by 73.3%, so now your logo may still be in the "Logo Up Position" but slightly to the left and this shows an excellent manufactured product. A Grade "C" shaft may have to be rotated 180 degrees to get the same result and now that logo is underneath the shaft at address. I have all my clubs PURE'd and to me (as well as others who have hit them and then turned around and looked at me in astonishment as to "Is this what a fitted/tailored set of clubs should feel like and do?!") there is a definate difference in how they perform. Now as far as whether this process is utilized on the Tour, I do know this, there's a well documented story of a Touring Professional who had sets built for him by a club component manufacturerer who sponsored him on tour for a few years and he's a high profiled Tour player. They agonized for two years in their attempt at building him the perfect set of clubs because he commanded certain attributes of all of his equipment and they never truly performed 100% up to his standard and he let them know. The next year, this technology was introduced, they built him the sets of clubs utilizing this technology and watched him for several days, hours each day on their practice facility for an entire two weeeks and when he was finished, they totally expected him to give them a verbal list of what was wrong with the clubs. He simply walked up the hill toward them and said nothing as he walked away. They asked if there were any improvements required, any tweaks they could do and he turned around and said that there was absolutely nothing wrong with those clubs. I believe it was Lee Trevino who once said, "It's not the arrow, it's the Indian!" and I believed this to be true until I introduced this process to my equipment. Now, I believe it should be, "It's not the arrow, it's the Indian!" Here is a link to help you get your research started and to make you're own conclusions. As stated in an earlier post, it can't hurt: http://sstpure.com/media/golfweek090207.html

Then you can go with a shaft like the SK fiber line.

Virtually no spine due to build process so cpms are the same all 360*.

It so happens they are pretty damn fine shafts to boot and at quite reasonable $.

 

I spine/Flo my shafts, and have done it to alleviate droop (6/12 in driver) or nbp to 9/3 o clock.

Why? I want to try and get as many variables out of the way as I can.

When I pull my 6 ir I have zero doubt that it is as good as it can be and then its all up to me. Confidence factor I guess.

If the spline had to be at 12 3 6 0r 9 O-Clock our sure-fit hosel would have to be questioned .