The Golf Channel’s Adam Barr has written a very informative article on the subject of lightweight driver shafts. Rather than summarizing his article, I’m going to take a few of the quotes featured in it, and share my own comments and thoughts.

“The key benefit in using lighter weight shafts is that they provide more options for the location and distribution of the weight in the club head,” said Kevin Egelhoff, a senior design engineer at Aldila. “Head manufacturers can add additional weight or move the weight to strategic locations in their head, allowing them to obtain optimum performance benefits for players of all skill levels.”

Sounds like a definite benefit to me. Aside from control issues (which can be fixed with practice) why would you want your driver’s weight distributed evenly? With most of the weight contained at the end of your swing, the momentum builds faster, allowing the clubface to be moving with more velocity at the time of impact.

“The thing is that many players can’t control a shaft that is super light” said Chad Hall, director of marketing for True Temper Sports. “They will actually lose distance because they start to hit the ball all over the face and don’t effectively transfer the energy created in their swing to the ball. We say play the lightest shaft you can control. For some that may be a standard weight shaft; for others that may be a super light shaft.”

This is what I was getting to in the previous comment. If you are used to using a more balanced weight driver, it will probably take some practice to master a head-heavy model. This is, however, completely understandable.

With that being said, head over to the original article and read more about ultra-lightweight shafts.

Do you already have such a driver? Will you be adopting these advancements? Or are you content with your heavy steel [or graphite] shafts?