The weight of a golf shaft is a crucial factor in the fitment and success of that product in your bag. It may seem like a straightforward topic, but the weight of a golf shaft actually has small nuances that most golfer’s may be unaware of. With some help from our sponsor True Temper and their HZRDUS series of golf shafts, we’ll dive in and break apart the idea of shaft weight, what it really means, and how it may be impacting your game.
What does the weight of your golf shafts actually mean?
What do the numbers mean?
If you look at your golf shaft you’ll see a couple pieces of information on there. One of them is the weight of the golf shaft. In the example of this HZRDUS Silver, you can see the weight is stated as 60g. But that 60g isn’t the actual weight of the shaft, but rather the weight class of the shaft.
If you head over to True Temper’s site and start checking out their offerings, you’ll notice that they list the actual weights for all of their shafts. That listed weight is the raw weight of the shaft before it has been cut. A typical retail driver in today’s market is 45.5” in playing length, which cuts off about 3-4” of material off of the butt end of the shaft, making the playing weight of the shaft in your club lighter than the stated weight. Other manufacturers may display their shaft weights differently, and like many other equipment quirks in the golf industry there is no standard, so go forward with caution when looking up this information for yourself.
Weight Class
When you’re talking about woods shafts, there are different tiers of weight classes, and although there is no industry standard for how to class shafts, you can generally break down woods shafts into 40g, 50g, 60g, 70g, 80g, 90g, and 100g weight classes. Drivers are typically available in the 40g, 50g, and 60g classes, fairway woods in the 70g and 80g weight classes, and hybrids and utility shafts in the 90g and 100g weight classes; although you may see some overlap depending on the fit of a certain player and what works best for their game.
Does it really matter to my game?
Click through the options below to check out some different variables introduced to the equation and why knowing the actual weight of your shaft might mean more than you may think!
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Knowing the actual weight of your golf shaft is not crucial to your retail purchase. There might be a time that comes where you are deciding between two shaft flexes and you notice a significant weight increase in that shaft per the flex, like the example of the HZRDUS Black, and that may be enough to sway a close decision if you know that the stiffer shaft is also going to be a little bit heavier.
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What is important is knowing what will happen if you are messing with the characteristics of that shaft by trimming or extending the shaft. If you are a player who needs to shorten your shaft a little bit, you’ll be taking weight out of that shaft and if you are going to put in an extension you’ll be adding weight to that golf shaft. Both scenarios will affect what’s called your ‘swingweight’. We have an entire breakdown of what swingweight means here, which we suggest reading to understand more about how weight impacts the playability of the golf club.
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It’s also important to understand how the weight is distributed within that golf shaft, which may impact how that club feels and plays during the golf swing. Something like the HZRDUS Red CB, which is a counterbalanced shaft with more weight in the handle section, is going to have a different effect on that swingweight, and has a more impacted performance characteristic if you are to shorten or extend that shaft.
Understanding how golf shaft weight classes work and how those classes could affect the playability of that shaft for your game, could help save you some strokes! At the very least it may impact the purchasing decision that you may make next time you head to your favorite retail store to buy a new club. Take a few seconds to look up the specs of the shafts and you may find a few surprises that can save you from a bad purchase!