BMT - No Longer Just For Drivers....

For the past few years I have been using a driver shaft fitting system called BMT - Butt Mid Tip - to choose the best driver shafts for players. It was developed by Jerry Hoefling, Master AGCP Clubfitter.

The basics of this system are to measure a player's swing speed, overall swing tempo (time from start to finish of swing) and release point - where he/she releases his/her wrist cock. From these data, the system develops an estimated butt-mid-tip flex appropriate for the measured parameters. Then - using a data base of hundreds of shafts where measurements of shaft butt, mid, and tip stiffness have been made - it is possible to identify a shaft or shafts that are good fits for the way players swing their drivers.

The premise of using this fitting system is that it leads to using a shaft that best fits the player's swing characteristics, and so will significantly reduce the dispersion of driver results. Some prominent fitters have had 100% success rates using this system.

Over the past year I have been learning more of how other fitters have been applying this system to also fit fairway wood shafts. The way most have done this is to measure 3 wood swing speed, tempo, and release and use the same shaft BMT data - adding 10 grams of shaft weight to the shaft weight used for the driver - to find a good shaft for a player's 3 wood.

There are a lot of companies now that are developing fairway wood shafts that are meant to be put into 3 woods without any tipping. ACCRA shafts are a great example of this approach, and a number of PGA tour players are using ACCRA shafts with great results. The value of doing this is to promote a higher launch for 3 woods - or simply for your longest fairway wood.

I tested this on my fairway woods recently. A good BMT shaft fit for my fairway woods is an SK Fiber TT 80 A flex shaft. So I put this shaft into my Wishon 949 MC 3 wood without any tipping, and built my 5, 7, and 9 fairway woods with the same shaft but with enough tipping so the butt flex of all of the clubs would be the same. So far I have been very pleased with the performance results of these reshafted woods, and believe this is a great approach for fairway wood shaft fitting.

Tony

Protecting Your Clubs - And a Great Article!

Tonight I thought I would pass on some advice on making sure your clubs can be kept in good condition. In the summer months particularly, you should not leave your golf clubs in your car trunk. You may not think that temperatures can get high enough in your trunk to affect your clubs but - especially in the hot days in the south - temperatures can get well into the 200 degree levels, and this is hot enough for some epoxies to fail. I know of a recent experience of this happening from a post from another clubfitter. Even without failures directly from heat, you run the risk with steel shafted clubs of the combination of heat and humidity causing rust inside the shafts. Last year I reshafted a set of irons for a client due to rust in the shafts. Better safe than sorry - keep those clubs out of your trunk!


I also wanted to pass on an article from clubfitter who has done some recent great writing - J. Lynn Griffin, owner of The Golf Stop in Columbia, South Carolina. This article is right on the money related to fitting of the right driver and fairway wood lofts, shaft flexes, and substitutes of hybrids for irons. I hope that reading this will provide some of you with food for thought about the makeup of the clubs you play.

Here is the web address for the article:

http://www.peakperformancegolfswing.com/fairway-woods-hybrids/


Tony

Those Great "Year End" Specials on OEM Drivers?

I continue to find it interesting when I get emails from different suppliers of OEM golf clubs advertising their year end driver specials.

At the same time, all of us are now seeing advertisements for the new great innovations in drivers - the coming 2009 models.

I guess all of this makes me want to pose a question......if that great driver from a year ago is now marked down by $100 to $200, what does that really mean? Does it mean that driver was not really worth the $399 (and sometimes more!) that players paid for it when purchased early in 2008?

If companies have to keep coming out with the "new greatest thing since sliced bread" to justify charging $399 for a driver at the beginning of the year, maybe that driver is not all that great for every golfer. Something to consider when you make your next driver purchase!


AND.....continuing the thread that I shared a few blog posts ago, today I received my February 2009 issue of Golf Magazine, and it had club specs for Camilo Villegas. Not unlike Stuart Appleby, Camilo plays a 44 inch length driver, and he plays a 3 wood that has 15.5 degrees of loft. I will continue to keep posting this data from Golf Magazine as I receive it, but that 44 inch driver length just keeps showing up!!


Tony