Doany of you cut down your driver? over the last few years I have felt i dont swing my driver as well as the rest of my clubs, which i put down to the ever increasing head sizes and longer shafts.

So i have just bought a 460cc driver with a traditional pear shaped look from adress (which just looks a lot better to my eye) and i have cut an inch off down to 44.75"

 I havent even tried swinging iot yet but wondered if anybody else does this.

Thought about doing this recently but was advised against it by my club pro. He claimed that cutting a driver down will completely change the flex characteristics. Although this makes some sense it doesn't explain why the shaft manufacturers themselves supply instructions on where/how much to cut down by.

I ended up changing the shaft (very easy in an R9) and I'm loving the results. For the record the new shaft is about 1" shorter in the driver than the TM stock shaft. I doubt that this makes too much difference as I can match that by gripping down slightly anyway.

I also tried my 3 wood shaft in the driver (both R9 so can just swap them over in seconds). This is quite a bit shorter (3-4"). Only tried it out on the practice ground and it was very easy to hit. Swapped it back as when it came down to it I would rather hit my 3 wood if that's the shot that I was looking for.

With regards to your driver, I would be surprised if it has made an critical difference to the shaft dynamics, so if it feels better (more control) then hopefully it will go well for you.

I use a 44" driver shaft as well. Both my drivers have bespoke shafts in and were made up. It's not that expensive my Pro charged me £15 to do it, the cost comes from the shaft and obtaining the head. If you have a head you like then look for a shaft and get it cut - most shafts you buy separately are comparable, if not better than manufacturers shafts - allegedly.

I don't know what the difference in carry would be as head speed will be higher with a longer shaft, but I can say that accuracy is improved, and I would rather be in play more often than not.

Mark Roe always had an inch and a half taken off hit Driver shafts, which gave him the exact amount of control and distance he was looking for.

For the Amateur, if you played with a shorter shaft and hit it well, you would not notice any obvious difference in distance.......having tried it myself!

Changing the length by butt trimming should not affect the flex characteristics as this is what most shaft manufacturers expect you to do.

Tip trimming can affect the shaft flex as many shafts are 'flexed' by doing exactly that. Generally the more you tip trim the stiffer the shaft becomes with these types of shafts.

I once had to take 7" off my shaft when doing some Butt trimming.

She made me fold it in half!

Query for Geldap - i'd been told that swingweight was more an issue of preference than of performance (within reason).  Why  would the club be underperforming? 

I ask out of interest i recently had my set checked out by our club pro for compatability. Most of the swingweights through the set were D4 or D5, except for my 3 wood which was bought a few years ago second hand and has a swingweight of C5.  Ironically i hit this club really well. 

Does that mean i am a poof?

Previously mentioned person (MR) when playing on the euro tour did not add weight to the club when reducing the length by 1.5".   When using this Club myself, it did feel slightly shorter, and easier to control, but my distance was the same.

Paul L 11 wrote (see)

Does that mean i am a poof?

No fancying the same sex means your a poof.

Swing weight doesn't affect distance it's a feel thing.

So just fancying the same sex makes you a poof?  What if it's never consumated?  Are you then a non-practicing poof?  Or a "poof in principle" only?  Or are you assumed to be a non-poof until you cross the line and put your tadger where nature didn't intend? 

It's a minefield this!

Anyway back to the topic in hand, I was curious because geldap, who seems to know a lot more about this subject than i do, suggested

The clubhead will not load the shaft properly and you have an underperforming club.

Which seems to suggest swingweight is much more than merely a feel thing. 

Paul L 11 wrote (see)

The clubhead will not load the shaft properly and you have an underperforming club.

swingweight is actually not a weight but a balance point. and over the yrs there have been different companies using different fulcrum scales to measure it. - so i could easily make a 6ft long club make it weigh some 30lbs and swingweight it at D2 -but i doubt anyone could play with it ----- the head weight shaft weight grip weight and the length are all relative even the lie angle will change the measured sw --- in drivers many of the top companies use 202 to 206 gm heads and make them 45 3/4 in length to purposely increase the MOI which also has the added effect of increasing the swing weight ----- in a ladies club the headweights shaft weights and gripweights will all be lighter -- inc the s weight ---------------------- even changing grips can change the s w by as many as 3 points which then changes the overall dynamic feel of the club ---------------------------- it really boils down to - whatever works - regardless of what the sw balance numbers say

Geldap is right in saying there will be a variance in swingweight when butt trimming a driver.

However, we are talking about a weight that is relatively insignificant and would not be noticed by most people even if 2" was taken off. To suggest that 1/2" removed from the butt would affect performance at all, is a load of balderdash - most of us don't grip with such precision each time we play a shot and would be within 1/2" short or long of the alleged optimum anyway.

What concerns me more is the suggestion that we should re-weight the head in some way.  This was OK in the days when drivers were solid wood, or aluminium.

Now most modern heads are very carefully designed, within allowed tolerances. The L4V that I use pushes the boundaries on Moment Of Inertia, Centre Of Gravity, Coefficient Of Restitution and overall size . . . any tampering with the head itself, with gobs of lead tape, would potentially render it illegal, as it would on many other equivalent heads.

Also, if the weight is placed in areas where it was not designed to be, it will affect the performance - far more than the percieved weight of a fag packet in its apparent heft (swingweight).

. . . and swingweighting is just a way of matching a set of clubs to the preferred heft of a user, be it a poof or a gorilla. On its own it does not affect performance - swingspeed does.

There is no defined correct swingweight for any given club, be it a driver or a sand iron - and certainly not for a putter. There is a collective agreement in manufacture that historically assumes males will generally prefer around D2.

May I ask where you got this information from, because it doesn't make a lot of sense to me?

Deceptively Short wrote (see)

Is it therefore true that choking down an inch or two will alter the swingweight by 5 or 6 points? And would this be identical to trimming the shaft by the same amounts as you choke down? I just would like to have an idea of how my driver would feel if it had a different swingweight.

Choking down will give you exactly the same feel as trimming the shaft D-C. Only problem to contend with is that the part of the grip that you choke down to is slimmer than the normal grip and this will affect hand action and will cause it to seem as if it plays worse shorter.

I have chopped a few of my drivers by about 1" for more control without any change in distance. However, I would be reluctant to go to 2" and definitely not more than that.

I have also built two drivers to my own specification that worked well - the one had adjustable weighting and I fiddled around with that but it seemed to make very little difference - but I found 44" was about right.

My current driver is a stock L4V as I said - and that is 45" but I hit the bugger so damn well I wouldn't want to shorten it or lengthen it.

If you want to shorten your driver it is obviously because it doesn't work - either try shortening it or flog it on eBay. 

Taz wrote (see)

Taz wrote (see)

Choking down will give you exactly the same feel as trimming the shaft D-C. Only problem to contend with is that the part of the grip that you choke down to is slimmer than the normal grip and this will affect hand action and will cause it to seem as if it plays worse shorter.

Araldite a tapered bit of old shaft back in if it doesn't work.

No problem  - the grip end doesn't do 'owt.

What most people do not seem to understand is that by chopping off 2" their driver is that there is a possibility that they will be more accurate and get just as much or more distance. This is because they are more likely to hit it out of the centre of the club.

 Try hitting a ball out of the toe or heel and then the centre of the club and see what the distance is.

clubs are designed for the market - to produce the optimum specs when tested first and foremost on a robot - hence the longer and longer shafts and tend to heavier heads to increase MOI - they have to do this, so that no other manufacturer can stretch the limits and claim to be the longest - because a robot is static and all the angles can be fixed the sweetspot is never missed by more than 1/16th of an inch

it also doesnt have any feel so the s balance doesnt matter neither does it effect the performance

the only variables would be the MOI and weighting of the head all other things being equal

in this scenario a shorter shaft that has been butted would lead to lower yardage or less load relative to the optimum spec of the origonal

however

most golfers are not accurate enough to be with 1/2 ins of the centre of the club consistently - the club length - shaft droop - torque - arc of swing - all play a part ( inc swing mechanics) in this variability

so shortening a club to improve the face dispersion pattern will lead to increased yardage and straighter shots - as the ball speed increases and it can even lead to an increase in overall swing speed as well - giving a double effect

as an example try a junior club and just see how far it goes then check the s balance of the club relative to its performance most will be very surprised

Very interesting many of the posts here.

 Though I can't see that cutting 2 gr. of the shaft should differ all so much. At least no more than changing grip which is 2 gr. heavier og lighter.

It's not so much the difference in overall weight Jenster - which in reality would be the loss of 1" of graphite = 1gr.

Heft is about leverage and swing balancing is how much leverage a head has against the shaft at a specified fulcrum.

Two drivers could potentially be built - one weighing a kilo and one weighing .25 kilo both with the same swingweight. Would you notice the difference?  I think so.

This is why swingweight can be altered by the weight of the shaft, or a grip, or weighting the butt end or having it longer or shorter.  Small weight difference is effectively increased because of that lever and there is a point where it would be noticeable.

However, there are (as Exmax says) a multitude of variables in the actual swing - higher swingspeeds will increase that effective weight, as will the action of the stroke.

Heft, (swingweight, swing balance) is about static leverage, when you hold the club horizontally and 'weigh' it in your hands -  does that heft work, for you, in loading the shaft and striking the ball accurately.

Higher swingweight can be detrimental as it may be difficult, for some guys, to swing a longer shaft at any speed, whereas a lighter SW may enable the user to swing faster and therefore apply just as much load to the shorter shaft.

In a game of millimetres, it's all semantics anyway.  How many of us actual hit our drives as we intended, on average?

Personally, I can go a couple of rounds before I get the swing, contact and accuracy exactly as I want it....and I've always been a decent driver of the ball!