Thanks Zac – keep up the great reporting!
The Velox shafts, which also come in a non-counterbalanced St model, were created with much more than proper weight distribution in mind, however.
Tom DeShiell, director of research and development at Matrix Shafts, said his team designed the Velox shafts to help golfers maximize the amount of energy they could transfer into the ball. They did so with deformation of energy (DE) analysis, a study of the curvature of a shaft during the swing and how it affects energy transfer.
“We wanted to optimize that curvature for golfers with different swing speeds,” DeShiell said.
Instead of the traditional R, S and X flexes, the Velox Sp and St shafts are categorized with numbers that relate to a golfer’s swing speed: 85, 95, 105 and 115. The 85 model will work best for golfers with a swing speed around 85 mph, the 95 will work best for golfers with a swing speed around 95 mph, and so on.
“Every different player has a different response to a shaft,” DeShiell said. “So, that’s where we tried to just concentrate on their swing speed.”
According to DeShiell, all golf shafts have a decrease in stiffness from the butt section to the tip section. But the rate at which that stiffness changes has to vary for golfers to get the most energy transfer from a shaft. For that reason, the Velox shafts for golfers with slower swing speeds have a rate of stiffness that decreases more rapidly, while the models for golfers with faster swing speeds decrease in stiffness more slowly.
The Velox shafts are currently being tested on the PGA Tour, and will be available at retail on Nov. 1. The Sp shafts (offered in weights of 50, 60, 70 and 80 grams) will retail for $275, while the St shafts (offered in weights of 60, 70 and 80 grams) will sell for $375.
Andrew is proud to sit on the National Fitters Board with Callaway Golf and has been proudly designated as one of the top 100 fitting centers by Golf Digest ever since this prestigious designation began back in 2010.