10/19/99
Golfsmith GCA 1999 CONFERENCE NOTES
By Bill Day, Golf Equipment Professional
This a set of "on-the-fly" notes taken during the GCA conference
held October 15-18, 1999. The notes follow the "orange" group
(1 of 4 groups) itinerary during the conference. The conference opened Thursday,
October 14 at 3:00pm with registration and trade show displays, but no presentations.
FRIDAY, 10/15/99
The Opening Remarks session was attended by all groups, with general greetings and an outline of the conference attendees (45 states and 9 countries). The product line for next year will be reduced in the number of models to aid in inventory reduction. There are several new Golfsmith heads, in addition to the Snake Eyes and Killer Bee components, and the re-designed Lynx club line which will be sold only as completed clubs by Golfsmith, not available to clubmakers.
Eaton/Golf Pride discussed their product line indicating they are adding Mid-size and ladies size to their Victory Velvet (50the Anniversary) grip line. They are also coming out with a new line of "soft" grips which may compete with the Winn grips.
Winn grips discussed their product line and showed pictures of their factory and processes. A new line of "weather" grips are due in the December/January time frame which are designed to provide a better grip in wet weather than their present grips.
During the lunch break two of the Golfsmith pros provided tips on fitting for swing defects, as well as exhibiting some of the many swing defects that show up at the Penick Academy. One of the most prominent faults is the "coming over the top" move that results in loss of head speed and accuracy.
TOM WISHON - SPINING
After lunch we attended the session on spining presented by Tom Wishon. Spining can be described as measuring the degree of asymmetry of a shaft. The USGA ruling allows orientation of the shaft in a club head to enable an asymmetric shaft (shaft with spines, etc.) to perform as if it were perfectly symmetrical. Tom defined a spine as a "selected plane that passes through and is parallel to the longitudinal axis of the shaft. When the shaft is clamped at the butt and displaced at the tip in the spine plane the resulting oscillation will remain planar (n.b. not wobbly or orbital). We call this plane the Planar Oscillation Plane (POP). Additionally, one side of the plane should contain or be close to the stiffest axis of the shaft." The Planar Oscillation Plane is placed in the plane of the swing ( from 3 o'clock to 9 o'clock for a right handed golfer.) An asymmetric shaft may have one or more POPs or even no POP.
The new computerized testing machine was exhibited on the display floor with printouts from the machine shown in the handout. (NOTE: Much of the following is taken word for word from the handout material and should be credited to Tom Wishon and Golfsmith.) "When a shaft kicks forward at impact it is important that it kicks forward (from 3 to 9 o'clock) with no oscillation in the toe up/toe down plane. Locating the POP in the hit direction minimizes the out of plane movement. Shaft oscillation tests have shown out of plane movements of " can occur with the POP oriented in the wrong direction. This movement is a direct result of the shaft and not the golfer."
The new machine contains separate sensors for the horizontal and vertical planes. The computer will plot the deflection over 360 degrees of the shaft for the POP selected indicating the hard and soft sides of the shaft. At the selected POP the display shows both vertical and horizontal deflection and the shaft is adjusted for minimum vertical oscillation while maintaining the large horizontal oscillation. The printout indicates the "logo up" tip oscillation vs the POP tip oscillation. At POP the display is nearly a straight line in the horizontal plane with little or no vertical deflection.
BILL TOTTEN conducted a seminar on shaft removal showing some of the tools of the trade for sale in the Golfsmith catalog. Included was removal of shafts broken off at the top of the hosel, steel and graphite shafts and iron and wood heads. Bill says that the biggest problem he see is the use of too much heat for head removal. For an iron head he recommends about 12 seconds with a propane torch, waiting a few seconds for the heat to equalize and then the application of pressure to remove the head. If you're strong (as he is) the big pry bar works very well. If the head does not come off immediately, heat again for no longer than about 5 seconds and then apply (constant) pressure until the head pops off. Titanium and aluminum heads are more difficult and require more heat, but the key is still the amount of constant force applied to the head that will remove it.
ALDILA described some of their shaft designs and their production capability. They also described some of the materials being used and noted that boron has been phased out in favor of other materials which perform better and may cost less. They noted some of the industry trends relating steel to graphite usage, and noted that there is no deterioration in graphite shafts compared to the fatigue that can happen in steel.
Trends are for both higher and lower weight graphite shafts depending on the golfer. Flex is getting softer all the time. Aldila has backed off two full flexes in their specifications. Apart from the bubble shafts, many of the shaped shafts with humps and bumps are going away as novelties without performance benefits, while oversize tips are continuing to increase. Big butts are not as popular as they once were. New shafts include progressive flex point shafts sold in sets for higher flight in long irons and lower flight in short irons.
SATURDAY 10/16/99
The day started with a tour of Golfsmith facilities from showroom to "Max Headspeed" (mechanical golfer) to order picking to shipping. Time was allotted for hitting some of the new heads and shafts on the range, ordering components and tools (free second day air shipment in the US) and a presentation by True Temper/Grafalloy.
TRUE TEMPER/GRAFALLOY
True Temper presented their new Sensicore Gold shafts which have a better feel with less vibration transmitted to the golfer. Their new products include TriGold irons shafts sold in sets with ascending weight and progressive flex through the set., with discrete lengths on both parallel tip and taper tip shafts. They are looking at flexible long irons and stiff short irons using a higher slope on the frequency curves.
After lunch and a presentation by UST on shafts there was a presentation by Fenwick/Royal Precision on their new shafts.
FENWICK/ROYAL PRECISION
Royal Precision is coming out with a new set of "flighted Rifle shafts" with a low kick point in the long irons and a high kick point in the short irons for flight control. Fenwick is providing a mirror image of the flighted Rifle shafts in graphite. It was noted that the Fenwick version of "R" flex is now 4.5 instead of 5.5.
SHAFT SPINING PART II
Was entitled Practical Applications of Shaft Orientation and presented by Britt Lindsey and Mike Duggan. One set of pictures showed an uncut steel shaft in the "logo up" and POP orientations followed by the same shaft cut to 6 iron length. Some minor variations showed up with a +/- 5 degree maximum but basically the "logo up" position continued to show orbiting tip oscillations while POP remained POP. The same pictures were shown for graphite shafts with the same basic result. Pictures of three different graphite shafts were shown in "logo up" and POP positions - although the "logo up" oscillations were all different, all three were capable of minimal oscillation in POP. A frequency chart of a set of steel shafts cut for irons was shown in the "logo up" and POP positions. The two charts showed similar frequencies for both logo up and POP conditions. The same data was shown for a set of graphite shafts with similar frequencies in the logo up and POP conditions (author note: I have not seen this in my testing of graphite shafts - I usually find more significant frequency variations.)
Data was presented on nine tests using golfers with 0, 12 and 20 handicaps. The test clubs were fitted to the individual golfer in both the spined and unspined condition. 30 hits per club were used to determine changes in performance as displayed by impact stickers. The measured improvement varied by handicap and ranged from 14 to 51% improvement!!!! The spined vs unspined club impact stickers were dramatic: unspined would be a large circle on the club face; by comparison the spined club faces showed a small dot. This is very visible proof of the more consistent performance of spined golf clubs.
JEFF SAFRIT
Jeff presented a (humorous) technical discussion related to manufacturing tools and techniques. Although humorous in nature, the background information was solid in terms of technical tips and methods for repeatable results in the manufacture of golf clubs.
SUNDAY 10/17/99
The day started with an ASK THE MANAGERS session for all hands with Carl and Frank Paul on the spot along with Ken and Curt. Questions ranged from "when are you going public" (in the works) to "why can't Canadian clubmakers get components on time". Carl described the beginning and current status of Golfsmith's operations and some of the plans for the future. They took a lot of hits on not selling Lynx components to certified clubmakers and also for selling Snake Eyes components to stick-and-glue clubmakers which will denigrate the brand name due to poor quality assembly and low selling prices.
TIM SWENDNER
Tim talked about refinishing steel and titanium metal woods and the tools used to accomplish the necessary steps, along with PPG paint color numbers and references to various OEM and Golfsmith heads.
TOM WISHON - OPTIMIZING CLUBHEAD DESIGN
Tom discussed shapes and sizes as well as materials used to manufacture club heads suitable for the great variety of golfers. Curent myths include "stronger/harder material will increase ball velocity" and "thin face increases ball velocity. NOT TRUE. Energy is always lost in the process of hitting the ball with the club, but more energy can be obtained by optimizing all aspects of clubhead design for some clubs, but not for all. The Coefficient of Restitution (COR) is a measure of the energy loss/retention at impact, with a COR of 1.0 meaning that all energy is retained and a COR of 0.0 meaning all energy is lost. Current clubs range from 0.7 to 0.8 COR for drivers. A physical limit of about 0.9 appears to be the best obtainable, but the USGA in their wisdom has limited the COR to maximum of 0.830. Improvement in the COR from the current .79 to .83 means an increase of 5-8 yards. Increasing the COR can only be done by clubhead design by increasing face deflection which minimizes ball deformation. More deflection of the club head face can be obtained by increasing face size, proper selection of materials and careful control of face thickness. Deflection is limited by the yield strength and elasticity of the material - when yield strength is exceeded a permanent deformation occurs in the club face. Thus the club designer must skate on thin ice to get maximum deflection while not exceeding the yield strength, and has resulted to date in some "swing speed rated club heads".
After lunch there was a question and answer session with the technical staff. Too many questions for notes, but a good general information session with insights on some common problems among clubmakers.
MONDAY 10/17/99
The golf outing was canceled at the last minute due to a severe change in weather (cold, wet) so an impromptu information session was held with various technical and instruction people fielding various questions. I had to leave before the end of this session but it was a unique solution to an unfortunate change in weather.
The GCA Conference Notes were provided by Bill Day, GCA Advanced Clubmaker and PCS "Class A" Clubmaker. Questions can be addressed to Bill via e-mail at billday@infowest.com