So I dropped by my club maker the other day to get the PRGR FW and Epon AF-901 shafted with the 80t Crazy FW80 regular flex shafts. Mr. Owada who is a top indpendent club maker here in the Chiba area also deals a lot with Crazy shafts so I thought I would query him on his experiences with Crazy shaft installs. Our conversation (in Japanese) went something like this:
gocchin: Owada-san, what do you think of the brand Crazy?
Owada: They are not for everyone because of their price range but the do make a rather good shaft, quality wise and performance wise.
gocchin: We’ve found the CPM to be unusually high for example a Stiff/Regular flex at 45″ with a 200g head was coming out at 266cpm with a 5″ clamp, for some brands that is close to SX or even X Flex. Is this something you experience as well?
Owada: Yes the CPM always do come out on the high side but let me guess, I bet the players have no problems hitting the clubs even though the CPM are higher than what they are used to?
gocchin: That seems to be the case, myself included. It appears that even clubs that spec out at 10-20 CPM more than what players are used are very hittable and providing very very good performance.
Owada: This is the nature of Crazy shafts. You look at the numbers and the CPM are surprisingly high. If you try and flex the club in your hands, it sure does feel very stout. However playing with the club is a different story, once you swing the club it does not feel nearly as stiff as you would expect especially after seeing the numbers and simply holding the club. This is the design and quality of the shaft at work. I have seen you write in your blog about carbon grading and the fact that higher quality carbon shafts contain more metal and glass particles as opposed to lower end shafts with carbon that contain more flexible rubber particles. This plays a big part in the results you see. You can almost say when little force is applied to the club, for example, a little wobble for CPM testing or just flexing the club by hand, the high grade carbon with metal/glass particles feels very stiff. However once you actually swing the club and the shaft stores your energy you can almost say it comes alive. This is the high grade carbon reacting to the energy from your swing and the simple ability of the shaft to regain its shape quickly during release.
gocchin: I thought my driver with Longest Yard 01 would be too stiff for me losing feel and forcing me to push the ball right however it was straighter and longer than ever. I don’t have to think about timing anymore, I just swing and the impact is so predictable. I actually thought the shaft felt very good.
Owada: As you can see also, the torque numbers on your Longest Yard are higher than what many would expect from a high performance shaft. This was done on purpose and well thought out by Crazy designers. They knew a shaft with very high grade carbon and very low torque has the potential to lose feel so the added torque is enough to give feel and match with the shafts unloading at impact without sacrificing control.
gocchin: I’ve noticed that the 80t models from Crazy do play on the softer side compared to other models.
Owada: Yes this is true because the Black 80, even though the carbon grade is so high, uses thinner walls making for a very active shaft. Because of this the 80 series shafts play probably a flex softer than say the CB50 and Longest Yard. This includes your FW80 shaft so its good you went with Regular unlike your R2 LY-01.
gocchin: Speaking of my 80 model shafts… are my clubs ready?
So Mr. Owada brought out my clubs which he so carefully built and recorded the before and after specs as he always does.
With the PRGR 7W we lost a bit too much weight off the club. Since it is a Tour Model the original stock shaft is actually quite heavy. I had to end up keeping the PRGR at the same length and going with a much lighter grip to keep swing weight up as we don’t like tip weighting or adding weight to the head.
PRGR M3 Hit Tour 21*
BEFORE: 41.5″ 336g D2 263CPM
AFTER: 41.5″ 318CPM D0 259CPM
Observations: I actually lost some CPM here illustrating that the 80 series Crazy shafts may be softer by a flex than other Crazy models. The 20g heavier stock PRGR shaft was rated for 91mph so I think I am okay at 259cpm for the lighter Crazy shaft. The drop in weight had the swing weight go down 2 points but still at an okay D0 for me.
Epon AF-901 UT 24*
BEFORE: 39.25″ 349g D1 256CPM
AFTER: 39.25″ 341g D0.5 273CPM
Observations: The lighter FW80 shaft at a shorter length in the AF-901 CPM’ed at a much more respectable 273 versus the 256 for the heavier stock Mach Line UT shaft which I was pulling left. The stouter and higher quality shaft should do the trick creating a more accurate AF-901 which already did very well distance wise.
Based on these numbers the FW80 shaft is more in line with a normal flex as the regular flex model I used showed pretty normal stiffness. The real test is tomorrow as I head out for 18 holes early in the morning to see how these new builds perform. We’ll be playing Eagle Lake which is know for its more narrow fairways so accuracy will be very important.
