Shaft Choice

Question
Hi Mark, I am a high handicap golfer who has been away from the game for a few years only playing two or three times a year. i am thinking of buying a new set of irons and starting to play on a regular basis. I am looking at irons such as Clevland Golf's Launcher irons developed for the high handicaper such as myself. My question is should I go with steel or graphite shafts? I tend to have an easy smooth swing most of the time and I am not sure which shaft would be better. The extra 100 dollars for graphite would not make or break my decision. Hope you can help me find an answer.

Answer
Hello Gary,

Thanks for the question. I'm glad to hear you're getting back into the game.

Let me tell you the main differences between the steel and graphite shafts and from that hopefully you'll be able to make up your mind.

Steel is more consistent in production that graphite (especially the cheaper graphite shafts), which basically means that if  a company made 100 steel shafts and 100 graphite shafts the steel shafts would have little change between the shafts. However the graphite even though they are made in exactly the same way are likely to have a larger degree of differences between them. They are also more likely to have voids in the shaft (weak points) which are not always picked up on in quality control. Steel shafts tend to be more consistent for accuracy, this is why nearly all pro's use steel irons, if they want more distance they will simply use a longer & lower lofted club. However they cannot do this with the Driver because this is the longest & lowest lofted club (except of course the loft of the putter) and for that reason most use graphite in their woods.
The graphite shafts are lighter and tend to be a fraction longer, this allows you to swing the club a little faster and with good contact gain extra distance.

Summary

If your swing is easy and smooth and you could do with extra distance then go for graphite. If you accuracy is the main problem and not distance then go for steel.

I hope this helps.

Kind regards,

Marc Evans