GOLFER PROFILE: Won-haeng Lee Looking ahead to Spring, Lee was looking forward to sharpening his already impressive game with an update to his golf clubs. At 55 years old, he was concerned that his current equipment may have gotten a tad difficult to handle in terms of firmness in flex and club lofts. In particular, he had been experiencing pain in his right shoulder for over a year, and had been diagnosed with adhesive capsulitis of shoulder (frozen shoulder). The nagging pain, he says, was a signal from his body that he may be straining in trying to maintain his 105mph swing speed. A solid amateur golfer with a 5.8 index handicap, his strengths are accurate iron play and low/mid trajectory drives. However, he says that his MB irons are stiff steel shafts tend to tire him out towards the back nine, which can result in pushed drives or hooks from over-compensating. His irons also carry less distance, and often leaves him with longer putts for higher scores. Interestingly, Lee admits that he wasn't a firm believer in club fitting. Having played for over 20 years, his self-taught homemade swing is surprisingly fluid and yet powerful. He says he always believed it was the carpenter and not the tools that makes the difference, but that the aches and pain made him reconsider what could be improved on the equipment side of things. As a devoted Bridgestone Golf fan, Lee's bag was almost completely made up of the brand. He also admitted that he likes the muscleback design for their compact heads and great feel, but that they can be punishing on mishits. As expected, his gamers were on the stiff side for shafts befitting his handicap. Driver: Bridgestone 415 Limited 9˚ + Ventus Black 6s shaft at D4 Wood: Taylormade Stealth 15˚ + Tensei TM50 stiff shaft Hybrids: Taylormade Stealth 19˚ + Tensei TM60 stiff shaft Irons: Bridgestone 220MB (4-P) + True Temper Dynamic Golf S200 steel shafts Wedges: Bridgestone BRM2 wedges (50˚ 54˚ 58˚) S200 steel shafts Putter: Odyssey Versa #7 IRONSAfter warming up for a bit, Lee's first order of business was his irons. For starters, we saw that he carries his 7-iron 145m (158 yards) with a slight fade. As the hitting session went on, Lee occasionally hit the ball a bit fat as he was seen to put some extra effort into the downswing. He explained that the shaft seemed a bit heavy and firm, which necessitated the oomph. As a result, he was bouncing a bit more on the impact causing the iron to dig a bit more than usual. Our recommendation was to switch current iron shafts (~128g) to our MetaFlex ix90 carbon (90g) iron shafts. Understandably, Lee was concerned as he'd never tried such a light iron shaft, let alone carbon shafts. He thought that the shots will balloon with a much higher back spin and also feel too soft to trust during the downswing. After some test swings with other demo irons with the same shaft, he was confortable enough to trust us with re-fitting his MB irons with the lighter, stronger iron shafts. The resulting 7-iron with the ix90 iron shaft resulted in an average carry of 148m (162 yards), which compared directly to his original yardage of 158 yards, is not much. However, Lee noticed a big difference in the amount of effort and exertion he put into the swing, which was only about 80-90% of his swing with the steel shaft to get the same result. When he stepped on the gas, his carry increased as much as up to 165m (180 yards). Smiling, Lee's only worry afterwards was how to wether the inevitable ridicule from his friends on switching to carbon shafts in his muscle-back irons. To be sure, Lee wasn't looking for additional iron distance, but he was glad to have the extra ammunition in his arsenal. Moreover, the less amount of exertion allowed him to be smoother in his swing tempo, which resulted in a much more consistent swing over the course of a round. In fact, Lee hit over 200 balls during the fitting and was amazed at how his body and shoulder held up throughout the session. This alone, he said, was worth the change. DRIVERLee had the same issues with driver being too stiff to handle unless swinging at full power. His gamer Ventus Black 6s averaged 228m (249 yards), with which he was satisfied for distance. However, he says he starts getting fatigued at the turn with his shots being pushed to the right. Worse, he would sometimes overcompensate and overly use his wrist to turn over the club, resulting in a hook. After trying several demo shafts, we agreed on our new FF38 TBT driver shaft featuring a titanium wire wrapped helically around our flagship FreeFlex FF38 shaft. The groundbreaking shaft merges the advantages of a softer shaft for easy speed and shaft loading, while providing a firm torque further aided by the TBT technology to keep a tight shot-dispersion. The lighter driver shaft at 42 grams allowed for the swingweight to drop to D2 for easier, faster swings with less efforts. As with the carbon iron shafts, Lee was initially cautious with the new driver as it felt very flexible. Upon taking several tentative swings with the TBT-shafted driver, however, Lee was surprised at how firm the light shaft felt throughout the swing. Lee was particularly taken with how the ball would not go left despite trying to actively turn over the club. He was soon free to swing as hard as he wanted, with the shaft firming up in accordance to how hard it was being swung. We explained that even though this is essentially the FF38 shaft with titanium added, it feels completely different. Torque alone doesn’t dictate direction, and in softer shafts, they often bend left though the impact zone, which can lead to a hook. The titanium wire helps stabilize the shaft at that key moment, keeping it straighter through impact. This results in better directional stability and a lower launch angle and spin than you’d expect from such a soft shaft. Lee confided that his understanding of how shafts work and behave was completely turned upside down, as he'd never imagined such a shaft shaft can feel so firm with a boring launch characteristics of a much-stiffer shaft. Overall, Lee was more than happy with the resulting baby fade and similar carry distance at 80-90% swing power from before. Again, Lee was able to get his swing speed upto +4 mph while going easy on the body; something he was looking for more than anything. WEDGES, PUTTER, and FW WOODSLee's biggest concern with the wedge was his distance gapping between his PW and 50° wedge. The PW averaged 130 yard carry while the gap wedge barely totaled 100 yards. He also lamented that his 54° and 58° wedges also suffered from short carry distance, including an unwanted draw. We suspected that his attack angle is too steep, resulting in excess backspin and ballooning shots, but felt that carbon shafts were not necessary to fix the gapping issue. Rather, it was solved by tweaking the lie angle of this wedges to better suit is upright stance so that the ball finds the center of the clubface. We all agreed to leave the FW woods and the Putter alone, as they were working well for Lee as they were. No need to fix them if they are not broken, and Lee was welcome to come back anytime to re-visit his options as needed. At the end of a long session, Lee was happy (and surprised) at the reduced level of fatigue he felt after hitting over 200 balls almost non-stop. It was exactly what he was looking for in gaining the same or better performance with less strain and effort. Welcome to Team FreeFlex, Lee!
