What Is Shaft Torque And Is it important? (Video) - by Pete Styles
What Is Shaft Torque And Is it important? (Video) - by Pete Styles

Here is a good question for you. What is shaft torque and how important is it in your golf swing? The important thing to remember with shaft torque is it’s different to flex. Flex of a golf club is this. And we’re all used to seeing that written on the side of the shaft. It says stiff flex, regular flex, man’s flex, lady’s flex, junior flex. And that’s to flex the club. But an important part of the golf clubs makeup when you’re looking for a good club fitter is whether they understand torque of the golf club, whether the shaft is twisting.

Now when you make a good golf swing, the shaft is loading and unloading in quite a strong twisting action. And that’s the shaft torque. If your swing is too fast, you need a shaft that is a lot stiffer. And if you have a slower swing, you can get away with a shaft that is a little bit softer and has a bit more torque. Now one way of thinking about this as well is when you hit the golf pool, there’s a huge bending full from the clubface. You imagine this club head is swinging down towards the ball, upwards of 100 miles an hour and then that may hit the ball and tries to stop. And you can imagine the toe end would be pulled back. The hill end would pull through because your hand is still pulling there under the huge twist. Now if I was to do that with a golf club that didn’t have the right torsional value, I would be able to feel the club head twist away from it, opening the club head up which could cause the ball to leak out to the right hand side. But actually, it would produce gear effect spin. Gear effect is where one angle, it goes back and the ball would spin the opposite way. So, if I’m using a golf club where the torsional value of the shaft is too low, it’s opening up too much an impact because it’s too soft, the ball could actually violently hook down the left hand side for a right-handed golfer. Likewise if I have a shaft that’s too soft and I hit the hill, it could actually produce big slicing and cutting shots. So, this is not the flex of the shaft but the twisting property of the shaft. Generally speaking, if you buy a very cheap quality graphite shaft, the flex is okay but the torsional value of it is very, very poor. So, when you’re looking for graphite shaft in golf clubs that least spend $50 on a driver, maybe even a $100 plus. Because then you know the graphite shaft which we’ll know is the engine of the engine of the golf club is going to be decent quality. With steel shafts, generally the torsional value is better. It’s more rigid. Steel doesn’t twist so much. So, you can get away with buying cheaper steel shafting clubs particularly in your irons. Please let me know that if you’re buying a driver and you’re spending less than $20 and it’s missing the fairway, it’s not your fault. It’s the drivers fault, okay. So, nice expensive graphite shaft would have a torsional value that’s better. Make sure it’s suited your swing speed and then when you go to the driving range and hit it, it won’t feel like a host pipe on the end of the stick. It will feel a little bit more solid when you hit it. And that’s why torque is important to a golfer. 2014-05-06

Here is a good question for you. What is shaft torque and how important is it in your golf swing? The important thing to remember with shaft torque is it’s different to flex. Flex of a golf club is this. And we’re all used to seeing that written on the side of the shaft. It says stiff flex, regular flex, man’s flex, lady’s flex, junior flex. And that’s to flex the club. But an important part of the golf clubs makeup when you’re looking for a good club fitter is whether they understand torque of the golf club, whether the shaft is twisting.

Now when you make a good golf swing, the shaft is loading and unloading in quite a strong twisting action. And that’s the shaft torque. If your swing is too fast, you need a shaft that is a lot stiffer. And if you have a slower swing, you can get away with a shaft that is a little bit softer and has a bit more torque. Now one way of thinking about this as well is when you hit the golf pool, there’s a huge bending full from the clubface. You imagine this club head is swinging down towards the ball, upwards of 100 miles an hour and then that may hit the ball and tries to stop. And you can imagine the toe end would be pulled back. The hill end would pull through because your hand is still pulling there under the huge twist.

Now if I was to do that with a golf club that didn’t have the right torsional value, I would be able to feel the club head twist away from it, opening the club head up which could cause the ball to leak out to the right hand side. But actually, it would produce gear effect spin. Gear effect is where one angle, it goes back and the ball would spin the opposite way. So, if I’m using a golf club where the torsional value of the shaft is too low, it’s opening up too much an impact because it’s too soft, the ball could actually violently hook down the left hand side for a right-handed golfer. Likewise if I have a shaft that’s too soft and I hit the hill, it could actually produce big slicing and cutting shots. So, this is not the flex of the shaft but the twisting property of the shaft.

Generally speaking, if you buy a very cheap quality graphite shaft, the flex is okay but the torsional value of it is very, very poor. So, when you’re looking for graphite shaft in golf clubs that least spend $50 on a driver, maybe even a $100 plus. Because then you know the graphite shaft which we’ll know is the engine of the engine of the golf club is going to be decent quality. With steel shafts, generally the torsional value is better. It’s more rigid. Steel doesn’t twist so much. So, you can get away with buying cheaper steel shafting clubs particularly in your irons.

Please let me know that if you’re buying a driver and you’re spending less than $20 and it’s missing the fairway, it’s not your fault. It’s the drivers fault, okay. So, nice expensive graphite shaft would have a torsional value that’s better. Make sure it’s suited your swing speed and then when you go to the driving range and hit it, it won’t feel like a host pipe on the end of the stick. It will feel a little bit more solid when you hit it. And that’s why torque is important to a golfer.