Hi everyone. Hope you're having a great pre-Christmas week. This is probably one of the hardest weeks to get through but it's slowly rolling along. SirPutts has been busy with email and tonight he's talking to a reader about switching irons and shafts…
I currently have a set of Hogan BH-5 steel shaft irons and I would like to get new something new and different. I am 52 years old, been playing for 45 years. I have a driver swing speed of 88 mph. I was thinking about going to graphite shafts. Do you have any suggestion???
To give you some more info, I play to between a 2 to 6 handicap. My normal ball flight is a slight draw, which eliminates any kind of clubs with offset or draw bias. I currently play the Hogan BH-5 irons with steel shafts. I am standard fit, 5 foot 9 inches tall. I was looking at the Adams Hybrid Boxer A3 set with graphite shafts.
The only problem with graphite is they are a little longer. My game is based more on accuracy than trying to get distance, so I usually hit a seven iron from around 135.
First off I am a big fan of graphite shafts. The new shafts coming to the market are very high in quality and can provide a lot of benefits for golfers including vibration dampening, lighter weight, and more distance. Based on your driver swing speed I would suggest that a regular flex would be the best for you.
It sounds like you have a pretty good grasp on your game and what you are looking for which definitely helps in picking out a new set of clubs. The A3 Boxer set that you mentioned is a great one, its one of my recommendations also. There will be a little bit of offset in these irons but not so much that every shot you hit turns into a big hook. They also use a pretty high quality graphite shaft and the hybrids are awesome.
I would suggest taking a look at the Yonex clubs. Although they aren't a huge name brand in the U.S. they do make one of the best graphite shafts on the market. The Yonex C280 is a nice all-around club that combines performance with forgiveness.
Another club I would suggest looking at is the TaylorMade R7 TP. Though it will be a bit tougher to find, this club is available in graphite and you should be able to demo one from any shop that has a TaylorMade fitting cart. This is a slightly smaller head with a very reduced offset so you shouldn't have any worries about hooking the ball with it and even though it is from TaylorMade's "Tour Preferred" line there is still plenty of forgiveness for a lower handicap player.
You are correct that in some lines the graphite shaft will be longer than steel (in the Adams A3 the graphite is longer than the steel, in the TM they are the same length) but you should be able to get your set fitted when you buy it. This should eliminate any concerns over the length of the clubs.
Thanks SirPutts! Feel free to drop us a line with any golf club questions you may have. We do our best to respond to every email. Talk to you tomorrow!