Tipping... school me

I know what it means from a definitional standpoint and the general purpose of doing it, but I am perplexed at how one knows when it is needed.

When your ballflight is too high. Spin a touch high. Club feels a bit whippy.

Many reasons.

Alot of it trial and error.....knowledge about your swing and hiw different shafts work....knowing if a new different or tipped shaft is right direction.....

For myself if everything was really really good already but just wanted it tad stiffer feel at that end I would tip.....idk how much it really changes anything other than feel of it tho

Sure Howard or stuart have some scientific data about tho.....for me it's just a feel thing

I don't let them remove/clean clubs at the end of my round.

Its primarily a feel/fine tuning thing. You normally have to be pretty well in tune with your feel and your swing to really determine whether or not its necessary. Tipping is never a drastic change, its more like the finer sanding towards the end of a woodworking project. These are also only things that will really affect a player with an aggressive and/or late release.

Reasons you may want to tip a shaft:

- You'd like the shaft to feel a touch firmer towards the head, particularly in transition.

- You're consistently striking the ball and you like the way the club is setup, you just want to remove a small amount of spin.

- You've added weight to the head and you want to maintain the shaft flex.

- You'd prefer to see more loft on your driver and want to offset the added launch and spin a little bit.

Reasons you might think you want to tip a shaft but should look at other solutions:

- Your spin is 500rpm+ more than you want it to be.

- You want the shaft to feel like the next flex up (S -> X).

- You want to shorten the shaft.

- The pros often do it so you want to try it as well.

- Your flight is more than several degrees too high.

Tipping is fine tuning, use the right tool for the right job.

When a Gatorade from the beverage cart is $4.00. You just give them a $5.00 and be happy.

Oh, clubs:) Yeah, exactly what the person before me said. Some folks on this site think people can't tell the difference between one ball to the next. Well, I can totally tell the difference between balls, but tip the shaft a little and you've got to be pretty special to truly tell the difference all things else equal...

As mentioned above, Stuart will have the precise information you need, that said, I can speak only from my experience, I am a high ball hitter, after trying plenty of shafts to accommodate a lower ball flight the issue came in form of spin, so, we played with different tipping lengths, from .25" to 1", found out that 1" gives me the best overall results, all my driver shafts (have 3 different at this time) are tipped 1" and at 44.25" playing length.

but I am perplexed at how one knows when it is needed.

Lots of good responses already but simply put through trial and error - including experiences with fitting shafts for yourself in general.

To summarize/reiterate the important points

1) tipping is primarily a means to tweak the loading/unloading feel of the shaft - and largely will only benefit those that are both sensitive to those feels (not everyone is) and for which the shaft (untipped) does not match well with the expectations the player has for how they think the shaft should feel. (there is no right or wrong amount of loading, it's purely a subjective judgement). Since trial and error testing can be expensive (particularly when it comes to testing different amounts of tipping), generally, if the shaft is a bit too soft and needs tipping, the player will 'know' something doesn't feel right or there will be some problems with controlling impact. So if the club feels fine, and there are no atypical problems being experienced with the club, there is little reason to even consider tipping.

If your just curious and wondering what would happen or what you might be missing, you'll likely get more benefit by going around to the different fitting carts in your area and just experimenting with different shafts and see what happens to your ball flight with various stiffness profiles.

2) tipping is also done to adjust and adapt to different head characteristics, particularly weight and bottom bore to ground specs. e.g. I know shaft A works great for me in head B (maybe a 3H), now I want to install one in head C. (maybe a 4H). I can use the difference in head weight and other head specs to use different tipping amounts to 'match' the shaft behavior in the two heads. Matching a 'new' club to one I already know works well.

3) As some have mentioned, for some players (particularly those with later releases) and depending on the original profile of the shaft, tipping can potentially be used to tweak the launch/spin numbers. Personally, I don't usually recommend that approach as it can be very unpredictable and there are a lot more effective ways to control the launch/spin.

Thank you all for clarifying. It definitely cleared up an confusion.

I thought tipping was a city in China

When a Gatorade from the beverage cart is $4.00. You just give them a $5.00 and be happy.

 

Oh, clubs:) Yeah, exactly what the person before me said. Some folks on this site think people can't tell the difference between one ball to the next. Well, I can totally tell the difference between balls, but tip the shaft a little and you've got to be pretty special to truly tell the difference all things else equal...

Unless it's Chastity, then you tip up a little more, due to her "questionable morals".