Mid Balance Point shaft Diver Shaft- Meaning and Benefits.

[gibbyfan]

I was fit today for driver and fairway. The fitter mentioned a mid or center balance shaft for my fairway ( Pederson Ballistic ). I liked it a lot and the numbers were spot on! That lead me to think about driver shafts that are mid balance point with a stiffer butt and tip. I believe it means the mass of the shaft is towards the middle of the shaft rather than tip or butt. However, please correct me if I am wrong. Also, what shafts have a mid balance point? Most or is it very few. Very curious to learn more about how it affects the club's over all feel and swing weight.

[Stuart_G]

Are you sure your fitter wasn't talking about "kick point" instead of balance point?

 

Balance point is really only an important spec as it relates to helping fit swing weight for certain playing lengths. The longer stock playing lengths for drivers and fairways sometimes need a shaft that is considered somewhat 'counterbalanced' to help keep the swing weight from getting un-managable. It's certainly a characteristic that is important to the builder when making the club and setting the swing weight but outside of the effect on swing weight (which can be managed in several other ways as well), it's not really a fitting characteristic for picking a shaft. It's also not a spec that the manufacturers are very open with other than some vague labeling about a shaft being 'counter-balanced' or not.

 

Kick point, on the other hand, is an old (and not very accurate but still commonly used) way to represent the stiffness profile of the shaft and what many think of as the 'launch characteristic' of the shaft. A high kickpoint shaft is one which has a stiffer tip and a softer butt which can potentially result in a lower launching shaft. Low kick point means a softer tip and higher launching shaft. mid kick-point being a mid-launch shaft.

[avguy]

This idea is interesting for driver feel to the particular player, I believe. There's been alot of due raves for the latest Ping Driver out, the G400/LST/SFT/Max. I don't have one, but curious factor sets in, so I checked them out off the rack lately at a PGASS.

 

I know the stock shaft is the Alta CB, and also readily available is the Ping Tour in 65/75g. They had all those there, and just a few waggles with each shafted version and I could really 'feel' what a counter-balance design does when paired with such driver heads that go about 206g. Those in Ping TS felt heavier to me overall than those in Alta CB with the counter-balance 55g.