+1" on wedges, affect the club, and how to adjust?

[Mulliganizer]

Greetings all!

 

Apparently, my arms are short and I need +1 length on my irons. Reading up on the effects on the club for adding length, adding weight to the head isn't the optimal solution just to get it to a certain swing weight because you're making the club even heavier. 

 

• For a casual golfer like me (who wants to get more serious soon), if I do the extension myself, do I have anything else to really worry about? (like adjusting the loft/lie?)

 

My PW is at 36.25", so was going to make my other wedges the same length since I tend to full swing with them. If I wanted to add weight, I can just get some led tape. 

 

Looking for any other suggestions/feedback.

Edited April 8, 2023 by Mulliganizer

[nkurz]

I don't think I'm understanding your question correctly.  If you extend a wedge and want to keep the same swing weight, you'd need to remove weight from the head.  It's usually the people who are shortening their shafts that are adding weight to the head.  

 

For most practical purposes and most people, there is no way to remove weight from the head.   If you happen to be a talented metal worker, the impractical way usually involve removing metal from the head.  The only way to reduce the swing weight would be to switch to a lighter shaft.  If you are starting with standard shafts, this is probably possible; if you are already in lightweight graphite, it may not be.  

 

On the other hand, you should also ask yourself if you really need to keep the swing weight the same.   For some people it matters a lot, for others it makes little difference.  Probably more important (if it is for you) is that all your clubs be close to the same.  If you are extending all your clubs, all your clubs will play heavier, so there might be no problem.    I'd say try it first and see.

 

Normally if you extend a club you'd want to make it flatter in lie, and if you shorten it you'd want to make it more upright, but since you changing length because the old club didn't fit you it's hard to know in advance if it should be changed or not.  Better to make extend first and then measure to see.  Search for Howard's tips on how to do this.  

 

If you are doing all your clubs, it may be easier just to swap the shafts by two numbers instead of extending everything.  Sometimes people are worried about doing this because it's the equivalent to switching to a softer flex, but for some people this can be a good thing:  it all depends on how well fit the previous flex was.  It's easy to switch back if you don't like the result.

 

It's liberating to work on your own clubs.  I'd take advantage of this and just start trying stuff to see how you like it.  I certainly wouldn't extend all your clubs until you've tried it out for a while with a sample or two and seen how you like it.  There are no hard and fast rules for club length.  Short arms or not, the proof for amateurs like us is whether we like the results when we swing it.

 

Good luck, and maybe someone more expert than me will chime in with better suggestions.  

 

[Stuart_G]

22 hours ago, Mulliganizer said:

My PW is at 36.25", so was going to make my other wedges the same length since I tend to full swing with them.

 

If you're comfortable with that length - I think that's a great way to go.    People who need longer length irons do so because the shortest clubs in the set get too short.  Not because the mid and long irons are too short.    So simplest solution is to just extend the ones that are too short and leave the rest of the set alone.    Might want to check your distance gaps and if uneven you can fix by having some of the lofts bent.

[SCguy1993]

On 4/9/2023 at 12:30 PM, Stuart_G said:

 

If you're comfortable with that length - I think that's a great way to go.    People who need longer length irons do so because the shortest clubs in the set get too short.  Not because the mid and long irons are too short.    So simplest solution is to just extend the ones that are too short and leave the rest of the set alone.    Might want to check your distance gaps and if uneven you can fix by having some of the lofts bent.

Yep. There's a few threads about this. 

 

I ended up with a PW at 37.5", with a 3/8" incrememt in length up to the 4i. Went from S flex to X.

 

 

 

 

 

[Stuart_G]

23 minutes ago, SCguy1993 said:

Yep. There's a few threads about this.

 

Actually there are a LOT of threads about that 😉

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

As others mentioned, adding length will make the swing weight higher, so to counteract that you'd need to remove weight from the head if you wanted to keep them the same. 

 

I play OL irons 1" longer (37.5") than the manufacturer suggestion, and play my wedges at 36.75". I think the irons swing weight out to about D7, not sure on the wedges. When I had the wedges built I asked the vendor (Sub70) to cherry-pick the lightest heads. 

 

But as @nkurz mentions, swing weight is an individual thing. My previous VL clubs were all E0 as they were built +1.5". I prefer a heavy feeling club, as I'm 6'5" and 260#. When I have something "too light" it makes me tend to rush my tempo because it feels like I'm swinging air. So I love the fact that my irons and wedges have that heft. You may find you actually prefer it.