PING i15 irons.... Inside Hosel Diam.?

WSUWarriorPGAPro · July 3, 2023

Club Techs....

I am looking for some help. I have a customer who sheared off a couple of Ping iron heads from the TFC 149 graphite iron shafts. I have bored out the graphite shaft parts left in the hosels. I even burned out the remaining graphite and epoxy, since it didn't all come out with just the drilling, as I did not wish to damage the inside of the hosels.) That being said, the hosels are clean and I used a hosel gauge to check what it was, thinking it was .370. It appears to be actually .355T. Is this true? Also, what is a similar shaft to the stock PING TFC 149 graphite iron shafts that this set came with? If the hosel is .355T, that seems to be limiting the replacement options.

(The customer did not wish to send back to PING for the work, as PING has stated they are about 3 months out for turn around time for any repair work, last I heard.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

st1800e · July 3, 2023

.355 hosel. Check this link for Golfworks take on shaft type, then go to their catalog for similar shafts.

https://www.golfworks.com/oem-golf-shaft-replacement-guides/

Stuart_G · July 4, 2023

10 hours ago, WSUWarriorPGAPro said:

It appears to be actually .355T. Is this true?

Yes and no.

Technically it is but Ping uses a very atypical shape for a tapered hosel. So even taper tip shafts don't necessarily fit the best and can still be a bit loose - especially near the top of the hosel

10 hours ago, WSUWarriorPGAPro said:

If the hosel is .355T, that seems to be limiting the replacement options.

No it wont. You can add a taper to any graphite shaft tip. Besides, to get a good fit with the atypical hosel shape, I find it's a good idea to shape all graphite shafts to fit better - even the tapered one need some work to get a good fit. In fact I doubt you'll find a good match in a taper tip version in graphite. They tend to more commonly be heavier and stiffer tipped than the tfc shaft. And a parallel tip gives you more room to tune the stiffness feel by using variable tipping.

As for a good replacement - you can probably find an exact replacement on ebay. That would be your best bet.

As to what alternative shaft might be a good replacement? Just not a lot of data on club OEM proprietary shafts so hard to make a good recommendation (The Maltby shaft rating system is not going to be able to do guarantee a close match).

Also the TFC shaft had both a variable weight and profile based on the flex. So a good match for the stiff version is likely going to be different than a good match for the senior flex version. And you didn't mention which flex you needed to replace so I can't be any more specific. Just keep in mind getting a good match for weight is generally going to be way more important than getting a match for stiffness.

Edited July 4, 2023 by Stuart_G