Golfers love their game. It’s not uncommon to spend a pretty penny on golf club heads and custom golf shafts that suit the player’s skills. Let alone the gloves, bags, shoes, and other equipment that add to the expense.
So if you can justify the expense of a custom golf shaft to take your game to the next level, you should be able to justify the time it takes to care for and store your equipment the right way.
1. Fail to inspect before use
Some shafts – specifically graphite and carbon fiber iron and driver shafts, not so much steel shafts – develop small cracks over time. With use and stress, the fibers can start to separate.
Small nicks, chips, and hairline cracks, when caught early, can potentially be addressed or repaired and prevented from ballooning into problems that will actually damage your golf shafts.
One of the most important things you can do is check your golf shafts out before you play or practice with them, every time.
2. Fail to use a tee when you should be
Drivers and woods are meant to be played with tees. Failing to do so increases your chances of a shot error, notably of a fat shot.
Now, the ground is pretty soft, but it can be highly damaging to driver shafts. But the ground isn’t always soft. There is sand, gravel, and stone in the ground, along with other impediments.
Striking the ground is a nearly sure-fire way to damage your shafts. Play with a tee when using a driver or wood.
3. Leave them in the car or the garage
Leaving your custom golf shafts in the car or garage, especially in the heat, will almost certainly damage them.
It’s not that the carbon fiber or steel of the shaft will be damaged. It’s more that intense heat can cause the epoxy near the tip that secures the club head can break down.
When that happens, you won’t be able to play with your clubs again till you get them refitted.
4. Failing to clean the grips
If you don’t clean your golf club grips after a day at the range or on the course, sand, grass, dust, and debris can work their way up between the butt section of the shaft and the grip.
Over time, this can cause abrasive damage that will damage the shaft – especially carbon fiber shafts.
Will it destroy them? No – but it will adversely impact their performance, and yours when you play with them.
5. Use a golf bag without full shaft dividers
Using a golf bag without dividers, allowing your golf shafts to rattle around inside the bag, can and will damage the shafts – specifically carbon fiber and graphite shafts.
The repeated percussive damage from striking each other can cause the breakdown of epoxy, and the wearing of finishes, and it can also cause nicks, scratches, gouges, and worse – cracks and fractures to form.
6. Store them wet
This one is more of a problem for those that use steel shafts with irons. Water can cause significant damage to steel shafts, making them literally rust away.
Keep your shafts dry, and if you play with them in the rain, wipe them down with a golf towel after each day on the course – steel or graphite, regardless.
Need New Custom Golf Shafts?
Looking for new custom golf shafts for your favorite drivers? Upon inspection, has it become apparent that some of your shafts are in worse shape than you expected?
Get new ones! Visit Dallas Golf Company at DallasGolf.com and pick up some new shafts that are better suited to your skills, anyway. Just make sure when you get the new ones you observe these best practices to prevent damage in the future!
