When reading about the best golf driver shafts for sale, you may have seen it quipped somewhere or other that shafts are like the engines that drive the shot.
That is certainly true. It is also true that the shaft specification that gets the most attention is flex. It is easy enough to understand what this is – shaft flex is how much a shaft bends during the swing.
But what about other, related, factors like torque? And what about how these influence the performance of the “engine?”
This short post will break down the importance of this rating and why you should pay close attention to its effects.
What Is Torque?
Put as simply as possible, torque refers to how much a shaft has the propensity to twist during a swing.
Torque is measured in whole numbers that correspond to degrees of twist. For instance, a shaft with a torque rating of 3 would twist about 3 degrees around an axis running through the center of the shaft, under a swing load.
Driver shafts for sale with higher stiffness ratings usually, but not always, have lower torque ratings.
Torque, like shaft flex and kick point, can profoundly impact the manner in which the driver head strikes the ball, which in turn affects shot shape.
How Does Torque Impact Shaft Performance?
A shaft with a high torque rating will twist more aggressively during the swing sequence, and the higher the torque rating, the more the golf club head will oscillate during the swing.
If the torque rating is too high, and your swing speed and tempo are too fast, the clubhead is likely to be either too open or too closed at the point of impact. This can create both push and pull shots (inconsistently) among other, worse, shot errors.
While driver shafts are no longer made of steel, steel is the material that offers the lowest torque ratings. Long have graphite shaft manufacturers striven to produce composite shafts with torque ratings that rival the performance of steel.
Aldila was one of the first companies to make great strides in this arena. They introduced boron fibers into the carbon fiber matrix of some golf shafts, which dramatically limited the torque rating of those shafts, producing effects that were much stiffer, and more similar, to those of predecessor steel shafts.
On the other end of the spectrum, a golf shaft with a higher torque rating can be a desirable thing to some players. While a torque rating that is too high can produce (or exacerbate) shot errors, it is also true that torque has less of an effect on accuracy than shaft flex and kick point ratings.
Moreover, a shat with a higher torque rating will produce a much smoother swing and deliver excellent feedback, which many golfers prefer.
So it is not enough to say that players with high swing speeds or low swing speeds should look for this, that, or the other torque rating. The only way to know for sure is to work with a golf fitter.
Why Working with a Fitter Can Help Shore Up Your Choice in Driver Shafts for Sale
While it is true that a shaft might have a torque rating that is either too low or too high for you, the best thing you can do is work with a fitter to determine a range that is suitably matched to your abilities.
Once you get fitted, you can apply that knowledge of your preferences to all future purchases of golf driver shafts for sale.
For those in the Dallas area, visit Dallas Golf Company at their retail shop in Texas. You can work with their fitters firsthand to get personalized notes and recommendations about what shafts you should be playing with.
That way you can make wiser choices about shaft flex, weight, length, kick point, and torque rating going forward.
