UST Mamiya V2 ProForce Driver Shaft Review

UST V2 ProForce & ProForce HL Driver Shaft Review

By Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, A Dallas Fort Worth Club Fitter & Builder
The Highlands Performance Golf Center, Carrollton Texas 
Golf Digest Certified America’s 100 Best Club Fitter

I have limited access to UST shafts as they do not provide review samples. This review is of the shafts available as a custom shaft selection from TaylorMade. The Proforce shaft has an interesting history. A lunch meeting of UST management after a tour win in the 90’s reflected on how little attention the bland color of the shaft received. The engineer at the table picked up a jar of mustard and declared he would fix the problem, he would paint them mustard color. The tour rep was horrified with the idea. Over his objection, he was handed mustard colored shafts. Soon after, Jose Maria Olazabal won the 1999 Masters with the Proforce Gold golf shaft. As a result UST could not make them fast enough for the tour rep to hand out on tour. I have verified this story from three of the four that were at that lunch. It is a colorful (pun intended) story about the history of golf shaft marketing. It is now 24 years later and the ProForce shaft is still with us. It has gone through updates to deal with driver head design and shape. It remains a viable design imitated by many shaft companies.

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Russ

UST LIN-Q Driver Shaft Review

UST LIN-Q Blue & Red Driver Shaft Review

By Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, A Dallas Fort Worth Club Fitter & Builder
The Highlands Performance Golf Center, Carrollton Texas 
Golf Digest Certified America’s 100 Best Club Fitter

I have limited access to UST shafts as they do not provide review samples. In looking at the UST website they have provided accurate EI profiles of the LIN-Q product line. I would expect as much as they own one of my EI instruments. Carbon fiber materials are constantly being improved. UST tells us that they used the latest generation TORAY prepreg in the LIN-Q. 

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Russ

USTMamiya Recoil ESX Golf Iron Shaft Review

UST Mamiya Recoil ESX Shaft Review

By Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, A Dallas Fort Worth Club Fitter & Club Maker
The Highlands Performance Golf Center, Carrollton Texas 
Golf Digest Certified America’s 100 Best Club Fitter

It has been some time since I measured a set of UST Mamiya Recoil iron shafts. UST does not make review samples available and the last time I did measure a set of constant weight taper Recoils I did not see consistent profiles through the set. Updates to a fitting cart that arrived a few weeks ago included the Recoil ESX. I ordered a set of irons that were getting custom shafted with uncut ESX shafts to get an updated look at set consistency. I pulled the shafts and measured them. I was suprised with what I saw.

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Russ

UST Recoil Parallel Iron Shafts

UST Recoil Parallel Iron Golf Shaft Review

By Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, A Dallas Fort Worth Club Fitter & Club Maker
The Golf Center at the Highlands, Carrollton Texas

RecoilParallelImageWhen the UST Recoil Iron shaft was first introduced I was enthralled by the concept of hoop deformation storing and then releasing energy. Hoop deformation was not part of the discussion in the club fitting organizations I belonged to. There was no publically documented procedure in the golf shaft business for measuring it. I was given some hints by another shaft company and set out on a long discovery process to measure it. Eventually it redefined how I calculated golf shaft EI by adding a correction for hoop deformation in the 3 point measuring process. This did not happen overnight. The journey lasted a little over a year, hoop deformation measurements are now an integral part of my understanding of the golf shaft. While I am forever grateful to UST Mamiya for bringing this to my attention, I did not find anything extraordinary about the hoop strength of the Recoil shafts. Generally it is a function of wall thickness, fiber orientation and layup strategy.

I recently obtained a limited range of UST Recoil shafts, including the Recoil 450, Recoil 460, Recoil 660, Recoil 670 and Recoil 680. Before we look at the numbers I realized in a conversation with a shaft company executive a few weeks ago that I was remiss in explaining my rating of shaft stiffness, EI Area. An article on the metric has been posted.. The concept was presented to me by Jeff Meyers who was the shaft guru at Titleist for about 20 years. By using area under the curve, each measurement of the shaft, from tip to butt is given equal weight in the stiffness rating. Jeff found it preferable over frequency to predict how golfers would report their impression of shaft stiffness. Frequency is heavily weighted toward the butt, overlooking the remainder of the shafts. As you read the charts on this site, your can compare overall stiffness of shafts by looking at the EI Area number in the tables. 

To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership.
Russ

To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership.
Russ

UST Proforce V5 Golf Shaft Review

Driver Golf Shaft – UST Proforce V5

By Russ Ryden, A Golf Digest America’s 100 Best Clubfitter
Fit2Score, Dallas Fort Worth, Texas

USTProforceV5_ImageThe UST Mamiya Proforce V5 is a 2014 update of the ever popular Proforce V2. I have never had much experience with this shaft so my comments will be limited to observations of the numbers. Comparing it to the single Proforce V2 that was in the shop, the Proforce V5 torque is about a half degree lower. That creates a more stable tip for the larger heavier driver heads that we now see loaded with bling.

USTProforceV5__EiGjTb

Radial consistency is excellent, the average was 99.8 with a standard deviation of 0.3%. None of the review sample exceeded my 2 cpm threshold, all were excellent. At this price point, that is notable. It reflects a trend in the shaft business to produce quality shafts that work consistently in any orientation in rotating hosels. The graphics of the Proforce V5 reflect that, wrapping uniformly around the shaft.

If you were familiar with the UST AXIVCORE Tour Green you will find the Proforce V5 to be quite similar. Compared to the AXIVCORE which integrates 4 axis material int he tip, the Proforce V5 has about a half degree more torque. You can expect a mid launch ball flight