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
The Aldila Quaranta shafts are light weigh only, reminding me of the Ultra Light Mitsubishi Bassara shafts. So many other shaft designs have been extended down to the 50 gram range that I have moved away from fitting with Ultra Light models. The tip stiffness and torque of the Sapphire are impressive.
When I first wrote this review I did not notice that some of the shafts were marked with a very small TX below the stiffness number. This caused some confusion that resolved when the non TX 6,5 shafts arrived.