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
The 2023 Fujikura Axiom is a new iron shaft concept. They are parallel 0.370 tips which Fujikura states can be sanded to 0.355 tapers. The wall thickness at the tip is thick and I have no reason to doubt this can be done without damaging the tip integrity. Typically parallel sets are made from a single “blank” tip trimmed to increase stiffness in shorter lengths. The Axiom comes in three different models, short for 8, 9, W, mid for 5, 6, 7, and long for 2, 3, and 4. The idea is to create “specific performance throughout the iron set.” Lets see how this can be seen by virtual trimming a set of shafts.
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Russ
TPT Golf is a division of a Swiss technology and composite firm that developed carbon fiber materials. They have produced America’s Cup yacht sails, lightweight racing car bodies, skis, snowboards, watch bodies, aircraft parts and satellite parts. They offered their prepreg to shaft companies and was told it was too expensive. Their only choice to enter the golf market was to make their own shafts. Their ultra premium shafts quickly appeared in the bags of several marque PGA players.
Thin Ply Technology (TPT) shafts have double the layers of material found in typical ultra premium shafts. Prepreg tapes are wrapped on the mandrel on CNC winders. Most other shafts are hand rolled, much like cigars. TPT makes the prepreg ribbon and can orientate the fiber direction in the ribbon. That creates a uniquely new method of creating golf shafts. They can adjust shaft properties in unique ways to adjust shaft performance. I have been to the Swiss R&D site demonstrating the process of EI measurement with my instrument and software.
Now that we have the fifth generation of the Speeder Evolution one wonders if this was a marketing strategy planned at the beginning or that evolved over the years. The fundamental design has not changed,a good thing. Along the way there were subtle tweaks.