This week, on the range at the Military Tribute at The Greenbrier, the inaugural event of the 2019 – 2020 PGA Tour season, we spotted Jason Dufner with a very custom LA Golf Shafts long iron shaft.

We reached out to LA Golf Shafts Chief Product Officer John Oldenburg to get the inside info, and John did not disappoint in the details and the story behind the switch by Jason.

“Duff reached out to me shortly after he put our new OLYSS 65 Tour X prototype in play in his driver last season.  He was looking for something for his 4-iron that would get the ball up in the air a bit easier, but maintain (or increase) distance, and keep the spin close to where it was with his existing shaft which was a TT Dynamic Gold AMT S400.  What I worked on providing him was a shaft that had an overall stiffness/frequency and weight that were comparable to his current set up, but with a softer tip section.  And to improve accuracy (decrease dispersion), I wanted to get him something with lower torque than the TT AMT shaft.  So, in a nutshell, that’s what I designed for him.  It’s a 125 gram shaft with a frequency close to the AMT S400, but with a tip that is pretty significantly softer and has 0.3 degrees lower torque.  The combo of a softer tip with lower torque will help him to launch the ball higher but maintain his accuracy.  The “Duff 4-iron”, also has a higher balance point than the AMT S440.  That way Duff can use a heavier head, get the same swingweight he is comfortable with, and put a little more mass behind the ball at impact to get an increase in ball speed and thus distance.”

“That’s the great thing about graphite.  The limitless design capability.  Graphite is a huge family of composite materials, with different stiffness, strength, density, etc..   Steel, although there are more alloys available today, is primarily a single material with a defined, limited set of mechanical properties.  And even with the additional alloys, individual steel shafts are made from one single steel alloy.  I can mix and match any number of composite materials into a single shaft, to change, enhance, fine tune any number of the shaft playing characteristics.  I can lower the torque and soften the tip.  With steel, if you soften the tip, the torque has to go up.  With steel, change the weight and you change the stiffness and torque.  Composites allow me to adjust individual attributes while having little or no effect on the remaining attributes.  This is a huge benefit of graphite and one of the reasons that I am working with Bryson and Duff and complete sets of graphite for their irons.  Stay tuned!”

This hopefully answers some of the questions that have been asked in the forums about a potential full iron set, and thanks to John we can look forward to more individual player-focused products.

• More photos of/discussion about Dufner’s shaft in the forums.