One of the sometimes annoying habits of the golf equipment industry is when it sinks its teeth into a new trend, it tends to bite deep and hang on tight. Just such a trend is oversize equipment design in golf. About 13 years ago, an oversize putter helped Jack Nicklaus to his fourth Masters title and with it, signified the entry of oversize equipment design into the golf industry. Nine years ago, oversize metal woods made their entry, first in the form of stainless steel woods. Now with titanium, wood heads are able to be designed even larger. Even as the largest company in the game has introduced a 300cc size titanium drive, the state of oversize wood head design may not yet have reached its pinnacle. High strength aerospace aluminum alloys which are even lighter than titanium but which posses a high strength-to weight ratio, make it possible to create gigantic wood heads which are significantly larger thank even the newest titanium drivers.

Irons too have expanded in size over the last several years. Far more irons today are designed with the word "OVERSIZE" cast into position on the head than without.

But as an example of biting its teeth even deeper into what is proving to be a successful trend, in 1997 is also shaping up as The Year of the Oversize Graphite Shaft. Not wanting to be left of the limelight, a number of new shaft designs will display a sizable increase in the butt diameter over what has been the norm in shaft design for decades. The arrival of the "Oversize Butt" shafts, as they are being called, signifies the development of a completely new area of clubmaking technology which is being founded on what the industry hopes will prove to be sound engineering principles instead of the marketing hype.

For decades, shafts were designed with a range in butt diameter from 0.560" to 0.620", depending on the flex desired. Guided by the most simple design principle of the larger the shaft diameter, the stiffer the overall flex, shaft engineers have always reserved the smaller butt diameters for L and A flex, while the larger dimensions were required to create the S and X flex.

In the 1970s a few shat companies and major manufacturers of golf club briefly departed from the industry's normal range in butt diameter with the manufacture of limited assortment of shafts with 0.690" to 0.700" butt diameters. Conceived as a way to squeeze out a few grams of weight to lighten the shaft, a few of the slightly larger butt diameter shafts such as the Ben Hogan Legend and the True Temper Kinetic soon proved to be exception rather than the rule and disappeared after a few short years, never to be seen again.

Why didn't the slightly larger butt diameter shafts of the 1970s stick around? And why is the industry now offering even larger butt diameter shafts? Twenty years ago, all of the 0.690" to 0.700" butt shafts were made from steel. To retain a standard grip size, the early 0.700" butt shafts required a grip with much less rubber; in short, a grip made with the same outer diameter but a larger inner diameter to fit the large shaft. These grips wilt less rubber were not tick enough to absorb the shock of impact and vibration from a steel shaft as well as the conventional rubber grips which for the normal 0.560 " to 0.620" shafts. Consequently, the slight decrease in shaft weight obtained from making the shaft with a larger and thinner butt was out-weighted by the harsh impact felt by the golfer. As a result, oversize butt steel shafts quickly departed from the scene.

Currently the new stable of big butt diameter shafts is quite different than forerunners. Most remarkable, the new oversize butt diameters shafts are manufactured from graphite instead of steel. By virtue of its physical properties, graphite can absorb the shock of impact with the ball and the ground much better than steel.

However, the real reason clubmaker will be wise to consider using the big butt shafts is because of the change in both the total weight and balance point that these shafts and their matching grips will create. Greatly increasing the opportunity to use far lighter grips than ever seen before in clubmaking. Together, the ultralight grips and the oversize butt graphite shaft greatly reduce the total weight and lower the balance point of the assembled club.

As a result of the tremendous popularity of ultralight graphite shafts, golfers are aware that the lighter the total weight of the club, the greater the potential for increasing clubhead speed and with it, distance. It is a common fact that if gofers can swing the club with greater velocity through impact and still hit the ball on-center, they will experience an increase in distance, regardless of whether the club is a wood or iron. Because total weight is the primary determinant of golf club velocity, this principle of lighter club=higher swing speed=more distance had driven the development of lighter and lighter shafts which now weigh even less than 50 grams! However, all o these ultralight graphite shaft have been designed with conventional butt diameter, which means they require conventional weight grips. To push total weight a little lower, a number of grips with conventional core sizes have been developed which weigh 12-15 grams less than a normal grip. With this combination, the total weight of a golf club which is built with conventional butt diameter ultralight graphite shaft (i.e. a driver) can be driven below 312 grams.

While sub-312 grams drivers and their corresponding fairway woods and irons are significantly light enough to generate increases in clubhead velocity, two other increasingly important factors have opened the door for the technology of the big butt shafts. First, shafts which weight less than 60 grams are far more expensive than shafts which weight in the area of 70 grams. Drop the shaft weight under 50 grams and the price goes up even higher. Thus, the oversize butt shaft and its assortment of matching ultralight grips can enable the golf club company to build with even lighter total weights with moderately priced graphite shafts. The second factor which has paved the way for the acceptance of the oversize butt shaft concerns the much lower balance these shafts will create in the assembled club. This lower balance point automatically results from the use of the oversize shaft with its much lighter matching grip. By using the grip weight of 16-28grams, the balance point of the club is moved significantly closer to the clubhead. Decreasing the grip mass also has the effect of automatically increasing the swingweight of the for and given head weight, creating what is called a light total weight golf club with a 'head heavy' type of feel. Head heavy is simple a descriptive term which is another way of saying the golfer is able to feel the presence of the clubhead much more during the swing without the entire club being heavy.

Test by many companies including Golfsmith has shown that a golf club with a very light total weight can disrupt some golfers' tempo and swing timing unless the swingweight and balance point are changed to overcome this potential situation. In particular, golfers with higher swing speeds and particularly, golfers with an inherently faster tempo could possibly experience swing timing problems when making change to a golf club with much lighter total weight. Such potential problems can be overcome by building the very light total weight club with low balance point/'headheavy' type of clubhead feel. Hence, the combination of the oversize butt shaft with its very light grip can be great way to fit very light total weight golf clubs to golfers with higher swing speed and/ or a fast tempo and experience greater success in being able to increase distance and improve clubhead feel.

On the shaft designers drawing boards, this makes the big butt shaft a possibly win-win situation for very wide range of golfers from strong low handicappers. But how do golf club companies know when to use an oversize butt shaft as opposed to an ultralight weight shaft with a conventional butt diameter?

Initial tests with the shafts have revealed that some golfers prefer the oversize butt shaft to weight slightly more than in the irons than in the woods. When some shaft companies started to develop an ultralight iron shaft to match an ultralight wood shaft that was already meeting with success, they began to hear such comments from the their testing groups such as, "I can't feel the head", or "It just feels too light".

But what about the oversize shafts? As a further result of its studies, Golfsmith feels that most comments of the being "too light" or "not having enough clubhead feel" could also be attributed to the naturally shorter length of the irons compared to the woods. Because most golfers do not use the long irons nearly as much as the middle and short irons, the longest irons with which most players are routinely familiar, from the standpoint of feel, is the 4- or 5- iron. Compared to the driver, the 4 and/or 5-irons are at least 5 to 6 inches or more shorter in length. As such, the clubhead and the balance point of the 'familiar' irons is much closer to the golfer's hands than with the driver and fairway woods. It stands to reason that an iron could possess much less clubhead feel than a wood simply because the head is not far away from the hands and as such, cannot exert as much of a sensation of clubhead feel to the golfer. In short, the farther the clubhead mass is from the hands, the more it can create a "head heavy" type of feel in the club. That may be the same situation with the feel of irons compared to the woods, even though the weight of any iron head is greater than the weight of any wood head. As a result, as the shaft weight deceases, it is very possible for irons to "lose" their clubhead feel, necessitating the need for something to be done in the design or assembly of the club to help golfers feel the presence of the clubhead.

This what brings about the opportunity for the oversize butt shaft, both for woods and irons. Because oversize butt graphite shafts require a much lighter grip, the balance point of the clubs built with such shafts will naturally be a lot farther from the hands than if conventional butt diameter ultralight graphite shaft were used.