SST Pure Media Articles

Golf group slices its stance on reorienting club heads

By Rafer Guzman
Reprinted from the Wall Street Journal
April 21, 1999

Dick Weiss says that he has ended the United States Golf Associations own brand of "Don't ask, don't tell."

Mr. Weiss, a professional golfer and golf-club maker in Miami, says the USGA discriminated for years against those who chose a particular orientation -- in club shafts, that is.

Mr. Weiss holds a patent on a device (and on the process of assembling a club utilizing a longitudinally extended seam, or spine) that he claims can orient golf-club shafts to their heads with unprecedented accuracy. The device locates a shaft's inner (dominant) "spine" -- an irregularity that arises during manufacturing -- then rotates the shaft to achieve a more symetrical(ly functioning) club.

The USGA ruled against such devices (actually, the USGA ruled against the promotion and identification of a spine within a shaft) in 1990, worrying that manufacturers would tout clubs that could induce hooks or slices. But, in February (1999), after Mr. Weiss argued his case before the USGA's Implements & Balls Committee, the ruling was reversed -- Mr. Weiss is now allowed to reorient shafts to "neutralize" irregularities.

"... The ruling finally legitimizes a widespread practice in golf", says Tom Wishon, vice president of Golfsmith Inc., a golf retailer in Austin, Texas. "It's common knowledge among people who work in the high ends of the equipment industry. A number of Tour vans were doing this in one way or another." The most obvious clue: When the (shaft) logos on a set of clubs are not uniformly positioned; i.e. all logos facing up or down.