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May 1999 MIAMI, Fla. -- Dick Weiss, Florida professional golfer, clubmaker and businessman, recently succeeded in his 2 1/2 year, one-man pursuit to persuade the USGA to acknowledge that golf shafts are not manufactured round or straight and therefore need to be precisely oriented during the club assembly process in order to perform symmetrically in accordance with the Rules of Golf, specifically Rule 4 1-b and Appendix II, as the Rule is written today. In response to an invitation to appeal the USGA staff's decision, a presentation was made by Dick Weiss to the USGA's Implements and Ball Committee (Feb. 3, 1999). Upon review, the USGA has acknowledged that shafts currently being manufactured, and that have been manufactured in the past, possess asymmetries in bending and twisting properties. With this acknowledgement, the USGA has reversed its 1990 rules decision making a shaft, therefore a club, non-conforming if shafts are identified to possess asymmetrical "spine-like" characteristics. After more tha two years of lobbying the USGA, Weiss succeeded in getting the USGA to approve his process of assembly as conforming under the Rules of Golf. "What this means," Weiss says, "is that shaft-induced mis-hits, at all levels of play, can be significantly reduced." This can be accomplished by retro-fitting existing clubs or buying them new from Weiss' selected licensees. Weiss explains that essentially every shaft has one or more "sides" that are slightly to significantly different in stiffness. This is because, whether a shaft is welded from a coiled metal strip, stretched and drawn from a pierced metal billet, wrapped from pennant-shaped strips of composite fiber material, or fiber composite wrapped or wound around a forming mandrel, it is virtually impossible to make a shaft so that its wall thickness is exactly the same all the way around. Consequently, spines or differences in stiffness symmetry occur from these minute manufacturing inconsistencies and other anomalies of the manufacturing process used today. If the shaft diameter is somewhat oval, for example, or if that shaft wall is slightly thicker on one side, the shaft cannot bend and twist the exact same way in all directions; as is specifically prescribed for in the Rules of Golf (4-1b, and Appendix II) in order to be "conforming." In its Notice to Manufacturers dated Feb. 9, 1999, superceding its 1990 memo, the USGA writes:
However, shaft manufacturuers have not yet been able to assure us that they can maintain tolerances which greatly minimize or eliminate asymmetries in twisting and bending (which the USGA had requested in the 1990 Notice. The Committee has therefore concluded that the process of orienting a shaft with the intent of causing it to perform as if it were symmetrical would not be inconsistent with Rule 4-1b (Previously there was a reluctance to condone the advertising or other public acknowledgement to this effect by shaft manufacturers, other OEMs, and club makers)." "In retrospect," Weiss adds, "all golfers have had a club or two in their set that simply felt and performed better than the rest ... one they were more confident in for executing a stroke. My testing has confirmed that these 'favorite' clubs coincidentally had their spines haphazardly inserted into the clubhead in a 'neutral' position that allows for symmetrical performance. The USGA refers to it as a 'neutral symmetrical-like direction. "Now I have refined the process so that golfer can have their entire set spine-matched and realize a 'favorite' club feel, greater accuracy and added distance. I've also developed the machinery necessary to make this process available economically." Preliminary independent field testing has been conducted by Golfsmith at their Austin, Texas, facility. A recent study by Golf Science Consultants, Inc., found that spine-aligned shaft increased swing repeatability from 14 to 51 percent. Golfsmith's Vice President and Chief Technical Officer, Tom Wishon, plays with a set of clubs retrofitted and spine-aligned by Dick Weiss and says, "Spine-aligned or spine-matched shafts provide a more uniform and consistent set of clubs than frequency matching."
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