Q: What characteristics of the Project X steel shaft line were you trying to replicate when designing the Project X graphite line of driver, fairway wood, and hybrid shafts?
A: The Project X player profile has typically been someone looking for low spin, and a penetrating ball flight. We wanted to give them a similar feel so that, for example, it’s a fairly seamless transition when going from a long iron to the hybrid. With the driver the spin reduction is so great that we’ve seen some of our Tour players increase the loft and get an optimum launch angle and spin without any of the board-like feeling that low spin shafts can sometimes deliver.

Q: What are some of the key design characteristics of Project X?
A: One of the unique things about Project X iron shafts is that each one has its own taper rate down to a 2” parallel tip. That’s a smaller parallel section than other products. Project X graphite has the same profile – we have reinforced the bottom third with 2 extra wraps of high modulus graphite, and kept the smoother taper from the butt down. This gradual taper allows for a nice even load.

Q: How does Project X graphite fit in with True Temper’s other graphite line, Grafalloy?
A: Well, first off, they are two different brands. The shafts may share a similar frequency and tip deflection, but the mid taper differentiates Project X, and it is generally a higher end product geared towards top amateurs and Tour players who are looking for low spin and a penetrating ball flight.

Q: OK, without saying anything bad about products you may supply to OEM manufacturers. How much better is an aftermarket product like Project X than the one that comes with a new club?
A: First, the OEM is going to try and provide a shaft profile that will work for most players, but it’s impossible to have something that works for everyone. Every better player should be fit, just as a Tour player would. Second, the price of an aftermarket shaft like Project X is affected by some things that are very important to a better player. We can use better materials, and a higher flag count for better performance. [Ed. note – a flag is a sheet of high modulus graphite.] Not only are the material costs higher, the cost of labor goes up too.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to add Don?
A: I would only advise your players to not get fooled by the hype. Project X is already going up against some of the shaft names you hear when someone talks about a high end product, and coming up a winner. Look out for us in 2010!

Leading off the triple victory, the left-handed champion at the CA Championship shot a 19-under 269 with True Temper’s Project X shafts in his Callaway irons; while the winners at the Puerto Rico Open and the New Zealand Open played True Temper’s Dynamic Gold shafts. In addition, eight of the Top 10 finishers at the CA Championship played True Temper shafts and all the Top 10 players in Puerto Rico Open played True Temper shafts in their irons.

“As the number one shaft manufacturer in the world, True Temper shafts often produce winning results, but a victory at a pro event never ceases to be an exciting time,” says Scott Hennessy, president and CEO of True Temper Sports. “High-performance Dynamic Gold and Project X shafts continue to set the industry standard for distance, accuracy and control on the PGA and other pro tours and it’s very rewarding to see so many tour pros trust True Temper products.”
One of the most popular steel shaft designs in the world, True Temper’s Dynamic Gold shafts featuring a high-flex, tour weight design that is often played by skilled players who prefer a low, penetrating ball trajectory.

The Project X shaft is another True Temper brand which is highly prized on Tour for providing a dedicated constant taper rate per inch for each shaft in the set. The longer taper rate more efficiently transfers energy to the ball and the ball gets up faster and flattens out for a penetrating trajectory. Dynamic Gold shafts are available in tapered and parallel irons and parallel woods, while Project X steel shafts are available in tapered and parallel irons.

Myth: Low torque shafts have better dispersion: Many golfers believe a lower torque shaft will twist less at impact resulting in improved dispersion.
Fact: High speed camera studies have shown that even on a 9 degree torque shaft the ball stays in contact with the face for only thousandths of a second, not allowing for the twisting of the shaft to alter the balls horizontal trajectory.

Torque plays a large role in the feel of the golf shaft. The Grafalloy Blue and ProLaunch Red were stiff butt, stiff tip shafts, yet Blue felt much firmer than the ProLaunch Red because its torque was almost a degree lower. As a result, we stopped chasing lower torque and now focus on how we can tune torque to provide the feel that suits the target player profile for a particular design. Shafts designed for penetrating ball flights, such as the ProLaunch Axis Red, will feel best with a torque between 3 and 4 degrees while higher launching shafts such as the ProLaunch Axis Blue work best with a torque of 4 degrees and higher.

Project X Shafts

Myth: Shaft performance is all about material: Some shaft companies are touting the use of their own or premium fibers to provide ultimate performance.
Fact: There are a very few manufacturers of the high and super high modulus fibers used in today’s high end golf shafts. Even companies that make high end fiber and use it in their own branded shafts sell these fibers to other shaft manufacturers. Performance gains are made with superior design and understanding of flex/torsional/cross sectional profiles and use of the fibers in cutting edge shaft technologies. While two shafts may use the same Japanese made super high modulus fibers, the shaft designer who is able to best harness the properties of those fibers into technologies such as Smart Ply and Micromesh will be able to maximize the material, the shaft and the swing.

Trend: Cross Sectional Stability. Several 2008/2009 golf shafts have touted increased cross- sectional (or hoop) stability. Cross-sectional stiffness (or stability) is the shaft’s resistance to ovalization. When a traditional shaft is loaded, its cross section deforms from a circle to an oval. The energy that goes into this deformation cannot be returned to the ball and is lost. Increased cross-sectional stability also provides a more stable feel and improved shot-to-shot consistency.

There are several methods for controlling cross-sectional stiffness, with one of the most popular methods being multi-axis weaves. While these weaves have an undeniable aesthetic value, they are a not an efficient way to use carbon fiber. Carbon fiber performs its best when held straight; weaves require the fibers to be curved around one another. Technologies utilizing thin uni-directional carbon fiber layers, such as Grafalloy’s Axis Technology, limit cross sectional deformation much more efficiently.

Future: The groove change and what it means to your driver. By now everyone has heard about the USGA mandated groove change that will take place effective January 1, 2010. This groove change is intended to reduce the spin golfers can achieve from the rough with existing grooves. With these rolled back grooves, many golfers will switch to a ball that spins more to retain their drop and stop abilities around the greens. This ball change will create an increase in spin with the driver, resulting in ballooned shots and lost distance. Enter Project X.

The new Project X wood shafts were designed to be the lowest spinning shafts available. With two additional layers of super high modulus tip reinforcement, Project X has continually shown several hundred RPM reduction in spin over the other premium low spin shafts on the market. The introduction of graphite Project X wood and hybrid shafts means golfers can now benefit from Project X performance in every club, driver through wedge.

Project X Flighted brings – I think everybody understands what Flighted is, Flighted technology makes the long irons softer and the short irons kind of progressively stiffer. So let’s all check our egos at the door, we all need help with the long irons, most of probably don’t even play a 2-iron any more, we’ve got a hybrid in the bag, but maybe some of us have taken out our 3-iron and some even 4-iron – but we all need help getting the ball launched and that’s what Flighted technology does. Obviously, Rifle Flighted does the exact same thing as far as Flighted technology, but the Project X family with the constant taper and all those different things that make Project X what it is, that’s the differentiation between those two. And, of course, if you had to look at Project X Flighted and Rifle Flighted, you would say Project X Flighted in general, would fly a little bit lower overall than Rifle Flighted would.

Rifle Frequency Matched, you’ve got a lot flexibility with what you’re trying to do from trimming scenarios, more of a softer tip product compared to certainly the Project X family. Rifle Lite is a light version of Rifle, and it’s actually, Rifle Lite is a pretty stiff golf shaft which would kind of moved away. . . Project X High Launch, sorry, yeah, Project X High Launch is just that, it’s a high launch version of Project X. So you’d have to say then, that does the Flighted connect the dots between the High Launch in the long irons and Project X in the short irons, yeah, that’s precisely what it does. The Grafalloy family – we’ve got Epic which is, you can’t even compare Epic to anything else, and I’m sure we’ll talk more about Epic a little bit more. Yeah, we’ll just leave that alone for right now because it is unlike anything else that’s ever been done. If you look at straight graphite, we’ve got Axis which sits at the top of the food chain for us. It is an ultra-exotic, ultra-premium shaft, we’ve got Smart Ply technology in it, which Don can talk a little bit more about in just a second and explain what that is. Then you’ve got the Pro Launch family which has been, of course, wildly successful for us.

You’ve got ProLaunch Blue, Blue flies high, that simple. ProLaunch Red, Red flies low, or more penetrating, if you want to say that. We introduced Red middle of last year to the Tour environment and had remarkable success. Never have, I think I can say pretty much say exclusively, no shaft manufacturer, including ourselves, ever launched a shaft and had more success as this shaft has. We won seven times in six consecutive weeks: we won three times on the Nationwide Tour, we won three times on the PGA Tour, and we won once on the Champions Tour alongside of one of the European Tour wins. So now we’ve got two options for that launch monitor tuned design, bringing that high ball flight with Blue and low ball flight with Red. Of course they all have our Blue Tip technology which was introduced in the original Blue shaft, which is heads were getting bigger, now we’re kind of stopping at that 460 range with the USGA regulations, but the whole Blue Micro-mesh technology was specifically to stabilize bigger heads and really has tangible performance benefits. Comp-NT was kind of our entry into nano-technology into graphite golf shafts which is really what, to confuse Epic’s technology with anything that’s been done in a graphite shaft, including Comp-NT, they’re not even an apples to apples comparison.

But what Comp-NT is, is sort of the tip of the iceberg. Let’s take carbon nano-tubes and impregnate the resin system of a graphite golf shaft where really the resin is critical because it holds the fibers together, but other than that it provides no structural integrity. It’s just a weight adder that is necessary to hold the graphite shaft together. We wanted to put some carbon nano-tubes in there to provide some improved strength properties, and what we found is it actually helped align the carbon fiber a little better too. So, a great design, but that really was the tip of the iceberg when you look at Epic, and Don, I’ll let you talk a little bit about Smart Ply that’s in Axis.