Years ago, when my body was much better than it is today and I was much younger, I experimented with driver lengths from 48 down to 42. This was a fun bit of tinkering. I have always been a club fitter and learned in my teens from an old man I used to work for just to get experience and learn. It was never my full-time job but I did attend Matby's course and learned a great deal. I wanted to have custom clubs easily for myself and I made some side money to pay for my golf. Anyway, I found the 48" shaft difficult to manipulate. For me, dispersion was the least in the shorter ranges. Today, at 65, I play essentially a 3W mini-driver at 42", 14 degrees loft and it is a senior shaft playing at R -. A big drive for me is 220. My game is devolving into a dink old man game. My woods go all the way down to 11W. The rest is 7i-PW, and 52, 56, 60, 68 wedges. I have put a lot of people into a shorter driver length over the years and the majority it has helped them find the fairways more easily. These are all mid to high handicap folks. Great video. Shafts really are critical for anyone's game. Most people I encounter who need help have too stiff of a shaft. Flex and length are key.

You are an excellent ball striker. I think for most people the desire to shorten has to do with control for misfits rather than straight up distance. So maybe the test is really to get some mid handicappers and apply similar test plan.

Time for me to hit the used Callaway website to find a 44" reg flex to replace my stock stiff shaft. I don’t bring the thunder like i used to!😂 Was doing a fitting at my club recently and had to ask the guy to stop calling out my carry distances out loud. I know I'm a short hitter i don’t need everyone else to hear...😊

If everyone took a shot every time Ross says “to be fair”, we’d all be very drunk by now, to be fair 😂

Quality content per usual! Love the incite less the marketing blah blah from others. Really was interesting to see strike stats so similiar across lengths. Your comfort seemed best on shorter, even though you mashed many of the 46, lol.

I cut my current driver shaft down by I think half an inch. At first, it didn't feel much better and my driving didn't improve. I then watched a video from TxG and Ian Fraser said that if you reduce shaft length, you have to add a bit of headweight to maintain swing weight. I think it was something like 2g per half inch. When I added the headweight, my driving was vastly improved.

Most of us average golfer don’t necessarily need tons of distance, we need consistency, accuracy, forgiveness, a pleasing sound, value! Choking up does help, so does the proper ball! What about counter weighting in the handle? Thanks

I’d be curious to see CPM numbers with every length at the same swing weight

I truly appreciate the "idea" of this test. But to be completely fair, you would need some time "between" each length adjustment to resynchronize your setup and delivery for the new feel of the club. Then you could establish consistency as the length and other factors are changing.

Great video

For me, I find the change in lie angle makes a big difference on low loft clubs, with longer shaft lifting the toe and causing more left misses. Shorter shaft lowers toe and more right misses. I think you compensate extremely well for variations in club. Great video and I think the most important take away for me is that people swinging 44.5 are probably not giving up much swing speed and likely will benefit much more than you did on finding the sweet spot. Thanks for doing this!

Shorter shaft helps when your shorter in height , I'm 5ft 6 and a full length shaft is much harder to hit so I chop 2 inches of and it's much easier to square up

Love the approach and the time stamps - these are really useful vids

i cut my driver down to 44 inch, hit the fairway almost everytime now , and i started only 2 months ago

Great video, thanks. How do you think a constant swing weight at say D3 would have affected your swing/results as the shaft was getting shorter?

Cobra adds 4g more weight to the head when they ship a "tour length" shaft (their stock offering of a 44.5" driver) it improves feel considerably as well as ball flight

Awesome video, i was always under the impression shorter the shaft more creates a more neutral path ! Very interesting too see!

Callaway fitter at demo day had me play with 1” shorter staff because he said I will hit it more often in center

Plan on doing this myself next week, got two cobra heads, 3 shafts, a Rapsodo mln 2 and face impact sticker.

Great video and test and explanation, I've just shortened my driver and it feels like i have so much more control especially for someone who slices occasionally, and the driver feels so much lighter that i feel like i can generate more speed which is handy being in the slower swing speed bracket 👍

Interesting research. There was not as much difference between shafts lengths as I expected. I suspect that this is heavily due to you being able to hit the sweet spot regardless of length. I suspect that with less ability in this that the differences would be greater and the 46" shaft would be considerably less accurate.

From my personal experience going 45.5 to 44.5 moved my strike to the toe and increased left miss. But by changing shafts to stiffer tipped shaft and cutting down to 45 I not only gain distance, height and accuracy.

Great vid lad, really informative stuff here. I see no reason to play anything longer than 45"... Right now playing 44.75" and it's been great.

Does choking down on the club give the same differences as cutting it down? Or does swing weight stay more similar?

Great video Ross, loving my 44.5’’ Ping G430 Max Driver!

Recently picked up a mini driver with 43.75 shaft and lost a bit of distance in comparative shots in the fairway. However, getting more shots IN the fairway, so when compared to the misses with my regular driver that include OB shots, shots in the woods or topped 150 yards - I’m way ahead in distance gained.

Most golfers are double digit handicappers. High handicap golfers should be playing 43-44 inch drivers with a 100 gram shaft. Shafts kick toward the bottom so there is virtually no distance loss and high handicappers will hit the ball farther because they will hit the ball on the center of the face and the heavy shaft will smooth out their tempo. No one fits for shaft length or weight. Why aren't we giving golfers clubs they can actually hit??? The golf industry's GREED! If we gave golfers clubs they could actually hit they would never buy clubs again. Several years ago I was playing golf with my dad. He had a POS driver from a local sporting goods store. He was in the trees right all day. On hole 10 he asked to hit my 44.5 inch X flex driver with an 80 gram shaft. His swing speed was around 80 mph. He hit my driver dead straight down the middle of the fairway about 240 yards, so I'm speaking from experience.

So what has the greater effect on the performance of the golf shaft, length, weight, flex, or shaft profile?

Very interesting. I was led to believe that cutting from the butt made the flex play softer. Would you recommend then adding weight to the head if it's been cut down? Thanks for the video.

When we shorten the shaft, say by cutting 1.5 inch, then we normally add 16g-18g to the head. We expect that that the shaft now plays stiffer, however the added weight kind of compensated that. I have a doubt that, because of the heavier head weight, would this setup be causing open face due to the ratio between torque and head weight changed?

Interesting. I thought it would make a lot more difference than it appears to. Would gripping down the shaft a bit more have similar effect as shortening it?

Does player height play a factor. Im 6'2" just ordered a 46 inch driver, looking for more distance at age 57.

Ross, just curious. What length do you normally play in your gamer driver? BTW: love your channel.

So can we conclude that the heavy swing weight stops him from swinging faster with the longer shaft? All in all there is not really any difference.

Hi, So you spine shafts ? Does spining make that much difference ? Great channel.

Played my best golf last week with a ping g425 lst and no head weight and a regular counter balanced 3 wood shaft 🤣hit all fairways and won longest drive

Great video. Tiger and Greg Norman at their height played 43.75. Would be interested to see if there's any impact if you add more weight to the head as the shaft shortens to balance the swing weight. I've just shortened my driver to 43.75 and not seeing any real change in distance.

Love the videos as always 👍🏻 Would love to see you build a 2 driver setup, maybe a normal 45.5/46 longer driver 9.deg, for open fairways - bombers. And a 2nd “mini” driver, normal driver head but 43.5”, 12’deg loft fairway finder. All swing weighted correctly etc. be really interesting to see if there is enough difference if you build 2 drivers, rather than a buying off the shelf mini driver, and drop a 3 wood to make space

I've been struggling with "standard" tee height and set up. Drill on range with low tee for low point control. Played 9 with same idea and automatically hitting fairways and to target. Small sample, but why would a low tee improve contact? Ball dis go low unless really well struck, then ball would launch. Next ideas is trying with more loft to increase ball height

Would like to see the same test, but maintaining a constant swing weight.

Would adding weight back (to keep a fixed swingweight) change the flex ? Id assume it would maybe balance the flex added from the cut down.

If you took off the half inch from the tip vs the butt, how does that affect the CPM increase? If it goes up 4ish points from a butt trim, is a trip rim +7-9?

By coincidence last night I put a 3 wood Kaili white 70S into my Aerojet LS lofted it up to 12* to try & create a kind of “mini” driver & headed off to the practice ground. As you say it was noticeably lighter to swing which allowed me to attack more ? If that makes sense. My gamer driver is a Mizuno ST-Z with Kaili White 60S 45.25” & the Longest drive was with the mizuno BUT not by much and the Cobra was much tighter front to back and left to right. I have a dilemma now whether to take Frankenstein’s Driver onto the course 😂 Should I add a bit of weight into the head do you think ? I don’t have swing weight machine, is there a diy way of getting it close ?

Another great video. I have been using a 44.25” driver for a long time. Titleist TSi2 driver the last couple years. This year I bought a different shaft, and went 45” I just got back from playing a 3 day tournament, and my partner signed me up to play the Senior tees. Courses were tight and lots of bunkers. I played a lot of bunt drivers, choking up about 1.5” on the shaft. On the holes with less trouble, I would grip it normally. On the last day I finally realized that I was hitting more fairways and hitting the ball as long as I was used to, when I was choked up. I’m putting in my old shaft for tomorrow’s round. I always tried to get the swingweight back up to around D2. I think for tomorrow’s round I won’t bother, and see what happens. ⛳️🏌🏽‍♂️

So I want to cut down all my shafts to about 6-iron length. I want to know more about shaft frequency.

Why did you pick a fairway at all. Range would have been a fairer comparison. Good though. Very interesting. Thanks.

Would you add heavier weights in the head to get the swing weight back up, with the shorter shaft?

Ive come to the conclusion that you are just too adaptive with all these great tests

Ross a went like for like from a stealth 2 HD to i10 max red shaft on the stealth regular shaft to blue shaft reg on the qi10 and cant hit the qi10 at all everything goes straight right now a have lofted up on the i10 and cant hit it any ideas what wrong trottie says get the swing weight checked asap

Is that a good plug for mini driver based on these stats?

So in theory get a reg flex trim it down to play stiffer. Whst about the shaft weight? Did that 60g become 50g by the end roughly

If you play a stiff shaft, would it be better to cut down a softer shaft to end up with a stiffer profile when finished?

Did I miss something, why wasn’t the swing weight kept consistent with the length change? Makes the results null as you now have 2 variables and are unable to tell which or both is causing a change in results. Also, Would the extra weights not neutralise the CPM increase due to the head mass increase?

I put a 46” shaft and it was like cheating how far I was hitting

Looks like 44.5 is the way to go for dispersion and virtually no loss of distance

This is great comparison. I shortened my driver to 45” and it worked wonders on my dispersion. My only problem now is the push fade you’re experiencing. But I think that’s more of a user error 😅.

Please stand still

I may have missed it, but any difference in club head speed?

Is the length taken off the shaft only or including the head?

Extremely interesting video. Smash that like button 👇

No idea why but my wife wanted to watch this. However she hates golf! "Stiff and long works better". Ok dear

Tip or butt trim?

Shocked you did not add weight as you shortened the shaft. Put 12 grams on the head and then tell us the freq. this is just sort of senseless. Cut the shaft, leave the head.

Ross, just picked up an Accra tz6. 60 gram stiff. Used to playing a tensei 1k white 60s. Obviously different ends of the spectrum. I’m now hitting nice high draws, but my height is anywhere from 34-37 yards high making my descent angle almost straight down. Spin is good, just no roll out because of the height. Would you say trying to take this shaft to 45” from the standard TaylorMade length would be the first step ? Or would tipping be a better idea? I really like the feel of this shaft, and would like to put it in the bag if I can get the height down. Coming off wrist surgery my swing speed isn’t back to where it previously was to play the 1k white. Only averaging 106 mph. Down from 115. Much appreciated!!!

Might have to game the 46 from now on 👍🏻🏌🏻‍♂️ great video as always m8.