One might think that it would be a "no brainer" that golfers swinging lighter golf shafts would create more clubhead speeds.  Well, recently a custom club fitter from South Carolina - Chris Wycoff - published some results in GolfWRX that suggest that this is not necessarily true.

The link to Chris's GolfWRX article is provided below:

  Chris Wycoff - Do Lighter Shafts Create More Clubhead Speed?

Chris did tests for golfers with high and low clubhead speeds, and high and low handicaps - for categories.  He used stiff shafts and shaft weights varying between 40 and 70 grams - a pretty wide shaft weight variation.

The results show that shaft weight - for these tests - had very little influence on clubhead speed.  Actually in some cases clubhead speed increased when heavier shafts were used.  And there were also some cases where total distance increased when heavier shafts were used.

What caused these results?  My take on this is that it shows that golfers are individuals, and different golfers react differently to different shaft weights.  Clearly there is no one-to-one relationship between clubhead speed and shaft weight.  As Chris says in his article - " ... be very careful when selecting a lightweight shaft for your driver."  Or perhaps stated another way - Test Test Test!