Tag: Driver Shafts

Fujikura Venus Blue wood shaft (2024)

The new Ventus Blue shaft has the same profile as the 2018 version it replaces.

Gear: Fujikura Venus Blue wood shaft (2024)
Price: $350
Available: February 29

In 2018, Fujikura released the first Ventus shafts, and like many things in the golf world, it took some time to gain momentum and acceptance, but from the start, the Ventus shafts had an intriguing story to tell.

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Drivers are often designed to enhance stability and forgiveness, but the Ventus shafts were made to make every driver more stable and forgiving thanks to the addition of a unique material called VeloCore, a multi-material bias core construction technique that Fujikura developed. By making the Ventus shafts more stable during your transition from the backswing to the downswing and at impact, many golfers found that Ventus shafts helped them make solid contact more often, and as that happened, they gained confidence and swung more freely, leading to more club head speed, increased ball speed and extra distance.

Since its debut in Ventus wood shafts, VeloCore has branched into graphite iron shafts with the 2023 release of the Axiom, helping players get the same benefits from the fairway that Ventus provides off the tee.

Fujikura Ventus Blue VeloCore+
VeloCore+ adds more stability to the Ventus Blue. (David Dusek/Golfweek)

Now, six years later, Fujikura is releasing the next generation of Ventus shafts, starting with the Blue, which features VeloCore+. While the original VeloCore was made using two materials, a third material has been added to the design to enhance stability further. While Fujikura is mum on the extra recipe for VeloCore+, like the original, it runs the length of the 2024 Ventus Blue to help create a smoother-feeling, more-stable shaft that Fujikura claims will help golfers tighten dispersion off the tee and add ball speed.

The new Ventus Blue shaft has the same profile as the 2018 version it replaces, offering a mid-launch and low-spin option for a wide range of players. However, it is not replacing the Ventus Blue TR shaft that was released in 2022.

The original Ventus shafts were offered in Blue, Black (low-launch, low-spin) and Red (mid-high launch, mid-spin) profiles. Still, so far, Fujikura has only announced the release of the updated Blue model, which will be available in weights ranging from 58 grams (Ventus 5) up to 94 grams (Ventus 9) in flexes from R2 (Lite, Senior), R, S and X.

PGA Championship: Bubba Watson changes driver shafts. Finally!

Bubba Watson switched his driver shaft for the first time in over a decade.

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TULSA, Okla. — It was the phone call that Kenton Oates had dreamed about, but never thought would happen. Two weeks after the Masters, where Bubba Watson had finished T-39, he was calling Oates, who is a PGA Tour rep for Ping Golf and one of the people who helps to ensure that Watson, who has a lifetime contract with Ping, is happy with his clubs.

“On the Wednesday of New Orleans, Bubba called me and said, ‘Hey Man, send me like three or four regular graphite shafts. I want to try something lighter and get a little more pop in my bat back,'” Oates recalled.

Watson has been happy to try new drivers over the years and has typically switched into Ping’s newest models easily. These days, he uses a Ping G425 LST, but he had been playing the same pink Grafalloy Bi-Matrix X prototype shaft for more than a decade.

Aside from the color, what makes it unique is that the top and middle sections are graphite, but the lower third of the shaft is steel, so it is extremely heavy by today’s standards. According to Oates, it weighs about 88 grams, which is about 30 grams more than many graphite shafts that elite players on the PGA Tour use.

“We had been down this road before,” Oates said. “The last time we tried this with Bubba, we remembered that so many shafts today are really stable, and they can make your shots under-spin and not curved as much. So we added a little loft, put some weight on the toe to make sure the ball would cut for him, because if Bubba can’t hit his stock cut he’s not going to play the club.”

Bubba Watson at 2022 PGA Championship
Bubba Watson testing shafts with Ping’s Spenser Rothluebber (left) Tuesday at the 2022 PGA Championship. (David Dusek/Golfweek)

Oates sent the shafts to Watson, including a 60-gram Project X HZRDUS Smoke Black 60 TX, and Watson texted him within days and said he loved it.

Stunned, Oates and the Ping team had two challenges to overcome next, getting a customized, pink HZRDUS Smoke Black shaft from Project X and getting Bubba’s grip just right.

“The minute he told us he liked that one, we got on the horn with David Wilson at True Temper [Project X’s parent company] and said, ‘Hey, can you get us a pink one?'” said Oates. “To their credit, they got us a pink on by the time we got to the Byron Nelson [three weeks later].”

Meanwhile, the club builders in Ping’s tour department in Phoenix, known as Ping WRX, had managed to do one of the hardest things in club fitting: get Bubba Watson’s driver gripped just the way the two-time Masters champion likes. Watson needs 11 layers of tape under the top hand of his Ping Gold grip, and 13 layers under the bottom hand, and the cord in the grip needs to be in just the right spot.

“Bubba Watson gripping instructions takes up a whole line in the Excel spreadsheet we have in the truck,” Oates said with a laugh.

Bubba Watson's pink Project X HZRDUS Black driver shaft
Bubba Watson’s pink Project X HZRDUS Black 60 TX shaft (David Dusek/Golfweek)

But after the ping Project X shaft arrived at the Byron Nelson, Watson didn’t love the way the grip on it felt as much as the grip on the black shaft. With Watson, everything is about feel, and there was something not quite right with the grip on the pink shaft.

“The black shaft is set to the perfect amount of openness,” Oates said. “If you put Bubba Watson’s driver down into a playing position, and you held the grip so the rib felt square in your hands, the face would be pointing 7 to 10 degrees to the left, which is open for a lefty.”

Rather than tinker at a major championship, Spencer Rothluebber, who builds clubs in Ping’s PGA Tour van, encouraged Watson to go with the black shaft and leave re-gripping the pink one for another week.

The advice has proved to be solid as Bubba Watson is leading the field in strokes gained tee to green heading into the final round of the 2022 PGA Championship and is averaging 331 yards on the two driving distance average-measured holes.

“He’s like a kid again,” Oates said.

Maybe the wait for that call was worth it.

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Fujikura Ventus TR graphite shaft

Adding a new material in the middle and handle areas helps Fujikura deliver more stability in the newest Ventus shaft.

When golfers talk about stability in their drivers, they usually think about how the head is designed to compensate for off-center hits by not twisting too much. The less the face twists when a ball is struck near the heel or toe, the straighter the shot will fly. But with the release of the Fujikura Ventus Black, Blue and Red shafts a few years ago, the Carlsbad, California-based shaft company was able to bring more stability and consistency to golfers of every level thanks to the shaft they use.

Now, with the release of the Ventus TR, Fujikura is using a new technology to expand the Ventus family and provide fitters with another option that could help golfers’ performance off the tee.

To be clear, none of the previously released Ventus shafts are going away, and why would Fujikura want to do that? If you counted up all the drivers, fairway woods and hybrids in play at the 2022 Farmers Insurance Open on the PGA Tour, more than 19 percent were fitted with a Fujikura Ventus shaft. Among the stars using a Ventus are Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Sam Burns, Aaron Wise, Max Homa and Billy Horschel.

Fujikura Ventus TR
The Spread Toe material in the Fujikura TR shaft provides more stability in the middle and handle sections. (David Dusek/Golfweek)

The Ventus TR was designed to have a mid-launch profile, fitting between the low-spinning Ventus Black and the mid-spin Ventus Blue. Like the other Ventus products, the Ventus TR was designed with VeloCore, a multimaterial construction made with Pitch 70-ton carbon fiber and 40-ton carbon fiber. The tip section is especially stiff to reduce twisting on off-center hits and boost stability, all while helping golfers maintain feel.

The Ventus TR, however, also has a new spread-toe carbon-fiber fabric in the middle and handle areas. It’s like a carbon-fiber tape that is flat and woven together. You can see it, subtly, in the silver areas near the handle area. The Spread Toe material does not allow resin, which bonds the carbon fiber together, to pool, so the carbon-fiber content of the material is very high. The addition of Spread Toe increases torsion stiffness in those areas by about 10 percent compared to Ventus Blue, so as golfers make the transition from the top of their swing into the downswing, the shaft will still load and flex while resisting twisting more effectively. Fujikura said that results in more center-strikes with increased consistency and ball speed, without adding excessive amounts of carbon fiber or weight to the top half of the shaft.

The Ventus TR shaft comes in 50-, 60-, 70- and 80-gram versions that can be trimmed to fit into drivers and fairway woods, in regular (R), stiff (S) and extra-stiff (X) flexes and a torque of 3.7 to 2.6. It became available at authorized Fujikura dealers Feb. 1 for $350.