Cutting Down Length

I recently got a great deal on a set of ping I3's. They came factory +1" and I need a +.25". I am thinking of cutting them down with a tube cutter and regripping them myself. It seems fairly simple, but would anyone here advise against it?

If thisnis urgent I'd suggest that you send Lowpost42 a PM otherwise wait for him to respond here - one of the best qualified posters to help.

What? Why are you taking me here? What did I do?



Oh, hi!



If you don't mind, I'd like to ask a question, then answer your question.

How do you know you need +0.25"?


Now, to answer you question: "Would I advise against it?"

No sir, I would not.

However, please be aware of the additional changes you'll see besides the obvious length change. They are (and I list):

Your clubs will be 4 or 5 swingweight points lighter
Your clubs will play 1.5° flatter
Your clubs will play marginally stiffer
Your clubs will weigh 3-5 grams less



Just so you know what you're getting into.

__________________
PCS Class 'A' Clubfitter - www.pcsgep.com
True Length Technology Fitter - www.truelengthtechnology.com
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A new highlight: Golfing the home course on Christmas Day.

I say it too often: If it's golf club shaped, you can play with it.

For the record, I'm a club doctor, not a swing doctor.

Lowpost,

Thanks for the reply...here is my situation and hopefully answeres to your questions:

I got a custom fitting and here are my specs:

I am 6.75"
My wrist to floor is 37"

This initial static fitting would leave me at a +3* (white dot) and +1/2" length.

Then I went throught the full fitting with the tape and all and the gentleman reccomended that I am +4* (silver dot) and that I should play standard to +1/4" length.

So..the clubs I bought are silver dot and +1"....so I just wanted to get them down to my reccomended fitting.

Thanks again!

hi lowpost
you answer is enough to put me off trying to do anything like that and i would leave it to an expert like you that knows what there doing and also knows why there doing it and what results they will get by doing it.
cheers
bill

OK, so PING website says for a 6'1" fella with a 37" WTF they want you +1/2" and 3 up.
PING rep says lets take a 1/4" or the full 1/2" away but move you upright another degree.

So you buy 4 up and 1" over to cut 3/4" off to have 4" and 1/4" over.

Logically, it makes perfect sense.

What I've previously mentioned will still happen, though. Now, they could play like your recommended fitting, but also could play only 2.5° up. This will totally depend on whether or not PING builds the length after the lie is set, or whether they bend after length is set (which I'm pretty sure is how it works - build to length, then bend for lie). So in your fitted set, they would have built it 1/4" over, then bent them 4° up (which, by the way sounds ridiculous for a guy my height with my WTF. You must stand very tall at address). Don't be surprised if you have to have them bent upright again to hit Silver spec.


Bill, it's nothing to be afraid of. You gotta start somewhere.
Clubmaking is another one of those venues where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. When you first get in, it's very much about little jobs like regripping and altering your own lengths and shaft flexes. Then you learn about all the little tweaks and quirks that you can do to ensure a better quality build - like frequency matching, spining and floing, shaft profiling, swingweight or MOI matching, and advanced concepts like True Length Technology (TLT).

But like I like to say, anybody can cut and glue clubs and stick 'em together. 200,000 underage chinese assemblers can't be wrong.

__________________
PCS Class 'A' Clubfitter - www.pcsgep.com
True Length Technology Fitter - www.truelengthtechnology.com
It's live! - www.ShipShapeClubs.com

A new highlight: Golfing the home course on Christmas Day.

I say it too often: If it's golf club shaped, you can play with it.

For the record, I'm a club doctor, not a swing doctor.

Thanks again LowPost. It is news that I didnt want to hear but I needed to. I'll cut'em regripp'em and take it from there.

That brings up an interesting point. Without any measurements taken, is it generally a good idea to cut drivers to 43 1/2" or 44" down from 45"? I am mainly interested in how that would affect distance.
I just need a general rule of thumb answer since I have not given any other details. A buddy of mine tells me since he took an inch off his driver, his distance and accuracy have improved.
At 5'9" with slightly longer than normal arm length and using a d 9 swing weighted driver, I am just curious; club specs were never my strong points.

I'm of the opinion that unless you're very talented OR you have a 39" WTF, you shouldn't be using a 45" driver - it's much too long.

We're discussing this over at the Wishon forums currently - how drivers are being made with more and more upright a lie - and longer than ever, which makes the club play even MORE upright. All this 'uprightness' leads to balls that start out pullside, and make solid contact more difficult for the average golfer - because solid contact will send his ball pull side. So he needs junk contact and a weak face angle to hit a straight ball.

In the lab, cutting your driver down costs you roughly 7 yards per inch, due to the lost swing speed by using a shorter stick. This assumes that your quality of contact will remain the same. However, the real world application is that most folks benefit by shortening their 45"+ boomstick, because their control goes up and distance does NOT decrease due to the increased number of on-center hits.

It's a phenomenon I've experienced for myself - a short, slow swing with good contact and compression creates the same distance as a long, fast swing with poor contact and so-so (or no) compression. There's more at play than raw SS.

So, what you see in your friend I would consider a normal result. Just remember that you go approximately 6 swingweight points lighter for every inch you hack off - and assumes that you put the same weight grip back on.

__________________
PCS Class 'A' Clubfitter - www.pcsgep.com
True Length Technology Fitter - www.truelengthtechnology.com
It's live! - www.ShipShapeClubs.com

A new highlight: Golfing the home course on Christmas Day.

I say it too often: If it's golf club shaped, you can play with it.

For the record, I'm a club doctor, not a swing doctor.

Err, does 6.75' mean the extra 0.75' = 3/4 of a foot = 6' 9" (and if you're not busy next year, could you play lock forward for Bath?)? Or, as LP said, 6' 1"?

I know a pro who told me Ping are very anti slice, and so fit clubs very upright. Don't know if this is true or not?

hi bulldog
if you check the ping site you will see the lie angles of there clubs with a black dot setting and if you check them against the standard callaway you will see the lie is the same thought the club range. i think the anti slice has more to do with the toe-heel weight used on there clubs and also the large offset.
Ping are the only club maker to offer 10 lie setting as standard on all the range of clubs and have since the 70s and i do not think a fitter would try and fit you a more upright club to cure a slice, i would think they were more likely to make your grip thicker.
lowpost will know about what to do to help with fitting a club to help with a slice more than i would.
cheers
bill

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"You're out of your goddamn mind" - Reuben Tishkoff, Oceans 11

I could see how the gobs of offset on most Ping clubs would make someone think they're anti-slice, but a lie angle is a lie angle is a lie angle. And the greater of these is face angle. If Pings were truly anti slice, they'd be grossly offset with closed face angles (don't think they exist? The GolfSmith Special Force line was just that - closed faced irons and woods).

Sorry for the outburst, but it's this kind of 'ignorance as truth' that permeates the golf world. Most pros only know what they're told by their OEM rep - and an OEM rep is a snake-oil salesman. "Tell 'em what they want to hear, and don't confuse them with the truth".

__________________
PCS Class 'A' Clubfitter - www.pcsgep.com
True Length Technology Fitter - www.truelengthtechnology.com
It's live! - www.ShipShapeClubs.com

A new highlight: Golfing the home course on Christmas Day.

I say it too often: If it's golf club shaped, you can play with it.

For the record, I'm a club doctor, not a swing doctor.

Similar to doctors only knowing what the drug rep tells them and how many samples they leave in the office.

Quite. That's why you trust your pharmacist. Ironically enough, pharmacists know more about the drugs and what they do than doctors.

Said pro is notorious for **** advice. Will file his contribution here under 'U' for useless...