Is the shaft the engine of the golf club? Not really

Question: I constantly hear that the shaft is the engine of the club. Is that true?

Answer: This is one of golf’s great clichés. It’s also mostly a folk tale from the fairways.

The shaft is important for many reasons, but to call it the "engine" is a misnomer. The player is the engine. A shaft doesn’t “kick” or “spring” or “unload” into the ball at impact. It doesn’t add clubhead speed by snapping like a whip at the bottom of the swing.

Clubfitters know the real story. “The design of the clubhead has the most impact on ball flight and launch conditions,” says Ben Giunta, owner of The Tour Van in Portland, Ore., and lead club technician for LIV Golf in the U.S. “The shaft can certainly impact all launch conditions, but typically it is much more subtle.”

The shaft is more accurately described as the “transmission” because it is one of the elements that can transfer the golfer’s power to the ball. For those still not willing to give up on the shaft is the engine mantra, Jason Fryia, co-founder of The Golf Exchange, offers some clarification.

“I can give you a modern clubhead with a shaft from 40 years ago, and your performance will likely be much better than with a modern shaft in a clubhead from 40 years ago,” Fryia says.

“Just as a car engine has the largest impact on the performance of the car, I assume this myth suggests that the shaft has the largest impact on the ball flight and performance of the club, and that is not true in most cases,” Giunta adds. “A much more accurate analogy would be that the shaft is the suspension and tuning of the golf club.”

That’s a solid point. Just as you tune the engine and adjust the suspension of a car to ride and feel/drive differently, this is also the case with shaft choice.

Club Champion’s Nick Sherburne takes the car analogy a step further: “Without the correct shaft, the odds of being the fastest and most consistent you can be are slim to none," he says. "But once you have that, the head will drive a lot of the forgiveness, launch and spin. I prefer to say that the shaft is the transmission that drives the head, which is the engine. They work together: You can't have one without the other to make the car—or in this case, the ball—go.”