I've been experimenting with the length of my driver shafts for some time now.  With my height, floor to wrist measurement and set-up it's quite obvious that a 46” driver is too long for me, the typical lie puts the toe way up in the air so I end up cutting them down to between 43.625” - 45.25”.  The usual result is that I hit them longer and straighter.  Sounds great and logical so far huh? Enter the Ping K-15.

I was at the range last summer and there happened to be a Ping demo.  After hitting a bunch of balls to warm up I wandered over and looked things over.  They sized me up and gave me a 12* K-1.  This was the day of the release of the K-15 series, so I was thinking it was cool to try out the brand-new line.  I did what I always do with somebody else's club, I made smooth deliberate swings and the ball went right down the middle, 10 yards further than the 43.625” driver I was hitting.  The K-15 they gave me is 45.75” long with a TFC 149D shaft in soft R flex.  Ping's specs show the club as no offset and a swing weight of D3.   There's nothing listed about how closed the face is, just from looking at it I'd guess it's closed a degree or so, but I didn't measure it.  It's got a weight pad in the sole towards the heel that is supposed to let you more easily close the face of the club at impact.   My swing speed puts me right at the line between Reg and Stiff, but they handed me a soft R so it's what I used. I loved hitting it so much I nearly bought it on the spot, I just couldn't pay list for a new club and thought I should think about the longer shaft.   In hind-sight it's a good thing I didn't buy it, I likely would have found the shaft far too soft.

So what's with the extra distance?  Is it because it's 2” longer?  Is it because I was swinging someone else's club smoothly and deliberately like you're supposed to swing?   Is it because the shaft was so soft and whip-like?  I'll try to come back to that in another post.