Iron Golf Shafts – NIPPON N.S.PRO Zelos7

By Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, A Dallas Fort Worth Club Fitter & Club Maker
The Golf Center at the Highlands, Carrollton Texas

The Nippon Zelos 7 is now available in the US. Quality carbon fiber shafts dominate the lightweight iron shaft market. The NSPro 750 was the lightest steel shaft available from Nippon. The very thin walls of the butt of the shaft had to be reinforced with a woven graphite fabric. The Zelos7 is about 5 grams lighter than the 750. The graphite butt wrap is gone. Nippon is one of the largest manufacturers of automotive valve springs. They are using their metallurgical expertise in the design of golf shafts. The Modus3 shafts are one of my favorite steel iron shafts. The deliver great feel and exceptional dispersion control. The Zelos7 has quickly become a top seller in the Asian market. Using new alloys, Nippon design a 72 gram steel shaft that is stable. It is targeted at the slow smooth golf swing that is best fit into a light weight club.

I glued the review samples into some 6 iron heads and took them to the range. I was expecting a great deal of whippy dispersion from a shaft that had 4 pounds less stiffness than my current gamer. That was not the case. The S flex version was surprisingly stable and easy to control. The ball flight was higher, but that is to be expected with a shaft that is significantly softer than your ideal fit. I had no trouble controlling the Zelos7 and moved the samples immediately to my fitting system. If you are looking for a light weight iron shaft, you should be testing the Nippon Zelos7.

NIPPON N.S.PRO STEEL

By Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, A Dallas Fort Worth Club Fitter & Club Maker
The Golf Center at the Highlands, Carrollton Texas

NHK Spring Co. LTD.’s automotive value-spring alloy served as the genesis of a revolution in the golf shaft industry. When Nippon Shaft’s N.S. PRO 950GH came to market in 1999, it was the first consistently-made sub-100 gram steel shaft in the world. Light weight steel shafts allow some players to increase their swing speeds and thereby adding distance. All Nippon Shaft products are “constant weighted,” meaning that every iron in a set, from 3-iron to pitching wedge weighs the same. Tour Professionals play constant weight iron shafts almost exclusively. There is no good reason the rest of us should do otherwise.

“Constant weighting is a Nippon Shaft specialty,” says Hiro Fukuda of Nippon Shaft USA. “It doesn’t make sense to have a 3-iron that weighs more than your pitching wedge. The pros want a constant weight throughout their set for consistency.” I could not agree more. As my knowledge of golf shafts evolved, I stopped using parallel blanks and have never gone back to them.

Nippon Shaft developed proprietary golf shaft materials and specialized heat-treatment production processes resulting in high performance golf shafts that have great feel, consistency and performance. These productions lines raised the bar on steel shaft quality and consistency. Shaft to shaft linear consistency in a set is excellent, creating sets of matched bend profiles well beyond what can be achieved by frequency matching parallel blanks. The N.S.Pro family of steel shafts can be installed in any orientation, the redial consistency is excellent