Oban CT 115 Iron Shaft Review

Frank Viola, Ace of Clubs, Saugus, Massachusetts
Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, Dallas Fort Worth, Texas

Oban in a partnership with Shimada, has introduced a set of iron shafts through their dealers called the CT-115. A taper tip shaft with a constant weight of 115 grams, it comes in 12 discreet lengths which in turn can be fit and assembled to bring you 7 different flexes.  As follows; R, R+, S-, S, S+, X- and X.  The lengths are 36” thru 41.5” in half inch increments.  The aesthetics of this shaft provide a nice, brushed chrome finish and an eye-catching, hologram shaft label that you can apply over the steps on the shaft without any form of wrinkling.  Now that is a club builders dream!

The club builder selects a group of shafts to build a set. Using the shorter shafts, the set is stiffer. With a group selected from the longer end of the matrix, the set will be stiffer. All of the shafts are .355 tips and all were remarkably consistent in weight as you can see in the chart below. The word remarkable meant 115.3 grams plus – minus .3 grams. To put that in perspective, a typical set of constant weight irons usually has a bit less than a 2 gram range. Adding to that attention to quality, the radial consistency was 99.9% with a 0.1% standard deviation. That’s impressive, aligning these is truly useless.

We have built a number of fitting irons with these shafts (PXG and Miura) all through the flex range and the numbers are quite impressive.  Taking it from the Fitting Studio and on through the consequential building process we liked what we saw especially with the better player, who launched these lower in the shorter irons, higher in the longer ones and all with the characteristics of a low to mid-spin shaft.

Lets here from Ralph Riechert, the President of Oban, discussing the shafts with Woody Lashen of Pete’s Golf at the 2017 PGA Merchandise show.

This set of iron shafts is designed for a golf fitter that wants to deliver precisely tuned stiffness to their clients. In the past, that was done by tip trimming parallel shafts. The Oban CT-115 has all the advantages of parallel shaft designs with none of the disadvantaged. Advantage one, the set will be constant weight not descending. Advantage two, the stiffness steps between clubs is precisely done by the factory and not left to the club makers frequency instrument. Advantage three, the set stiffness range is on the high side unlike parallel sets which tend to be on the low end.

Below are the Launch Monitor results of a 2 Handicap…  A big, strong, strapping guy who can hit the ball as good as any I’ve had. He loved the feel of the shaft and did not have any reservations with the 115-gram weight.  We brought him through the fitting process with all of the premium shafts that we offer.  In the end, the OBAN won out with feel, stability, ball flight and ball dispersion.

Give your club fitter a call and check it out!  It just may be a shaft for you…