The Shimada Tour Wedge and the Shimada Tour Wedge Black are not new shafts, they have been available for years. What is new in the US market is that they are available from Oban golf shaft dealers. There are two models, the NW-110 Tour and the HW-120 Tour Black. The model numbers are the gram weights of the shafts. Lets take a look at how these shafts made for the Asian market compare to the Oban CT Iron Shaft profiles.
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The Oban CT-125 is the last of the weights that will be made in this model. It joins the previously reviewed CT-100 and CT-115, completing the fitting matrix of the series. Each weight has 11 shafts from which the club builder can select a subset to build a set. The extended range allows for fine tuning stiffness by “soft stepping” or “hard stepping”. This is not exactly the correct term for this design, but it is a concept you may be familiar with. Building a set of 8 shafts from the 11 available allows for three steps in either the soft or hard direction. A smaller set of 6 or 7 irons adds more stiffness options. Most other constant weight shaft brands produce 8 or 9 shafts in a model matrix.
If you do not follow my YouTube Channel, Devoted Golfer, this was shot at the 2019 PGA Merchandise show. Ralph Reichart, owner of Oban talks about briefly about the extrusion process used by Shimada to make the CT series of iron shafts.
To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership. Russ
The OBAN / Shimada CT-100 is a lower weight version of the CT-115 released last year. They give the club builder the ability to fine tune set stiffness in a constant weight, taper tip design. Iron shafts have traditionally been parallel or taper tip. I wrote an article, Parallel vs Constant Weight Irons Shafts, explaining the differences several years ago. The CT-100, like the CT-115, is a set of 12 constant weight shafts from which the club builder selects a group of shafts to build to an exact the stiffness range. This combines the best aspects of constant weigh taper sets with the tunable stiffness of parallel iron sets. This overcomes the tip stiffness compression inherent in parallel iron sets. If you did not understand that statement, read the technical article.
The discussion about the CT-100 starts at the 9:30 mark on this video shot at the 2018 PGA Merchandise show.
Lets take a closer look at the OBAN CT-100.
To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership. Russ
To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership. Russ
Shimada has new distribution in the USA, Oban. Oban has a little over 100 fitters in the US, all of which have been visited and evaluated by Oban management. My understanding is that the Shimada shafts will be available exclusively through the network of Oban fitters. Earlier this year I reviewed the Shimada 115g CT iron shaft. It will soon be joined by a lighter weight fitting set. The Tour 301 and Tour Lite are more conventional constant weight tapers.
To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership. Russ
As you have seen in the charts, Shimada manufacturing quality is second to none. It is good to finally have reliable distribution in the US. Shaft to shaft consistency in the four sets I measured is perfect. If you are looking for light weight iron shafts, set consistency sets steel apart from carbon fiber. You can be confident that sets made from either the mid 90 gram Shimada 3001 and the 106 gram Shimada Tour Lite will be consistent through the set.
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.
The technical discussion and measurements are available only to registered readers
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.
The technical discussion and measurements are available only to registered readers
Give your club fitter a call and check it out! It just may be a shaft for you…
The Highlands Performance Golf Center, Carrollton Texas 
The OBAN / Shimada CT-100 is a lower weight version of the