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