Oban CT Iron Shaft Review
By Russ Ryden, A Golf Digest America’s 100 Best Clubfitter
Fit2Score, Dallas Fort Worth, Texas
Oban in a partnership with Shimada and is introducing a set of iron shafts through their dealers called the CT-115. It is unique in that their are 12 shafts ranging from 36 inches in half inch increments to 41 1/2 inches. 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.
The Oban CT is offered in only one weight, 115 grams. If you are going to have only one weight, this is a good choice. It will fit the majority of amateur golfers. Comparing this profile to other know iron shaft designs I would expect to see a high launch, once again, making it a great fit for the average golfer.
When I looked at the bend profiles I saw a design that is typical of a parallel shaft. A section of uniform butt stiffness, a loss of stiffness through the mid section and uniform stiffness in the tip area.What I typically see in sets made by tip trimming parallel shafts is very small set stiffness ranges. That term set stiffness range will be explained in the technical section soon. Briefly, it is a measurement of how much launch assistance you can expect in your longer irons. A small number, very little, a larger number and the longer iron shafts contribute to launch. A low number is around 5%. The largest number seen so far is slightly less than 20%
Given the similarity to parallel shaft profiles I expected to see a low set stiffness range. That was not the case, While the numbers were smaller as the sets were stiffer, all ranged in what can be called the high mid values for set stiffness range. I don’t really want to use a branded name here, but this a a property introduced by Royal Precision called Flighted. When you see a Set Stiffness Range of 10% or higher the short irons will launch low and the long irons will launch high. For most amateur golfers, this is a good thing.
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.
The jury is out because they are so new we don’t have any testing yet, but the measurement indicate a favorable verdict.