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By
Steve Pike,
PGA.com Senior Writer
08.04.2005
06:12 pm (ET)
True Temper Sports next month will begin shipping the newest member of its "gold" family of golf shafts -- the Black Gold. Complementing Dynamic Gold, its constant weight counterpart, the Black Gold features a stepless, descending weight design, company officials said, meaning that the shafts get progressively lighter from long-iron to short-iron lengths. The Black Gold features the same ball flight of the Dynamic Gold shaft while offering a unique feel due to its descending weight properties, True Temper said. Its stepless profile, according to the company, also contributes to its distinct feel at impact in addition to providing custom club fitters the ability to pinpoint a specific finished club frequency. Black Gold will be available in both tapered and parallel versions in R, S and X flexes. The shaft is currently a tour-only product. "Dynamic Gold is constant weight, meaning that the 3-iron shaft weighs the same as the 8-iron shaft," said True Temper President Scott Hennessy. "While Dynamic Gold continues to be the overwhelming choice of professionals and top amateurs, there is a segment of players who prefer descending weight shafts because of their distinctive feel as the clubs progress into the shorter irons." Utilizing True Temper's proprietary manufacturing processes, Hennessy said, Black Gold's critical shaft parameters are held to exacting standards (consistency of the raw blank is held to within +/- 1.5 grams and the raw frequency is controlled to within +/- 2 cycles per minute). That results in a "frequency tuned" product that he said combines the trimming flexibility of a stepless design with the quality and consistency of True Temper's "gold" heritage. "The initiative with Black Gold was to produce a stepless shaft that not only had incredible playing characteristics but unmatched consistency versus anything currently in the stepless category," said Hennessy. "It is our precise manufacturing process that has established True Temper's gold series of shafts as the very best available and will position Black Gold as the most consistent stepless, frequency tuned shaft in the game today." Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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