Hi Dennis!  There's a few players like you on tour that need longer length.  Robert Karlsson comes to mind.  Last time I checked, he swings the Dynamic Golf Superlight X100s at 1" over length.  Have you been quoted/fitted for this particular model?  It's light enough and potentially stable enough for your game.  You'd probably fit into the Regular or Stiff version.

Hi Ryan...

Yes, I now use a regular flex shaft. I think I heard Robert Karlsson uses something like 1" extra long and 4 degrees upright, which is hard for me to imagine. By adjusting to extra length, I'm not looking to change the lie much, rather, I want to play it slightly farther away from me so I can swing around myself more instead of being as upright as I've always been.

Some guys from Golfworks have responded to an email I sent and they showed me an interesting way to accomplish the swing weight issue, but with a raise in the overall weight of the club. I don't think the overall weight would be as much an issue to me.

The short version is, they would use a weight in the butt of the club to counter balance it so the swing weight stays around D0 or D1.

Basically, they said I could use a shaft extender to gain 1.5" of extra length. Then they said I should use a fairly heavy grip, something 50 grams or over. Then they suggested a device they sell called a Tour Lock Pro.

The Tour Lock Pro is a counter balance device that goes in the butt end of the club. From what I can see in pictures, you drill the hole in the grip slightly larger and the device goes inside. You tighten a screw and it holds the weight in position somehow.

The device comes in various weights from 8 grams to 100 grams... In case you aren't familiar with gram measurements, 100 grams is just under 1/4 lb.  You have about 453 grams per pound. The thing is, I don't know which weight I would need in each club to get back down to the swing weight I want. I'd need to have more in depth discussions with the guys at Golfworks. I'm sure they have a way of calculating it.

NOW... The counter balance devices are expensive, about $10 each on average and pricier as the weight goes up. Add the cost of the extender and new grip to each club. Add the epoxy, the grip tape and the grip tape solvent, not to mention my time and it could be just as expensive as having someone put in new shafts.

I'm not doing much of anything in any great hurry. I'm going to play a couple rounds with the AP1 irons first, go choose some grips I like, then decide which direction I want to take with this project.

Very nice!  Just keep us informed here at Team Titleist!  We want some results! 

I just spoke to one of the tech people at The Golfworks and he explained things this way.

An extension of 1" would equal a swing weight increase of 6 points, so my Titleist irons would go from D0 to D6.

The counter balance device will not work with an extension. I would have to reshaft the clubs. He said the way it's made is such that it would break the extension or the shaft and that it usually happens fairly soon.

So, if I want to counter balance my irons I have two avenues I can travel, or a combination of both.

Each 4 grams at the butt of the club offsets one point of swingweight, so part of this equation is, can I find a grip that is so much heavier than the OEM Tour Velvet grips on the clubs that it counter balances it? Probably not because the Tour Velvet OEM grip is only 50 grams.

The heaviest midsize grip I can find is a 66 gram Lamkin Perma Wrap grip that's 1/16" oversize. I'm familiar with them and would be perfectly happy using them. The 16 gram difference will offset about 4 points of swing weight.

The other alternative is to put lead tape under the grip if I could find a spot where it wouldn't feel like a lump. I don't know how much tape would equal another 4-8 grams, but I suspect it's a lot.

I guess the only other thing we didn't talk about is how much the extension plug itself weighs. It can't be much.

I guess I should experiment with one club and see if it feels OK with the extension and heavier grip. With luck, I could get it down to D2 and that wouldn't be bad at all.

What shaft are we using here to calculate...the shaft I recommended for testing, the DG Superlight? 

Nippon NS Pro 105NT