This post contains affiliate links.
It’s always interesting to see what clubs and equipment the pros are playing with but when it comes to golf shafts and what flex of shafts they are using it’s much harder to tell what they are choosing.
While you can easily see what driver or irons the pros are hitting simply from watching them on TV it’s much more difficult to work out what shaft flex they are playing with.
So to find out we did a detailed analysis of the flexes of shafts being used by the top 100 PGA Tour pros to see how many pros are using regular, stiff, extra stiff or even tour extra stiff shafts in their clubs.
90% of the top 100 PGA Tour pros use extra stiff or Tour extra stiff flex shafts in their driver. As a whole pro players of woods, hybrids and utility irons again use extra stiff or Tour extra stiff shafts with stiff and stiff+ flex shafts only being more used in irons and wedges. None of the top 100 uses regular shafts.
When it comes to the flex of shafts the best pros use therefore it is clear that they don’t use shafts that the vast majority of us regular amateurs play with and indeed will often vary the flex of their shafts depending on the type of club.
But when it comes to looking at the shafts various manufacturers produce for the pros it’s not always easy to compare like with like as different companies use different numbering and naming conventions to indicate flex shafts.
And some shaft manufacturers even vary their own numbering system across different models of shafts to make it even more confusing!
Do All Pros Use Extra Stiff Shafts? In Their Longest Clubs They Do!
When it comes to looking at the flex of shafts the pros use in their clubs discussion typically starts with the driver.
Golfers are most often concerned with shaft flex when it comes to the club they can hit the ball furthest with and when it comes to driver shafts the preferences of the best players on the PGA Tour are crystal clear.
As a whole 90% of the top 100 golfers on the PGA Tour use either an extra stiff or Tour extra flex shaft in their driver. Only a very small number of this elite group, including Brian Harman and Jason Day, use a ‘softer’ stiff driver shaft while not one of the top 100 uses a regular or regular+ shaft in their driver.
And the simple reason for this is swing speed.
Shaft flex is in short a measure of how much a shaft will bend under the force of a golf swing with a head attached at the tip end.
As a shaft bends during the loading and downswing, so does the head rotate through the swing and choosing the proper flex allows the head to come back to the square position, thereby transferring the maximum amount of energy to the ball at impact.
The speed and frequency of your swing therefore determine what flex you need and one of the key reasons PGA Tour pros are able to achieve an average driving distance of close to 300 yards is because the majority of the top players record swing speeds in excess of 100mph.
Such swing speeds have however the potential to create a lot of bend in golf shafts and therefore the pros need a very stiff driver shaft to deliver the best results.
[Note – if you are interested in finding out all the reasons the pros hit the ball so far check out our article here.]
Of the 20 driver shaft models we found used among the top 100 PGA Tour pros Fujikura’s Ventus Blue 6X was the most popular extra stiff shaft while Mitsubishi’s Tensei CK Pro Blue 60 TX, Tensei AV Raw Orange 65 TX and Diamana D+ Limited 70 TX were shown to be the most used ‘Tour’ extra stiff shafts.
And this requirement for extra stiff shafts is also clearly in evidence in the other clubs the pros are aiming to hit consistently as far as possible – namely their fairway woods and hybrids.
As a general rule all the pros use tour extra stiff or extra stiff flex shafts in their fairway woods and hybrids. Out of the top 100 PGA Tour pros only Brian Harman uses only a stiff shaft in his 3-wood and 5-wood while Lucas Glover uses a tour extra stiff shaft in all his clubs including his wedges.
Now admittedly the flex set-up of Lucas Glover’s club shafts is unusual, even amongst the pros, but it is a clear example of how strong the shaft flexes the pros use are as they most frequently choose some of the strongest flex shafts on the market.
And what about the great Tiger Woods? Well he also plays tour extra stiff shafts in his driver and fairway woods although he does opt for comparatively ‘softer’ extra stiff shafts in his irons and wedges.
A complete list of the shaft flexes used by Tiger is shown in the table below.
| TIGER WOODS CLUB | SHAFT FLEX | SHAFT | |
| TaylorMade Stealth Plus Driver | Tour X-Stiff | Mitsubishi Diamana D+ Limited 60 TX | Check eBay View on Amazon |
| TaylorMade SIM Titanium 3-wood | Tour X-Stiff | Mitsubishi Diamana D+ Limited 70 TX | Check eBay View on Amazon |
| TaylorMade M3 5-wood | Tour X-Stiff | Mitsubishi Diamana D+ Limited 80 TX | Check eBay View on Amazon |
| TaylorMade P7TW Irons (3-PW) | X-Stiff | True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 | Check eBay View on Amazon |
| TaylorMade MG2 TW Grind Wedges (56º,60º) | Stiff | True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 | Check eBay View on Amazon |
[Note – If you want to check out the details of the exact shafts being used by the top 100 PGA Tour pros, including the most popular models across all categories of clubs, click here.]
Do Any Pros Use Stiff Shafts In Their Irons?
Golf shaft manufacturers don’t make it that straightforward to compare shaft flexes.
While some of them use labelling which is easy to understand – regular shafts are ‘R’, stiff shafts are ‘S’, extra stiff shafts are ‘X’, and tour extra stiff shafts are ‘TX’ – others categorise the flex of their shafts differently and use a numbering system which is not always the easiest to understand.
True Temper for example uses a numbering system which not only varies between shafts for woods and irons but also varies between different models of shafts they make!
This makes the job of comparing what shafts the different pros use in their irons that bit more complicated and analysing whether they use stiff or extra shafts in their irons also.
15% of the top 100 PGA Tour pros use stiff shafts in their irons including Hideki Matsuyama, Corey Connors, and Matt Kuchar. 9% choose stiff+ iron shafts, a flex in-between stiff and extra stiff, but over 70% use either extra stiff or tour extra stiff iron shafts. None of the top 100 PGA Tour pros uses regular iron shafts.
When it comes to utility iron shafts only Matt Jones in the top 100 PGA Tour pros uses a stiff shaft while the others who choose to play driving irons all again prefer extra stiff and tour extra stiff shafts which again shows how prevalent the choice of the strongest flex shafts is among the pros for almost all their clubs.
It is only among the wedge shafts selected by the pros that you finally see the majority of them using slightly ‘softer’ flex shafts but as we can see below a healthy number still continue to choose extra stiff shafts in their wedges.
[Note – To find out whether the pros use graphite or steel shafts check out our article on this topic.]
Do Any Pros Use Regular Shafts? Only in Their Wedges
When it comes to the shafts the best pros use many players will choose shafts made by 3 or even 4 different shaft manufacturers and the majority also vary the flex of shafts these use across the different club types.
When it comes to the flex of the shafts the top 100 PGA Tour pros use in their wedges the pros start finally to opt more often for slightly softer flex shafts although that does not mean the vast majority opt for anything any less strong than a stiff shaft.
Stiff shafts are the clear preference when it comes to wedge shafts however compared to the predominant extra stiff and tour extra stiff shafts they prefer in other clubs in the bag over 50% of the top 100 PGA Tour pros opt for stiff shafts in their gap, sand and lob wedges.
Close to a third of this elite group however still use extra stiff shafts in the shortest clubs in their bag and again we did not find one single player using a regular or regular+ shaft in their pitching, gap, sand or lob wedge.
Golf shafts mentioned in this article:
| GOLF SHAFT | |
| Fujikura Ventus Blue 6X | Check eBay View on Amazon |
| Mitsubishi Tensei CK Pro Blue 60 TX | Check eBay View on Amazon |
| Mitsubishi Tensei AV Raw Orange 65 TX | Check eBay View on Amazon |
| Mitsubishi Diamana D+ Limited 60 TX | Check eBay View on Amazon |
| Mitsubishi Diamana D+ Limited 70 TX | Check eBay View on Amazon |
| Mitsubishi Diamana D+ Limited 80 TX | Check eBay View on Amazon |
| True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 | Check eBay View on Amazon |
| True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 | Check eBay View on Amazon |
Other great articles related to this topic:
- What Shafts Do Pros Use? Top 100 PGA Tour Player Breakdown
- Do Pros Use Graphite or Steel Shafts? It Depends Which Club (2022 update)
- What Clubs Do Pro Golfers Use? Top 100 PGA Tour Player Guide
- What Irons Do LPGA Players Use? Top 50 Pros Analysis
- How Far Do Pro Golfers Hit Each Club? A 2022 Guide
- The PGA Tour’s Rising Driver Ball Speeds Mean One Thing – $$
- Should Your Driver Match Your Woods? Don’t Waste Your Money!
- Should Your Wedges Match Your Irons? Consistency is Key
- Are My Golf Clubs Too Old? It’s Performance Not Age That Matters
- Should I Play Blades or Cavity Back Irons? Use Your Head