Golf Gear Box is now carrying the Breakthrough Golf Technology (BGT) ZNE wedge shafts, to go along with their stability putter shafts. To see the putter stability shafts click HERE.
According to BGT, the two-piece design of the ZNE® Wedges delivers both Feel and Control, with 92% of golfers showing better distance control and 90% tighter dispersion. Golf’s first and only 2-piece wedge shaft, the ZNE Stiffness Stack™ is 2.5x stiffer than a traditional wedge shaft and allows the kickpoint to be optimized for the perfect launch and trajectory. The ZNE shaft is offered in 90g, 115g and 130g weights.
We decided to build our own wedge using a ZNE shaft and document it here. We picked up a used/like new Callaway 58° Jaws wedge shaft from Callaway Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) for this project. If you have not tried CPO for purchasing Callaway clubs, you should! Our used/like new wedge still had the stickers over the face, so in fact it was actually brand new!
We pulled the Callaway head from the shaft in our Oconee Club WORX studio and prepped it for install onto the ZNE shaft. We went with the ZNE 115g shaft which falls in the middle of currently offered shaft weights.
Next we removed the paint from the tip of the shaft and then glued the head to the shaft and let it cure for 24 hours. The next day we cut the shaft to length and added a midsize Winn DriTac LT club grip.
We then took the completed wedge out to our short game practice facility and worked on shots from around the green and sand. The first thing that takes some getting used to is the profile of the shaft at address, especially with the mid-size grip. The look of the club is that of a telescoping antenna.
The stiffness of the shaft is very apparent with absolutely no wiggle when swinging the wedge.
One of the hallmarks of a stability shaft is its torsion control, or its ability to reduce twisting of the head. The control was easily noticed when chipping from around the green. Even on off center strikes the ball goes where you aim the club face whether chipping or pitching onto the green.
When hitting out of the rough the big worry is always is that the grass is going to grab the club face and twist it. The ZNE shaft demonstrated impressive stability cutting through the rough to get the ball to the green.
We then moved to the driving range to see how the ZNE shaft reacted to full swing testing. The weight of the completed wedge was very similar to the weight of our 58° PM Grind wedge, so we did some head to head testing to see how it fared against our gamer.
The big concern with adding more stiffness to the shaft is that feedback and feel may get muted. We saw the exact opposite with the ZNE wedge providing better feedback in the hands compared to the PM wedge.
Our full swing miss is a bit of a pull and we had less of those with the BGT, and the torsion control of the BGT shaft reduced that left miss quite a bit from the PM grind. On half swings, or trying to take anything off the wedge, we're prone to the occasional shank and with the stability shaft we felt very comfortable that was not going to happen, we did not see any during testing.
Distance control was as good if not a little better than our PM wedge, but where the ZNE wedge really shined was in improved dispersion compared to our gamer. We had a lot more balls around the pin with the ZNE wedge than with the PM wedge.
One area where the PM grind was better than the ZNE was when we tried to muscle the club. You know, when it's cart path only and you don't take enough club so your try hit the heck out of the club you brung. When swinging hard with the ZNE the ball went nowhere, but with a long smooth swing the ball was a little longer than the PM wedge.
Since we were testing the club during Masters week, there were a lot of golfers in the practice area and everyone wanted to know "what the heck is with that shaft"? We let a few people try the wedge around the green and out on the range and all were impressed with the performance of the ZNE wedge, with the most common comment being "man, that's a stiff shaft".
One obvious question we got from testers was about the durability of a 2-piece versus a one-piece shaft. We checked with BGT, who told us that less than 1% of the 7,000 wedge shafts sold to date had any issues, and BGT will replace any damaged shaft at no charge. We did take a chunk out of the paint on our demo shaft just pulling the club in and out of our cart bag, and to their credit, BGT offered to replace it at no charge!
Interested to see what a stability shaft can for your wedge game? See the full line of Breakthrough Golf Technology ZNE wedge shafts HERE.