Talking about golf shafts is not as fun for some golfers as talking about the clubhead. A new driver or set of irons is easy to get excited about. The shafts tend to get a little more technical.
Go down to real golf equipment nerds, though, and they’ll tell you that the shafts are where it’s at.
As I’ve tracked the winning bags on the PGA Tour throughout 2026, I’ve also tracked the shafts the players used in their drivers and irons. Once I added all 38 winning setups together, there were pretty clear trends.
Here are the seven things I found most interesting.
1. 36 of 38 winning drivers came from just three manufacturers
Fujikura tallied 17 winning driver setups, Mitsubishi he was 11 and Project X he was eight Combined, these three manufacturers have accounted for 36 of the 38 PGA Tour wins we’ve tracked in 2026.
The only two out of that group were a Design Graphite barrel and an Aldila barrel.
2. Almost four out of every 10 driver wins were Ventus
Fujikura led the general count but the Ventus family deserves its mention.
Fifteen of the 38 winning drivers were a version of Ventus. That works out to just under 40 percent of all the winning driver setups we’ve tracked.
There were different models and weights in the mix, so it’s not that simple to say there’s a Ventus shaft that Tour players prefer. However, having nearly four out of every 10 winning drivers come from the same tree family is hard to ignore.
3. The 60 gram driver shaft was the most common by a wide margin
If you imagine a PGA Tour player swinging an extremely heavy driver shaft, the winning bags of 2026 tell a different story.
Twenty-two of the 38 winning drivers were in the 60 gram class. Fourteen were in the 70 gram class and only two were in the 80 gram range.
This means that almost 58 percent of these winning configurations used a 60 gram driver shaft. Tour players have great speed, but that doesn’t mean they automatically need an extremely heavy shaft to control.
4. X vs. TX was almost a coin flip
Twenty of the 38 driver wins were TX while 18 were X. An X golf shaft generally means stiffer, while TX is typically used for an extra stiff profile at the Tour level, but those that labels are not standardized from one barrel maker to another.
A Fujikura Xfor example, it cannot simply be lined up against a Mitsubishi o Project X TX and assume it’s sweeter just because of the letter on the tree. Manufacturers design different weights, torques, bending profiles and toe and head stiffness into each model. The Fujikura shaft specifications show these characteristics to be measured separately from the flex designation.
So the almost even X/TX split can tell us less about how “stiff” Tour players want their shafts and more about how little the flex label means without looking at the entire shaft profile.
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5. Iron shafts told a very different story
The shafts of the drivers can be installed very much in the ranges of 60 and 70 grams, but the iron shafts in these winning bags have been much more traditional.
Thirty-seven of the 38 primary iron shaft configurations we tracked were steel. Brandt Snedeker’s SteelFiber i95 setup was the lone graphite option in the main iron set.
There was graphite shafts Used in some specialty long irons, but once we got into the primary iron set, steel completely dominated. Graphite iron shafts continue to improve and become more popular for amateur golfers, but they haven’t made much of a dent in PGA Tour winning purses.
6. Five iron shaft patterns accounted for more than two-thirds of the winning setups
The market for iron shafts was as concentrated as the market for conductors.
Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 led the way with eight winning setups. KBS C Taper 130 X, Project X 6.5 and Dynamic Gold X7 each appeared five times while KBS Tour 130 X appeared three times.
7. Some Tour shots are not even with the same shaft throughout the iron set
This may be the most interesting takeaway of all.
Seven of the 38 winning bags had more than one shaft in the iron part of the set. Sometimes that meant a graphite shaft in a long iron specialty before transitioning into steel. In other cases, players used one shaft in the longer irons and another through the rest of the set.
We tend to think of finding a “iron shaft“And put every iron in the bag. Tour players are clearly willing to look at individual parts of the set differently when the clubs need to do different jobs.
What can golfers take from this?
None of this means you should put a Ventus in your driver because he won the most tournaments.
The most useful takeaway is that even with access to essentially any equipment they want, PGA Tour winners continue to return to a relatively small group of shaft brands and models.
The place Which golfers will win on the PGA Tour in 2026? We found some clear trends appeared first MyGolfSpy.
