Whats more important to a golf shaft — materials or processes?

There are lots of premium aftermarket golf shaft options out there, and they’re all a bit different.

Some use exotic materials to achieve unique performance, while others get there with cutting-edge technology and techniques. All have the same goal: making golfers better.

On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, co-host Johnny Wunder had Aretera Golf Co-Founders Chris Elson and Alex Dee on the show to discuss the company’s latest AO2 wood shafts.

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By: Eric Hickman, True Spec Master Club Fitter

“Your business is — at least for marketing’s sake — is a materials business, right?” Wunder asked the pair. “Everybody kind of has their limits to what a shaft can do. It’s the same shape, it’s typically the same, as far as the weight’s concerned. You have your constraints, your sandbox to plan. What’s more important, is it the materials that you use or the way that you actually use the materials? Or is it both?”

Dee explains that materials are important and even Aretera has proprietary materials, but everyone has great materials.

Aretera AO2 Blue Wood Shaft

AO2 stands in a class of its own with intelligent design, fined-tuned craftsmanship, and meticulous manufacturing. Active in the handle and firm mid to tip, the AO2 converts premiere engineering into shot repeatability.  We understand how challenging it can be to navigate a multitude of variables between swing dynamics and shaft profiles in play. That’s why we’ve strategically designed ONLY ONE attributing difference between Blue and Gray profiles — tip stiffness — to simplify the process and dial in spin and launch to match a player’s swing type.  

$420.00 from Fairway Jockey

View Product

“There are a lot of similarities now,” Dee said. “So it’s almost like a restaurant. If you want to go get seasonings in a piece of chicken, they’re going to be the same. It really comes down to how it’s cooked and how you prepare it.”

He said intellectual property in the shaft industry is very difficult to police and everyone has similar access to materials. That’s where it really comes down to the processes used to create a golf shaft and sometimes who is creating it.

“I’m gonna toot Alex’s horn here a little bit, because there are a lot of people that know how to design shafts,” Ellison said. “Like if I gave somebody a target spec for a particular product, there are a lot of people in the world that know how to create something based on a given direction of what they want to see.

Aretera AO2 Gray Wood Shaft

AO2 stands in a class of its own with intelligent design, fined-tuned craftsmanship, and meticulous manufacturing. Active in the handle and firm mid to tip, the AO2 converts premiere engineering into shot repeatability.  We understand how challenging it can be to navigate a multitude of variables between swing dynamics and shaft profiles in play. That’s why we’ve strategically designed ONLY ONE attributing difference between Blue and Gray profiles — tip stiffness — to simplify the process and dial in spin and launch to match a player’s swing type.  

$420.00 from Fairway Jockey

View Product

“But Alex is one of the few guys, I believe, that has, you know, it’s a combination of science and art, right? So he’s able to look at things from a different perspective. The incorporation of different material types, creating, as he just talked about, our power grid material, incorporating, utilizing it in different design architectures.

“So it’s a combination of all these things. There aren’t too many people that know how to creatively incorporate the combination of design, architecture and material in a way that’s impactful in improving performance to the golfer.”

For more from Wunder, Dee and Elson, listen to the full episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped here, or watch it below.

Want to overhaul your bag in 2025? Find a club-fitting location near you at True Spec Golf.