There are two types of Tour players: ones who are absolute gear sickos like Tiger Woods, Max Greyserman and Charles Howell III, who want to know everything there is to know about a golf club before they ever consider gaming it.
Then, there are those like Jon Rahm, who, once they have something that works, stick with it and don’t think much about it.
On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, Johnny Wunder, who worked for four years as part of Callaway’s media team, recalled how Rahm finally switched into the Fujikura Ventus Black shaft he’s now using.
For the entirety of his professional career, Rahm used the Aldila Tour Green 75TX shaft in his driver. Not only was it the same model shaft, Wunder explained, it was the same exact shaft going back to his days at TaylorMade when he came out of college.
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“When Callaway signed him from TaylorMade, the shaft that he was actually going with year to year with Callaway was the shaft that they pulled out of his … SIM driver when he was with TaylorMade,” Wunder said. “So they just pulled the cog off of it and buffed it down and put it in.”
“So his gamer driver on tour had literally the same shaft in it for like six or seven years.”
But as Rahm started to enter his prime, you can watch videos where his swing tempo starts to get faster and more explosive. Wunder chalked a lot of that up to speed training.
Eventually it got to the point where, with the Tour Green, Rahm started to see a left miss last season.
“He legitimately outgrew it,” Wunder said. “The big overcut for him isn’t his big miss, he doesn’t hate that. It’s when he’s trying to hit that cut, and the ball’s going left and staying left.”
That led Rahm to go to Callaway’s Ely Callaway Performance Center (ECPC) where he did some shaft testing and ultimately settled on the Ventus Black 7X, which helped eliminate his dreaded left miss.
“He pulls in the handle hard, he’s fast, he’s violent on the way down,” Wunder said. “He needs stable. So the Tour Green was a very stable part, but … parts of that shaft were actually quite whippy.
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“When you have a kind of a pully/quicker tempo, if you can’t time up the kick every single time, you’re inviting chaos,” Wunder continued. “So I guess the difference would be, the easiest way can explain it to the consumer; Ventus black, Jon has to make kick.”
After the shaft change, Rahm went on to win his first two LIV Golf titles and the season-long individual crown. See, changing shafts isn’t so scary after all.
For more from Wunder and fellow co-host Wadeh Maroun, listen to the full episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped podcast here or watch it below.
Want to dial in your driver for 2025? Find a club-fitting location near you at True Spec Golf.
