Johnny Wunder sits down with Marshall Thompson from Fujikura to walk through why Ventus has continued to dominate the PGA Tour and more.
GOLF
Every few weeks, golf equipment content focuses heavily on launch-monitor numbers: high launch, low spin, smash factor, ball speed. It dominates digital feeds, making for clean, digestible metrics.
However, in a tour truck on a random Tuesday morning at a PGA Tour event, the conversation sounds completely different. I have yet to hear a player walk on a truck and say “I wanna hit it farther.” The best players and fitters in the world don’t look at equipment that way — the priority is reliability.
On the latest episode of Tour Validated (embedded below), Fujikura tour rep and product developer Marshall Thompson sat down to discuss his two-decade career inside the Carlsbad lab and on the PGA Tour range. Thompson has spent 20 years building, testing and refining shafts alongside veteran fitters like Pat McCoy and John Hovis (now with Callaway on the Champions Tour), providing a practical perspective on what makes a driver perform under tournament pressure.
Here are a few things we learned.
1. The metrics that really matter: start line and impact location
When a player like Ryan Fox walks onto the range at the Scottish Open struggling with his driver, the diagnostic process focuses on eliminating the miss rather than chasing 3 extra yards. Fox was playing a Ventus Black 7TX shaft. He made center-face contact, but his start direction drifted too far right of his intended target line. For a player relying on a power fade, a right-start line that continues drifting farther right creates a major problem on a tight links course.
Instead of adjusting the hosel to a closed or upright setting — which could change the static face angle, add dynamic loft and increases spin — Thompson adjusted the shaft specifications. He moved Fox into the Ventus TR Black with VeloCore Plus in a 60-gram range (6X profile).
The lighter total weight allowed Fox to rotate the clubhead through impact to return his start line to the left. Launch angle and spin rates remained consistent, but his initial start direction was restored. Two weeks later, Fox walked off the 72nd hole at Royal Birkdale with the Claret Jug.
The primary lesson for golfers is to look at shaft weight and profile interactions before attempting to fix directional flaws purely through loft and lie sleeves. How the shaft interacts with your hands directly controls where the ball starts. This isn’t gospel but it does encourage golfers and the fitters they work with to investigate the entire problem. I was taught that if center-face contact is there, the head is right and the shaft is wrong. If the player can’t find the face, 95 percent of the time the shaft is wrong. That’s assuming length and lie angle are in a close enough realm to the player.
Traditional consumer fittings often prioritize maximum distance and peak launch or spin numbers, while tour reps evaluate face impact locations and start lines first. Rather than judging a driver solely by distance loss on a mis-hit, tour fittings focus on the physical shape and predictability of that miss.
2. Standard deviation beats peak performance
The original Ventus platform launched in 2018, and the Ventus Black remains widely used on professional tours, anchored in the bags of players like Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler.
When improving a product that already accounts for nearly 40 percent of driver shafts in play at a major championship, manufacturers rely on high-speed 3D motion capture systems (like Enzo) combined with 360-degree force plates.
Built for speed and control, the Fujikura VENTUS TR Black Shaft is engineered for players who generate powerful swings and demand maximum stability through impact. The shaft is powered by VeloCore+ technology, Fujikura’s advanced multi-material core structure designed to reduce twist and increase energy transfer throughout the swing. The result is a more stable delivery that helps aggressive players maintain tighter dispersion and consistent ball speed.
The goal is (in my experience) to give the player a shaft setup that harmonizes with their desired release patterns and puts them in a center-face opportunity more often than not. This ensures the good ones are good and the bad ones, yes, are still pretty good. That’s called fitting to a high floor — not a high ceiling.
When a tour player strikes a shot off the high toe or low heel, gear effect control determines whether the mis-hit stays playable or results in excessive dispersion and spin deviation. Multi-material and torsional stiffness profiles dictate how much the clubhead twists during off-center contact.
3. Why players don’t switch (and why they finally do)
Many amateur golfers change driver shafts when new options are released, whereas professional players tend to retain equipment for extended periods because they understand how the club behaves under tournament pressure.
Securing an equipment change from a tour professional requires one of two things:
— Clear Performance Gains: Viktor Hovland made a mid-season driver and shaft switch into the TR Black with VeloCore Plus because the setup produced a measurable increase in ball speed while maintaining the mid-section stiffness feel of his previous shaft.
— Solving the “Bad Miss”: Every player accepts that mis-hits happen. However, a mis-hit on tour must look predictable. If a toe miss hooks excessively, the club is removed immediately. If a new shaft keeps that same toe miss inside playable boundaries, it’s in the convo.
4. The soft-shaft experiment: what weight actually does to low point
Beyond woods, equipment discussions often examine iron shafts and flex selection. While traditional fitting standards pair higher swing speeds with heavier, stiffer steel shafts, players like Jimmy Walker have experimented with lightweight, softer graphite profiles (like Axiom 75RS) in blade irons.
When an iron shaft is too heavy or overly rigid for a player’s timing, physical adjustments happen automatically. The golfer may lean back or lower the handle, moving the low point behind the ball and causing heavy contact or misses off the heel.
Transitioning to a lighter, softer profile allows the player to maintain posture over the ball, move the low point forward and improve turf interaction. The softer tip section creates subtle dynamic drop at impact, bringing the center of the face closer to the ball and cleaning up strike location.
The takeaway for your game
When evaluating driver or iron changes this season, consider the following approach:
— Evaluate your worst shots. Judge equipment by the floor, not the ceiling. Standard deviation metrics will tell the truth over 15-20 shots.
— Prioritize start line control. If the ball consistently starts on the wrong side of your target, don’t be shy about evaluating shaft weight and profile options in addition to adjusting hosel settings.
— Match component weight to natural movement. Stiffer and heavier components are not automatically correct for every player. The right shaft setup allows the body to move through impact cleanly without forcing adjustments.
Johnny currently serves as the Director of Equipment at Golf.com, contributing to platforms like Fully Equipped Golf. Prior to this role, he was the Content Marketing Manager at Callaway Golf, where he led “Callaway Golf’s World of Wunder,” a platform dedicated to in-depth golf equipment content. Before joining Callaway, he was the Director of Original Content and host of “The Gear Dive” podcast at GolfWRX.com. Beyond his professional endeavors, Johnny is an avid golfer with a deep passion for the game, having played since his youth in Seattle, Washington.
