[Seanmx]

Interesting:

Darren Clarke, who is playing in this week's Scottish Open at Loch Lomond, rediscovered some of his old form on his recent sortie to the States, along with something just as significant. Namely, that for the past three years, he has been fitting his irons with the wrong shafts.

"You would think," he said humorously, "that I would have been smart enough to work out what was going on a bit sooner, but no."

After seven somewhat abbreviated events in which he missed the half-way cut, Clarke had four rounds at the recent Buick in which to think about what he was doing. Suddenly, it hit him that while his drives were bisecting fairways, his irons were going right and left and way too high.

advertisementHe had the clubs checked by Malcolm Clark, an expert in that field, on his return and Clark told him that he was using stiff shafts as opposed to the extra stiff he thought he had in place. It was all down to the different measuring system used in America and Europe. "My fault entirely," stressed the golfer. "I should have checked."

He hit two shots with the re-shafted implements and that was entirely enough to tell him that he was back on track. "The difference," he said, "was massive."

See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/mai.../sgmair112.xml for full story