ShopTalk: Club length

[Alan Brooks]

OK Collected Guru's (new meaning of 'cg'), can somebody explain to me the emphasis on club length. This question has been floating in my mind somewhere for a while and the post is prompted by Dave T's graphite shaft question and his desire to not make the clubs more than 1/2" longer. I guess I see finished club length as an output of the design/fitting process driven by desired swing weight (and all the things that go into swing weight), not an input. Our clubs vary in length from about 35" to about 45" and it is not clear to me why the length of any individual club in the middle of the set should matter that much.

The convention wisdom seems to suggest that 'longer clubs are harder to hit'. True, but longer clubs also have heads that are smaller, lighter (lower club head inertia and a lower club head to ball mass ratio and a lower club head to shaft mass ratio), with lower loft. All of these will make the longer clubs harder to hit and it's not clear to me that length alone is going to be a dominant factor, or maybe even a very important one. I put graphite shafts in my long irons, kept the swing weight the same which made the clubs maybe an inch longer, and they are EASIER to hit. The fact that my 4-iron is more than an inch longer than my 5-iron doesn't seem to bother me at all. I would think (naivety is such fun) that the club building process would go: cut the tip for the right stiffness, put the head on and cut the butt to get the right swing weight. Component weight variations mean length will be a bit random if you strictly match swing weight so I make sure I have even club length increments and let the swing weight float a bit, but I don't see overall club length as being important enough to move the club head cg around with tip pins or tungsten powder in the shafts.

Am I missing something here?

Thanks,

Alan Brooks