Breakthrough Golf Technology (BGT), the Richardson, Texas, company that introduced a composite-construction putter shaft, the Stability Shaft, in 2018, has jumped to the other end of the golf bag with their latest product, the Brava line of driver shafts.
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Breakthrough Golf Technology (BGT) the makers of the multi-material Stability Shaft for putters, has added the Brava line of driver shafts to their product stable. At least they’re not pink… |
The new shaft comes in four levels of stiffness – A, R, S and X (“R” for “Regular”, “S” for “Stiff”, “X” for “eXtra stiff”, I guess; I have no idea what “A” stands for, and it is not defined in the online information for the shaft) – for clubhead speeds of 75 mph, 85 mph, 95 mph, and 105 mph. Standard length is 46 inches, and the shafts weight in at 46 grams, 50 grams, 54 grams, and 58 grams, respectively.
The folks at BGT cite something they call “Speedflite NRG™ technology” (no explanation as to its meaning is offered) for the new driver shafts, which are constructed from “premium Toray™ carbon fiber”, which they claim “translates to less energy needed when swinging” for “an exceptionally stable driver head for more distance and tighter ball dispersion.”
Their ad copy also claims that the Brava shaft is “Designed for maximum ball speed and smash factor because it delivers more center strikes and a better face angle.” Ball speed and smash factor are functions of club head speed and the properties of the club face and the ball, and are affected by the quality of the strike (hitting the sweet spot matters…); just how a shaft is going to help the golfer hit the center of the club face is not explained; ditto with the face angle claim.
The new driver shaft is claimed to beat two premium driver shafts by up to 10 yards in distance and up to 60% in dispersion, information backed up by a pair of colorful graphs on their website but unaccompanied by any solid data or information about test protocols, etc. If you have read my June 2018 column on the Stability Shaft you may recall the skepticism I expressed at the claims made by BGT for that product and the data presentation they used to back it up. The same holds true for this new product.
The specifications table for the Brava range of shafts offers up data on “torque” for each shaft, a number that is used by shaft manufacturers to represent the torsional stiffness of their products. The term is a misnomer, because torque is a force input that produces rotation or torsion (circumferential stress), not the reaction to that force. That being said, these numbers do give a sense of the relative torsional stiffness of the four grades of the Brava shaft. The numbers that are advertised for this quality of the Brava line of shafts are – from “A” to “X”, respectively – 5.6˚, 4.4˚, 4.3˚, and 3.5˚, but these values cannot necessarily be used to compare this characteristic of the Brava shafts to driver shafts from other manufacturers because there is no uniform industry-wide test standard for obtaining this so-called “torque” measurement.
By the way – comparing the weight of each of the Brava shafts (see above) to the “torque” you can see that the extra 4 grams tacked on for the “S” shaft isn’t buying you much in the way of increased stiffness, by whatever measure is used.
Let’s get some data
My evaluation of the Brava line of driver shafts doesn’t stop at their marketing BUMF; the nice people at BGT (who may not have actually read my review of the Stability Shaft) set me up with an “S” flex Brava shaft for my Ben Hogan GS53 Max driver. (In a case of spectacularly bad timing, the Ben Hogan Golf Equipment Company had just closed its doors when I went to their website looking to buy a hosel for BGT to fit to a Brava shaft so I could swap it for the UST Mamiya Helium F4 shaft I had ordered my driver with. A timely suggestion from a Twitter acquaintance sent me to the OEM suppliers market, where I was able to purchase the needed item.)
I sent my Hogan driver off to BGT, and just a few days later I got it back, along with an S-flex Brava shaft fitted with the Hogan hosel I sent along with the driver (the “X” flex shaft wasn’t available at that time or I would have probably gone with that – the weight is closer to that of my gamer.) After regripping the Brava shaft with my preferred grip, a midsize Golf Pride Tour Velvet, I gathered some preliminary data about the two setups:
Shaft All-up shaft wt* Full club wt Swing wt
UST Mamiya Helium F4 139.8 gm 333.1 gm D5
Brava 54G S95 117.9 gm 311.1 gm** D4
* (incl. grip and hosel)
** (22-gram difference is about the weight of $1 worth of quarters)
With these numbers and the two shafts, in hand, I went to my local Golf Galaxy to get some comparative performance data on the two shafts. (Shoutout to Steve Kobota, Operations Manager at my local Golf Galaxy store, for setting up and running this testing session for me.)
Numbers don’t lie – but sometimes they’re hard to understand
The first thing to know when evaluating launch-monitor data from shots taken by a 65-year-old 25-handicap who doesn’t play nearly as much golf as he should is that I am not Iron Byron. I am the first to admit that my swing is inconsistent. The launch angle and spin rate numbers that came out of my Trackman session bear that out, and I would not use them to come to any conclusions about the relative qualities of the Brava shaft and the UST Mamiya Helium shaft that I normally game.
As for smash factor and carry yardage, as I stated above, smash factor is more a function of the driver head, the quality of contact, and the ball being used (the hitting bay was not equipped with my usual Titleist pills) than it is of the shaft, and since carry yardage/total yardage is calculated by the Trackman system (it was an indoor session) and is not actual data, I think that the best indicator of the relative qualities of these two shafts to come out of my hour in the hitting bay is club head speed.
The bottom line – What am I getting for $399.99?
The club head speed numbers that I achieved with the two shafts were remarkably similar. I actually achieved my maximum clubhead speed with the UST Mamiya Helium shaft, the heavier setup of the two by 22 grams, which I swung second, when I was already a bit tired. The average club head speed was slightly higher (for a few more swings) with the Brava shaft, but only by a miniscule 2.2%.
Club-Avg-He | Club-Avg-Br |
84.8 | 86.7 |
Max | Max |
90.7 | 90.5 |
The shot dispersion patterns were quite similar between the two (but nothing to write home about, courtesy of my intermittent two-way miss—remember, 25 handicap.)
All in all, despite the small—but noticeable—weight advantage of the Brava shaft, in my hands its performance was essentially identical to the standard-option UST Mamiya Helium shaft I normally play, and such similar performance would make it difficult, in my mind, to justify the purchase of the $399.99 Brava shaft. The smart play, if you are interested, is to try the shaft yourself, but that might not prove to be easy to do as the number of brick-and-mortar stores that carry the line of Brava shafts is limited; they are mostly Club Champion locations, according to the BGT website, so if you have one nearby you are in luck.
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† (You may note that my average club head speed numbers indicate that I should be swinging the “R” shaft, but I have always held that the best option for consistent shots is the lightest/stiffest shaft you can handle. My explanation as to why this is true can be found in this post from September 2019.)
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