About 85 per cent of the guys on the PGA Tour have in their irons or wedges a shaft that essentially hasn’t changed in 28 years: the True Temper Dynamic Gold. Unlike graphite shafts, whose design possibilities are limitless because of the combinations of fibrous materials that can be used and how they can be oriented, steel is a homogeneous substance that has uniform properties in all directions. From this simplicity comes its consistency to manufacture and to play. Still, one question remains: Can the steel golf shaft get any better? “From a design standpoint we’ve got most of the bases covered,” says Graeme Horwood, vice president of engineering and R&D at True Temper. “The main thing left to do is go lighter, which might mean experimenting with metals other than steel.”

The lighter the metal shafts made, the larger the pool of golfers who might play them. For control, Tour players  typically use shafts that weigh 120g or more, but manufacturing innovations have produced steel shafts that weigh 80g or less. One company has experimented with prototypes as light as 40g. “There’s less vibration dampening in lightweight steel,” says Marty Jertson, a design engineer for Ping, “so the real challenge is to make it without it feeling harsh.”

Ping and Nippon have developed the idea of iron shafts with ascending weight. Long-iron shafts are built light for maximising speed and bridging the tempo gap between hybrids and long irons. The shafts grow progressively heavier in the short irons for control.

“To some, graphite doesn’t give enough sensory interaction with the clubhead,” says Mark Pekarek, who has custom-fit more than 20,000 golfers at Green Grass Clubfitting in Illinois. “There’s no rule that says you need a certain swing speed to use steel.”

If the pros used lighter shafts, how far might their iron shots go? We might know even before the next generation gets on tour.

1. The tip section of the True Temper GS75 is designed to increase the ball’s peak trajectory (US$25 [S$33.70], truetemper.com).

2.  The Nippon 999GH can ascend from 98g in the 3-iron to 109g in the pitching wedge (US$149, nipponshaft.com).

3. The SMT Smooth Steel features a stepless design (US$14, smtgolf.com).

4. The mass and radius of each step is reduced proportionally in the KBS Tour (US$25, kbshafts.com).