What is “Kickpoint”?
What is “Kickpoint”?Answer: “Kickpoint” is actually a passe term these days. Kickpoint is an old term in shaft design that was used to try to describe how the shaft’s overall stiffness or flexibility was distributed over the entire length of the shaft. Today the term kickpoint is being replaced by the phrase “bend profile.” The reason is that kickpoint connotes the thought that the shaft has a “hinge,” which is definitely not true. “Bend profile,” on the other hand, offers the explanation that the shaft’s overall stiffness may vary intentionally over its entire length as a way to change the bending feel and the trajectory the shaft offers to the flight of the ball. By varying the outer and inner diameters of the shaft, along with the wall thickness in-between at any point along the shaft, it is possible to make shafts of the same overall stiffness but which differ in where they are more or less stiff. For example, it is possible to make two shafts of the same letter flex – such as an R
