How does the DIVNICK™ compare to other adjustable golf clubs?

 

There have been over 100 patents for adjustable loft golf clubs since 1895. We discuss this in more detail on the development page. But only a couple made it into the modern era which we will discuss on this page.

There have also been some new ones that have come and gone since we introduced our club in the early 1990's. The most recent entry is the Q Club which we discuss toward the bottom of this page.

Multiple Head Sets

Over the years, various companies have offered different ways to achieve portability. Several companies have had one shaft with a bag of different heads. One of the first to do that was called Voyager about 1990. You can click to enlarge the photo of their set to the right. A more recent version of that approach was made by DV8 and included a backpack. This approach still includes a relatively heavy bag, took time to change the heads between every shot, and would still have to be checked as baggage and paid for.

You can imagine how time-consuming it would be to change heads on the course. And the cost is several hundred dollars. So they haven't been successful solutions.

Semi-Adjustable Loft Sets

Others have offered a reduced number of clubs with 2 or 3 lofts per club with mixed results. One example was the "Walking Sticks" shown on this page. Each of the 3 clubs was a different length shaft to more closely resemble the lengths in a full set. Their clubs did not telescopic so were not beneficial for travel, and you still had to carry a bag or lay the clubs in the grass when you made your shot. So although they were somewhat portable, they were not "handy" to play with.

About the Walking Sticks...from Jimmy Berley, South Carolina

"I have used your adjustable club since 2016 and have played a lot of rounds with it. It is very durable and surprisingly solid. It hits about 10 yards farther than my Cobra irons. When I saw the Walking Sticks, I thought I should try them. They are well made, but feel heavy and hit about 10 yards shorter than my Cobras, and quite a bit shorter than yours, so I returned them. And like you have said on your website comparison page, they ADD to the number of clubs to carry. If someone is going to do that, it makes more sense to add a driver and a putter which are going to do things the adjustable club doesn’t do quite as well. But for me, I use your adjustable club for everything and often beat the people I play with. It is an amazing club."

Note: Walking Sticks are no longer being manufactured.

The rest of this page will focus on single clubs with loft adjustability.

Direct Copies

A few years after we introduced our Divnick Whole-In-One, a mail-order company made a direct copy. In fact, they made their molds right off of our club...didn't even try to change the look. We were able to persuade them to cease and desist. A couple others have come and gone over the years.

However, even the direct copies did not include several of the most important features of the Divnick such as the half-loft transmission which is very difficult to cast, our proprietary telescopic shaft, and the blend of durable alloys.

Telescopic Shafts: Telescopic shafts have been attempted before. But they used a .375" tip-diameter iron shaft that is cut into two sections. So they collapse down to only about 28" in length and are very stiff. Logically, when you overlap a few inches of shaft sections, it stiffens up the shaft dramatically. So a shaft that is designed for an iron head-weight becomes way too stiff when telescoped and yields unrewarding shots.

We designed our head to fit on a .335" tip-diameter driver shaft. Ordinarily, if it was a one-piece shaft, a driver shaft would be too flexible. But we make the shaft in 3 sections with 2 overlapping portions. Not only does that collapse down to 17" length which is much more convenient for travel, the overlapping sections stiffen it back up to a normal flex which produces majestic shots and a great feel. We also include a short proprietary carbon steel inner piece that strengthens the tip at the hosel. The performance of the shaft is what seems to amaze people the most, even more than the half-loft adjustability.

Lofts: Most other adjustable clubs have had a limited number of lofts. Our proprietary "ring gear" transmission replicates all the lofts in a full set, plus half lofts so you can really dial in the distance control. You can actually lock it on 180 different lofts, but most of those would not hit the ball forward. There are 34+ lofts in the playable range.

Materials: Other attempts at making adjustable clubs use traditional 300-series stainless which is not tough enough for the number of teeth necessary for a transmission. Ours is 17-4 stainless with a unique blend. It is more expensive to manufacture, but a lot more rugged which is why we have an unprecedented lifetime guarantee.

Lever: Past adjustable clubs required the use of an external tool or coin to lock and unlock the mechanism. The Divnick has a built-in locking lever with a conventional grade-8 nut inside. The lever is glass-filled nylon, which is designed for the automotive industry in various high-heat and strength environments, so it is very rugged. The lever is pressed over the nut, so the lever is only providing a little leverage for tightening. The nut provides the actual locking.

Telescopic Shaft Golf ClubsCollapsing

The Divnick uses a proprietary machined stainless steel collapsing cap that is pressed onto the end of the shaft. As shown in the accompanying picture, a portion of it extends up through an enlarged hole in the end of the grip. So the impact from striking it on a hard surface during the collapsing process (see instructions) is transferred directly into the shaft to make collapsing very easy.

Previous telescopic clubs did not use a collapsing cap so the soft end of the grip cushioned the impact and absorbed the force making it very difficult to collapse their shaft. It also made the club "bounce" back up which can cause injury. Eventually, the shaft "cookie-cut" through the end of the grip and then it would no longer collapse. Our patented design solved that issue.

Center of Gravity

The prior patents had their gear mechanism high and on the back of the head. The reason they did this was so that the mechanism would not hit the ground on the steeper lofts. However, in all of the designs, the mechanism would begin to hit the ground on about the 9-iron loft. This forced the bottom leading edge of the face up into the ball rather than allowing it to slide under thereby interfering with ball-contact on all the steeper lofts rendering the short game next to impossible. Also, it resulted in a very high center of gravity. Can you imagine the hand-stinging feel of hitting a club like the one pictured here? We discuss the center of gravity in more detail in our side-by-side photo comparisons linked further down this page.

Super Stick

For a couple of decades prior to our introduction of the DIVNICK™, the best design was being sold as the "Super Stick". Patented in 1974 by Donald Moore, it was strongly-built and replicated the traditional lofts.

Its drawbacks were that it did not have perimeter weighting, the mechanism was high on the back of the head which produced a high center of gravity and caused it to interfere with the ground on steeper lofts, the shaft alignment was behind the head rather than offset in front as with modern clubs design, it required a coin to loosen and tighten, had 3 confusing index marks and numbers to line up, and the 2 piece shaft was a stiff .395" diameter that fit over-the-hosel. It could not collapse any shorter than 23" which is too long to fit into a brief case or other small luggage.

Walker - Universal

A few years after we came out with the DIVNICK™, the originator of the Super Stick adapted some of our design features on an improved version of Super Stick which he called the "Walker". He later changed the name to the "Universal". Like most other adjustable clubs that have followed ours, it is no longer being made. But it was the best competitor for a while.

The Universal was an improvement over the Super Stick but it still had some important weaknesses that carried over. They kept the stiff .395" shaft and 23" closed length. The shaft exposed a critical performance difference. As mentioned above, normal iron shafts are .375" diameter at the tip which is epoxied into a female hosel socket. The Universal used an extra large .395" tip shaft that fit OVER a male stud which was easier to manufacture. When it was cut to make it telescopic, the overlapping sections resulted in an even stiffer shaft.

The Universal replicated each of the 14 traditional lofts while the Divnick can be set on more than twice as many lofts because it includes half-lofts.

Like so many others before and after the Divnick, they ended up going out of business due to lack of playability.

Q Club

We welcome new entries into the market which bring a focus to adjustable loft clubs.

The Q Club is the most recent entry into the adjustable loft market. It has a hybrid style head rather than an iron style like the Divnick. Their Gen 2 model has 8 loft settings compared to 34+ for the Divnick, and is adjusted by pushing the head into the hosel and rotating it. It locks with an internal spring. The Q has a 2-piece shaft that connects with a threaded coupler that separates to 20.5 inches long while the Divnick is telescopic and collapses to 17.5 inches for travel so it fits into a smaller case. The Q has a 3 year repair guarantee while the Divnick has a lifetime repair AND satisfaction guarantee. At the time of this writing, the Gen 2 Q sells for $349 compared to $249 for the Divnick. We did a lot of testing with screw-together shaft couplings, but the mechanism in the middle of the shaft negatively affected the flex, torque, and feel too much. It is also prone to locking up since each swing tightens it with more force than initial hand-twisting. We still make screw-in shafts for putters shown here. But we do not make them for full-swing clubs.

Time will tell how their 2-piece shaft works and how durable the loft mechanism is, especially if sand gets into it. (We designed the Divnick with an "open transmission" so sand would come out as easily as it gets in.) If the Q reaches the 5-year mark, we will do robot lab comparison testing and post it. Until then, we offer the following observations for your consideration.

The Divnick has been selling world-wide for over 30 years with many of the early clubs still being used every day. It has been used by military in deserts and mountains and on aircraft carriers. A group of men hit over 6,000 shots on a charity fund-raising hike across Scotland. There have been 3 different robot tests, and hundreds of thousands of shots by customers on every continent…much of it documented on our Reports page.

Performance - The bottom line when comparing clubs is, "How do they score over 18 holes?" Just considering the distance control with the Divnick's 34 lofts compared to the Q's 8 lofts gives you an idea of how that will affect your score. The closer you land to the hole, the more chances at birdie. They both hit about the same distance on long shots, but most of the strokes in a game are after the drive. The Q has 3 wedge lofts. The Divnick has 12 wedge lofts. The Divnick also has putting sight lines to help with alignment.

As a bonus, we can add your name, logo, school, flag, or picture to your Divnick and it comes with a Belt Bag that you can wear while playing, and the entire club fits inside the bag for storage or travel. The Belt Bag holds a few balls, your wallet and keys, and has a cell phone compartment.

We have begun to receive reports from customers who have used both the Divnick and Q with definite advantages for the Divnick, especially when comparing the most important thing, scoring. Also, at the lower price point and personalization options, the Divnick is the clear winner. If you would like to see some of these reports, please send an email to sales@divnick.com asking for the "Divnick vs Q Reports".

 


 

 

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