Clubmakers have noticed that by turning the shaft in a clubhead, you can actually produce different shots with the same swing. Over the years, we have seen a number of golfers who have come in complaining that their ball tends to push or pull no matter what they do. After testing, we often find that the club in question has a shaft with its spine oriented in such a way as to actually promote the mis-hits that the golfer was complaining about. We then took the same shaft out of the head, re-aligned it properly, and returned it to the golfer...who then went out and was able to hit the club straight! Even worse, most sets of clubs have shafts with spines that vary from club to club. Your 5 iron might promote a pull shot while your 6 iron might promote a push.

Why are they building and selling clubs that can increase your chances of hitting the ball off to the right (or left)? The answer is that up until a few months ago, the USGA ruled that "a shaft must have the same bending properties in any direction" and that a golf shaft that did bend in an irregular enough way to effect ball flight and direction would be considered illegal.

The USGA was well aware that the technology to make a perfectly round shaft for any reasonable sum of money wasn't available. So what they did was basically to promote a don’t ask, don’t tell policy where shaftmakers cannot identify the spine of a shaft and manufacturers cannot promote the benefits of spine aligned clubs.

As long as everyone kept quiet, clubmakers were allowed to align shafts for consistency, so long as they made no claims as to why such a club might be better.

All that has now changed. The USGA has approved spine aligning as a means of insuring that clubs perform consistently without unduly effecting ball flight and direction. What their decision does is to allow clubmakers to say "hey, there’s a problem with the way that your clubs are built, not with the way you are swinging them."

You need to be sure that your clubs are spine aligned, the same way that they should be matched in flex, or in lie angle, or in length. These are all important facets of a set of golf clubs and if they don’t all match, you'll find problems with your game.