When it comes to Tour usage, few shafts can claim the popularity of Aldila’s Rogue, which became available to professional golfers just 18 months ago. In that short time, the shafts have been used to win a whopping 24 PGA Tour events, including two major championships and back-to-back FedEx Cups.

That’s impressive, but this stat is almost unheard of in today’s hyper-competitive golf shaft market. Aldila’s Rogue Silver 70 Tour X shaft was the most used model of driver shaft on the PGA Tour for 44 consecutive weeks.

The success from the PGA Tour has carried down to regular golfers, whose demand for the shaft has resulted in it becoming a stock option for several major equipment manufactures, including Callaway, Exotics, TaylorMade and Titleist.

What makes the Rogue shaft a great fit for the best golfers in the world, as well as everyday golfers? What are the differences between the different Rogue shaft models? What do golfers need to know about Aldila’s new Rogue I/O shaft? We asked John Oldenburg, Vice President of Engineering for Aldila, those questions and more in the Q&A below.

WRX: Did it seem possible that Rogue shafts could become this popular 18 months ago? What made them so unbelievably successful?

JO: The success of the Rogue even took me by surprise. We knew we had a great product with exciting new technology, but the way it took off on Tour was unexpected. Because of the cost and availability of the unique Graphitic Carbon material used in the Rogue we initially planned a very, very limited run of the Rogue shafts even for Tour. But once the Tour demand and success skyrocketed, we made arrangements to increase our material supply. I can honestly say the Rogue shaft is our most successful Tour product ever in terms of wins in drivers. And it doesn’t seem to be letting up. Charl Schwartzl switched to the Rogue this fall and just won the Alfred Dunhill in South Africa. And where I had initially forecast that I would be able to sell 50 to 100 pieces of the $799 Rogue Limited Edition (Made in the USA) model, we actually passed 1,000 units sold over a month ago. 

I think the success of the Rogue can be pinned on three factors. First, the flex profile was based off of very successful profiles that were developed, tested, and played on Tour in the past going all way back to the NV. The second was the addition of the Graphitic Carbon, whose extreme stiffness allowed us to develop a product with a proven flex profile that was lighter and lower in torque than any of our previous products. And third is the fact that we counterbalanced the shaft. Modern driver heads with all their adjustable weighting and hosel features have been getting heavier and heavier. By counterbalancing the Rogue, Tour technicians could build a club with a heavier head and still get an acceptable swing weight for the player. Heavier heads allow greater inertial mass to be delivered to the ball, which is very good for performance. But, we didn’t simply counterbalance the Rogue and leave it at that. We adjusted the overall shaft frequency and tip stiffness to account for the increased inertial mass. More mass in the head makes a shaft play softer, so we stiffened the Rogue proportionally so that it would have the extraordinary performance characteristics of its predecessors when paired with today’s modern heavier driver heads. And, voila, it worked out awesome!

WRX: What’s the difference between the Rogue Limited Edition (Made in the USA) shafts and the other Rogue shaft models?

JO: The major difference between the Rogue Limited Edition and the Rogue Tour is where the shafts are made. The Rogue Limited Edition shafts are made in very small batches here in our R&D prototype facility in Poway, California. The Rogue Tour shafts are made in our manufacturing plant in Vietnam on our standard production lines. The Rogue Tour products also use a slightly different grade of Graphitic Carbon material then the Limited Edition models. This was done because we could not secure a large enough supply of the 125 MSI graphitic carbon for large scale production runs.

The Rogue Silver Tour shafts use a graphitic carbon material with a modulus of 110 MSI, which is still nearly twice as stiff as any graphite material used in any of our other premium products or any products produced by our competitors. The Rogue Black Tour shafts use graphitic carbon with a stiffness of 95 MSI. This is done because the Rogue Black is a softer, slightly higher torque product designed for a slightly higher ball flight and more moderate spin than the Rogue Silver. Besides the point of manufacture and the change in the graphitic carbon, the rest of the design and materials are identical between the Rogue Limited Edition shafts and the Rogue Tour shafts. They are built on exactly the same tooling and all the Rogues — Limited Edition and Tour — incorporate Aldila’s NexGen Micro Laminate materials along with the Graphitic Carbon. The Rogue Tour products are in no way downgrades from the Rogue Limited Edition. They are simply adjusted to account for material availability and production capacity.

WRX: Due to the increased stiffness of the Rogue shafts, are you seeing players using softer flexes than they have in the past? Are Tour players tipping the shafts as much as they have previous products?

JO: We don’t really see any pros using softer flexes or really tipping the shafts much less.  Again, we adjusted the shaft stiffness to account for the increased inertial mass created by the heavier heads. So, although the Rogues may frequency stiffer on a frequency machine than most of our previous tour product, from a playing standpoint, the dynamic stiffness when accounting for the increased loading due to the increase in head weight, is very, very similar to previous Tour products. We made the adjustments necessary to offset the effects of the heavier heads so the pros and the folks in the Tour trailers wouldn’t need to do anything different.

WRX: How does the new Rogue I/O compare to the original Rogue shafts?

JO: The new Rogue I/O is a merger of the Rogue product with R.I.P. Technology. R.I.P., which stands for Reverse Interlaminar Placement, moves the torque core (bias plies) from the interior to the exterior of the shaft laminate stack in the tip section. Hence the name I/O, for Inside-Out. Moving the bias plies, which control shaft torque and aid in cross sectional stability, to the outside of the shaft makes more efficient use of the these fibers to lower the torque of the tip section (the highest torque part of a shaft) without adding weight by moving the material further from the shafts neutral axis — an engineering term, trust me it works. 

Related: Enter to win an Aldila Rogue I/O shaft

R.I.P. technology also helps to stabilize the bending of the tip section of the shaft by providing additional cross-sectional stiffness to reduce lateral deformation. The Rogue I/O utilizes the same “Graphitic Carbon” technology, counterbalancing and inertial flex adjustment as the original Rogue products, combined with torque lowering and tip stabilizing R.I.P. technology. In Tour testing, the Rogue I/O Silver has a slightly lower launch and spin rate than the original Rogue Silver.

The Rogue I/O is already in play on the PGA Tour in the drivers of players in the top 50 of the World Golf Rankings and was used by one player for a top-5 finish in the Hero World Challenge.

WRX: Anything else, John?

JO: Keep your eyes open for some exciting new Rogue designs on Tour this coming year.