Golf equipment is complicated stuff: high-tech materials, space-aged engineering, and a veritable alphabet soup of MOI, CoG, Ti, etc., etc.

Faced with the risk of wasting hundreds – even thousands – of dollars, golfers contemplating the purchase of new clubs often freeze. How many guys have I seen swinging persimmon fairway woods or some old set of knock-off irons, “thinking” about buying some new clubs?

What these golfers need is their own personal equipment guru. Fortunately, Frank Thomas, inventor of the graphite shaft and former Technical Director for the USGA, is here for them.

Thomas’s own equipment company, Frankly Golf, features a personal Q&A page on its website. And in 2008, Thomas (in collaboration with Valerie Melvin) released a compilation of 100 of the bst questions in a volume entitled Dear Frank…Answers to 100 of Your Golf Equipment Questions.

From putter loft to the importance of bounce angles in various playing conditions, from bulge and roll in hybrids to finding the equator of the ball, the 163-page volume offers one invaluable nugget after another. Reading the clear, concise answers to the excellent questions is like eating a bag of chips – you simply can’t stop.

(Listen to Dave Berner’s interview with Frank Thomas here.)

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