Sourceshttps://proschoicegolfshafts.com/about-us/, https://proschoicegolfshafts.com/tour-ad-wood-shafts/, https://proschoicegolfshafts.com/graphite-design-product-news/, https://pluggedingolf.com/graphite-design-tour-ad-ek-shaft-review/, https://pluggedingolf.com/graphite-designs-tour-ad-di-shaft-review/, https://thegolfwire.com/124016-2/
FamiliesTour AD (wood), Tour AD F-Series, Tour AD irons, anti Gravity (aG), RAUNE, G-Tech, G-Series, YS NanoReloaded, YS+, Chichibu
Story MdGraphite Design is the boutique of this shelf. It makes fewer things than Fujikura or Mitsubishi, it charges at the top of the market for them, and its two-letter model codes have become their own dialect — a fitter says "DI" or "IZ" the way a wine person says a vintage, and everybody in the room is expected to know.
## The house
Graphite Design, Inc. was founded in 1989 in Chichibu, Saitama, Japan by Mr. Megumi Yamada, and opened its U.S. operation in 1997. The shafts are designed and manufactured at the Japanese factory. The company has long been counted among the largest shaft manufacturers in the world, and its Japan Tour record is genuinely absurd — it has run streaks of well over a hundred consecutive weeks as the most-used wood shaft brand in that tour's count.
**A note on sourcing, because it matters here.** Graphite Design's own site refuses automated access from our machines, so nothing in this profile is taken from it. What you are reading is built from Pro's Choice Golf Shafts — the company Graphite Design has granted exclusive distribution rights for the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, the UAE, South Africa, South America and Australia — plus independent testing. If you see a Graphite Design "fact" elsewhere on the internet with no source attached, be a little suspicious. This is a house whose marketing copy gets recycled a lot.
## Tour AD, and what the letters mean
**Tour AD** is the family. AD stands for Accuracy and Distance, and each two-letter suffix is a distinct bend profile rather than a trim level — which is why golfers name the code and not the family. The current wood menu runs **EK, FI, GC, VF, CQ, UB, XC, DI** and **IZ**, plus an **F-Series** fairway shaft. DI also comes in a Black version.
Beyond Tour AD, the shelf carries **anti Gravity (aG)**, the **RAUNE** iron shaft, **G-Tech** in wood and iron, **YS NanoReloaded** and **YS+**, the **G-Series** in Red, Silver, Iron and Hybrid, and the **Chichibu** line named for the factory town.
**DI** is the legend. Plugged In Golf's long-running review describes a medium butt and mid-section with a stiff tip, giving "a tremendous kick" that "never feels out of control" — a smooth, powerful load with a tip that stays quiet through impact. It has been in the bags of a lot of famous players over a very long time, and it is still the shaft other premium wood shafts get compared against.
## Where the marketing and the measurement disagree
This is the honest part, and it is exactly why this Library exists.
The newest wood shaft is **Tour AD EK** — EK for "Extra Kick" — which Graphite Design describes as mid/high launch with controlled mid/low spin. Plugged In Golf tested it on September 2, 2026 and reported results "differing slightly from what's advertised," observing mid/low spin with the launch closer to mid/low than mid/high. The reviewer also dug up the maker's own stiffness ratings and found the EK rated 4-3-4 butt-to-tip against the Tour AD DI's 2-2-4 — meaning that despite a name promising extra kick, the EK is meaningfully stiffer than the family's most famous shaft in every zone.
Neither of those things makes the EK a bad shaft. The reviewer liked it. But it does mean the label is running about one notch optimistic on launch, and that a golfer who reads "Extra Kick" and expects a soft, whippy load is going to be surprised. Take the maker's launch chart as a relative map of its own lineup, not as an absolute prediction of your ball flight.
## What you are actually paying for
Graphite Design sits at the top price tier — comfortably the most expensive family on this shelf, and enough that a set of woods shafted with them can cost more than a lot of drivers. What the money buys is real: very tight manufacturing tolerances, a genuinely distinct profile per code rather than three cosmetic variations on one design, and a design language that a good fitter can navigate precisely because the codes are stable across years.
What it does not buy is speed. No shaft does. If a shop opens with "this will add ten yards," you are in a sales conversation, not a fitting.
## Using this in a bay
Graphite Design is the best possible argument for testing a shaft rather than reading about one. The differences between DI, IZ and EK are real but they are differences of *timing* — where in the swing the shaft loads and how abruptly it gives that load back — and timing is the one shaft property that a spec sheet is worst at communicating and a launch monitor is best at exposing. Hit twenty balls on each, ignore your single best strike, and look at the spread and the spin. If a code genuinely fits you, it will show up in the boring middle of the distribution, not at the top of it.
And if none of them changes your numbers? That is a legitimate, money-saving result. Write it down and buy a fitting for something else.