Golf club fitting. Not something to fool with.
“Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didn't spend half our time wishing.”
Golf club fitting is a very important aspect of the game of golf. If you find that the ball is not doing what it should be (or what you told it to do) then it may not be your fault after all. It may be that your clubs don’t fit you.Manufacturers spend millions on designing what they believe to be the perfect golf club. Aerodynamics, balance, flex, bounce, resilience, and hundreds of other factors must be considered before the actual club prototype is a reality. Testing then must be carried out to see if the design will do what it should. they have you in mind trusting you will have good golf club fitting when you purchase their product.
With great fanfare, the clubs are marketed to you and I by way of the golf stores and pro shops. So far so good.
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Wow, how pretty the clubs look. Highly polished. Nice graphics. We ask to hit a few practice swings with the one we like. Smack. That felt great. Smack again. Better. The ball comes off the face with such a nice sound. The clerk didn't suggest golf club fitting.
Up to here, everything is as the manufacturer has planned it. This is the culmination of the reason he exists. To sell product that works. We decide that this is the club we have been waiting for all our lives. Now we will show the guys and gals what kind of game we really have. Sorry, the most important thing, that is, good golf club fitting has not happened. The guys in the shops want the sale. They probably will not even mention that you should have a pro do a proper good golf club fitting for your new club.
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Arrive at the course and hit the range. Smack. That one went left. Smack not bad. Smack, oops. And so it goes. The game starts and the club is not consistent. You try strengthening your grip. That’s not it. Open your stance. Helps a little. By the end of the round you are frustrated. Back to the range.
A little correction in your stance, address grip, etc. finally get a little consistency going now. Problem is that next week is a repeat of last week.
I, and I’m fairly certain, you, may have had this happen. We wonder what happened. The $500. driver is no better than the $99. Special we bought at the discount store.
I was lucky enough to be on a winning team in a golf tournament a year ago. The other guys carried me as I was everywhere off the tee. I had a great short game which helped so somehow we won. We all were given gift certificates for brand new Ping G5 drivers. In order to get them we had to phone Ping, set up a time to go in and GET FITTED.
Now I had never been fitted for a club before. Can’t be much to that, I thought. On the appointed day I showed up and admired the fancy waiting room. It was a very nice golfing den with big leather chairs. Lots of information about the company and just really a nice classy place to sit back to await my turn.
Finally the golf club fitting professional led me into a nice small driving area, offered a small bucket of balls for me to hit with my old driver and my 8 iron. I spent about ten minutes hitting balls and then moved to the middle mat where a camera was set up at the ball area. It also had a way of feeding into a computer everything that I did to that ball. This was shown on a large flat screen computer monitor. The pro explained what happened after trying different clubs with different lies and shafts.
He showed me how my shoulders were not set up square to the target but wide open. I never knew that before. He set me up properly, placed the driver he chose for me (it had a slight offset) and I hit ten balls dead centre. The computer told the story. The properly fitted club caused it to happen.
My driver was ordered to be made up for me from the factory. Custom built to the proper specifications. I’ve used my G5 all this past year and have never hit anything I’ve had, better than it.
If you are lucky enough to have a matched set of good quality irons that you purchased off the shelf, do your self a favor. Find a good reputable golf club maker of fitter and have them fitted to you. They will take into consideration your size, stance, power and a dozen other things before altering the club to fit.
This will give you not only confidence to hit them but they will feel 100% better. Your game will love you for it.
Regardless of a golfers ability, properly fitted golf clubs may aid in your hitting straighter, more good shots, consistently. By matching club specs to your golf swing, a good fitter can help or reduce, or even eliminate poor shot patterns, like hooks and slices. This will make the game more enjoyable. That’s what good golf club fitting can do for you.
Here is an amazing fact. When Tiger Woods won the US Open back in 2000 he had a final score of 272. That meant his clubs made contact with the ball 272 times in four days. The total accumulated time the club face was on the ball was one-tenth of a second. The club face and the ball are together in a normal shot for one 450 millionth of a second.
The question often comes up. What do they dimples do on the golf ball? The dimples are designed to create lift to the ball. When you hit a ball with a driver you will probably get the ball spinning about 3,000 rpm. With a wedge, 6,000 rpm. The grooves on the irons contacting the ball get it spinning. When the greens are not completely dried out you will notice that the ball will hit the green from the fairway and probably skip and stop. Hit it higher with a wedge and it may even hit and spin back.
If your clubs are fitted for you, they lie as they should, work as they should, and best of all, they hit the ball as they should and fly nice and straight.
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