More and more golf club companies are starting to emphasize part custom club fitting as an option to their typical marketing to golfers to buy their clubs in standard form, bought off the shelf. Some companies now offer a choice of varying shaft options and their ability to change loft and lie angle and perhaps club length as a way of saying "you've been custom fit".
However, this is only part of the true custom golf club fitting experience as there are actually 12 key fitting specifications which should be fit to the golfer's size, strength, athletic ability and swing characteristics. These are length, loft, lie, face angle, shaft weight, shaft flex, shaft tip stiffness or bend profile, total weight, swing weight, grip type and size, clubhead design and set makeup. So you can see there is more to fully custom golf club fitting than what the manufacturers are offering, and lastly here is a bold statement "none of the large golf companies is ever going to tell you or agrees to offer the true facts about custom club fitting because they would then be admitting to us all that their golf clubs off the rack are a total waste of money!"
Custom fitting is very definitely for beginners and the average golfer and not just for single-digit handicap players. When done properly, custom fitting can reduce and offset some of your swing errors. I have worked with a lot of teaching professionals and I can assure you, golfers who take lessons with properly fit clubs adapt to swing coaching much faster and more successfully than golfers who take lessons using golf clubs that are poorly fit.
Another way of looking at independent custom club fitting for the average to less skilled golfer specifically is not merely to increase the number of good shots, its to improve the consistency of shots overall while reducing the severity and frequency of the poor shots.
Good fitting will improve the number of good shots, but more predominantly, it allows the golfer to achieve better misses!
If you are thinking about custom fitting for your next driver or set of clubs, there are a few things you need to know to ensure you really do end up with properly custom-fit clubs that will improve your game. A colleague of mine in the golf business put this in the right way when he said that custom club fitting can be much like having your car washed.
On one hand, if your car needs a bath, you can pull out the hose and just spray water on it to wash off the obvious surface dirt. You can also fill a bucket with suds and scrub the dirt off the surface with a sponge. Or, you can pull out all the stops and scrub, detail and wax it. All three examples could be called a car wash.
Custom fitting in the golf industry today is much the same. There is fitting, and there is a professional custom club fitting. Examples of fitting include “6 questions on a web site”, 30 minutes hitting a few balls with a swing computer, or 3 measurements and a response from a golf salesperson to the effect of, “I know what you need.”
On the other hand, professional custom club fitting is going to involve a pretty fair amount of your time, often more than one trip to have your swing analyzed in detail so that ALL the possible specifications that make up a set of golf clubs can be pinpointed and selected to match with your strength, size, athletic ability, and especially, the way YOU and only YOU swing. Professional custom club fitting really is like the scrub, wax and detail car wash I mentioned before. The other types of fitting are not going to get you really matched well to your clubs to really result in the level of improvement that a real custom fitting can and will do. In other words, which “car wash” do YOU want for your money?
Now, let’s be clear—I am not saying that by being custom fit you can somehow go from being a total duffer to qualifying for next year’s Open. Buying new clubs—even truly custom-fitted ones—is NOT a substitute for learning and “grooving” the proper swing fundamentals. It never has been. It never will be.
I AM saying, however, that equipment that doesn’t fit—the wrong length, lie, loft, shaft, face angle, grip, flex, or weight—can keep you from being all that you could be as a golfer. Independent club fitters can fit all these variables as they keep a wider choice of club heads and shafts for you to try without any manufacturer bias, they may even correct your existing clubs, whereas many fittings that are done in the big box store or pro shop do not fit all these variables and can sometimes be commission led.
One of the biggest mistakes we see from the company fitter or local pro and yet one of the most important fitting variables is that of determining club length, whereby the fitter measures your wrist or fingers to the floor. This is complete nonsense and is an easy convenience and visual hocus-pocus so that the golfer feels impressed that the fitter knows what he is doing. The correct method in order to determine proper club length is for the golfer to try several length clubs with say a 7 iron in conjunction with impact labels. Club length will be determined when the longest club and impact label has the most on centre clubface hits.
Over the next forthcoming blog posts, I would like to inform you of what works and what doesn't in the golf club industry, we will be exploring some of the myths, the hype that gets you to part with your hard-earned money. I will inform you of what to look for and hopefully add to your knowledge so that the next time you are looking for that new club you will understand a little more of what will be the right club or clubs for you.
So to keep learning about the right clubs for you and all things golf please keep logging onto our website www.merciagolf.com from time to time and if you would like to receive our newsletters please add your email address using the "Join our email list” the button on the Home page of our website, many thanks.
Happy golfing and thank you for reading………….....
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