What is Club Fitting?

Dear Mod, if you can, please add a sticky on this thread and in this section so that our GR members can benefit from better understanding shaft fitting. Thanks.

What is Club Fitting?

Basically its like buying a ready made suit versus having a suit customised for you. But it’s a little bit more complicated than that.

Every golfers have a different competence, tempo, clubhead speed, swing path, wrist action, height, weight tolerance, fitness condition, amount of time spent practicing & playing and of course budget. With so many points of differences its not a case of what will work for your golfing kaki will work for you..

A proper club fitting session involves hitting some shorter and longer clubs to first determine if consistency throughout these clubs is achieved. If a golfer is more competent in his shorter irons but lack the confidence to use his/her longer clubs, it’s important to find out where the problem lies. This is important as it allows the golfer to extend his/her potential before committing to a change in shaft.

Note - in a typical week, we encourage at least 50% of our visitor to improve on various aspects of their swing, we also turn away at least half of those customers before we feel that it is not an objective exercise to have them change their shaft at that point.

When will fitting benefit you?

As a rule, we normally expect golfers who can hit at least 6 out of 10 shots consistently to be able to generate some form of useful statistic for us to work on, but there are exceptions.

Scenario 1 – Papa’s Dearest

Junior (aged 10) who has inherited papa’s 65g 9.5 degrees driver cut down 4 inches. The poor kid will end up hating golf or swing like John Daly.

Solution: Get a ready kid driver or get a higher lofted driver head with the appropriate weighted and flex matched shaft. Its not surprising that with the right driver, junior can increase driving distance with an additional 30 metres.

Our View: Length, weight, flex in that order are crucial in fitting juniors, get that right and you will see positive results immediately.

Scenario 2 – The Hunk with the Limpy Shaft

Keen beginner with a 2nd hand driver. Nothing wrong with that except the shaft is too weak for the 90 mph going 100 mph swing. Most golfers can only develop a real sense of feel after a longer period (1 to 2 years) of practice and play. Most beginners cannot tell the difference and may slow down their impact to accommodate their equipment.

Solution: Meet up with your friends at the driving range and try out what they have got. You may find something that may help control your dispersion and lengthen your drives. You can bring both drivers to a club fitter who can then measure up the flex on both drivers to give you the necessary shopping checklist.

Alternatively you can go for a fitting to gain a better understanding of what you need to help you gain better foothold in that part of the game.

In this aspect, we have changed shafts for keen beginners who have shafts that way too off their tangent to help them get along. We also cautioned that this might only help them for no more than 6 months, as some of these golfers have great potential. If no immediate rectification is taken, they will compensate (slow down, change ball position, set up differently, etc) their swing to match their ill-fitting equipment and the result will be unfortunate.

Our View: Continuous good instructional input, supervised practice, and correct equipment fit will help the keen golfer move on faster and better.

Scenario 3 – The Twenty Pound Jack Hammer

We encounter golfers who use shafts that are too heavy or too stiff for their own good all the time. A lot of golfers do not realised the relevance of kick-point and how it affect the feel for flex. Most seasoned golfers will pick up a driver, wriggled it a few times and declared that it is too whippy for them. The truth is the higher the kick point of the shaft, the more it “appears to be softer“ than it really is. So what happens when the shaft is too stiff? Well, you will a pretty tight dispersion range if the torque holds up but you will not cut any slack in the distance department.

Solution: Try different shafts that you feel is a tad lighter or whippy, you may get more than you bargained for when it comes to getting the extra 20 metres.

We come across golfers who complained that their friends outdrive them without trying any harder. In most of these cases, either swing flaws or having the wrong shafts are the usual suspects.

Our View: Get a fitting to better understand your swing characteristic. You may be surprise that merely by changing to a different ball, you can squeeze an additional 10 metres off the tee.

What happens in a fitting session?

Be ready to hit balls and its good to get some warm up before hand. You will hit some shorter irons and eventually your big dog. Depending on your objective for the fitting session, you will find out what’s stopping you from hitting the big drives and low scores from an equipment perspective.

We recently had a golfer who waited 19 years to find out that he need clubs that are 3 degree more upright and almost 2 inches longer. You shouldn’t have to wait so long to find out how you can improve your swing and your game.

Most club fitter will not charge for a fitting and even if they do, you can learn a lot about your game and your equipment. Golf is a part mental and part technique. You should get all the confidence you need when you know you’re your golf clubs are fitted-to-a-tee for you.

Its also great to see that the good equipment suppliers are now actively participating in custom fitting for OEM brands. In the past most of us got to listen to constant salesman pitch about forgiveness, long, latest, straight and we almost always end up still buying the wrong clubs.

Happy Golfing....

DGman

great post boss.

Done.

So... got stock?


It is a good write up btw. I am serious.

best post of the year in Golf Republic.

Awesome post!

Superb write up. This will clearify and emphasize the importance of clubfitting which has been overlooked by many golfers, seasoned or beginners alike...

good explanation.

so who is the hunk with the limpy shaft?

there will be more to come so that golfers can get a better understanding. most are questions that are posted here or what customers ask me.

DGman

SUPERB!! Post of the year!!!

So got zen boh? keke

DGman wrote:

so who is the hunk with the limpy shaft?

Certainly not Tiger Woods.

hi,

just to check how I can reuse my existing regular steel shaft and make it stiffer with a higher kickpoint?
Can this be done by shifting the shaft downwards for the clubhead?
Eg. 3 iron shaft move down to used for 4 iron clubhead, 4 iron shaft used for 5 iron clubhead etc..


thanks

You had me at What is Club Fitting?

DGman, hope to see you next year when I get back to SG. I'd like to get replace my driver shafts.

qtd wrote:

hi,

just to check how I can reuse my existing regular steel shaft and make it stiffer with a higher kickpoint?
Can this be done by shifting the shaft downwards for the clubhead?
Eg. 3 iron shaft move down to used for 4 iron clubhead, 4 iron shaft used for 5 iron clubhead etc..


thanks

just the opposite. you can tip the shaft (up to 2 inch for parallel - cos its not wise to extend the shaft by more than that or half inch for tapered) and extend the shaft accordingly. shifting the shaft downwards like sticking a 3 iron shaft into your 5 iron will make it play softer not stiffer.

for making the shaft stiffer, its makes more economical sense to get a new or 2nd hand set.

DGman

DGman

DGman wrote:

so who is the hunk with the limpy shaft?

there will be more to come so that golfers can get a better understanding. most are questions that are posted here or what customers ask me.

DGman

i have seen the hunk with the limpy shaft before when he first walked into BFG for the first time. and trust me, his shaft was as limp as it could get.

botak wrote:

You had me at What is Club Fitting?

DGman, hope to see you next year when I get back to SG. I'd like to get replace my driver shafts.

and soon u will see ur drives fading like mine

Good write up like this should not be left to fade. Can we have this archive to an independent link to benefit the community please?

Thanks!

Maybe not nice to share publicly but perhaps it is good to give an indicative cost. Need not be precisely but at least we know how much to save/invest

Dear Pug,

usually the analysis is free if it takes up to less than an hour.

as for the shaft change, there are several options:

1. you can change to the same stock shaft in the right flex, that will range from $50 to $80 (including extraction and installation) depending on type. Some OEM brands offers good quality shaft that is on par with the aftermarket products. i meet the TM tour rep recently and he confided that Sergio Driver is using a Diamana Kaili painted in TM colours.

2. you can sometimes get demo shafts at about 60% of the usual selling price

3. get performance and value brands which range from $135 to $250. in this segment, you will find brands like Grallaloy, Axiv, Graphite Design, Aldila or our BFG Graman.

4. Go for the premium brands like Diamana, Fujikura, Oban, Axiv-Mamiya, Tour Ad (Graphite Design), Matrix or our new Prototype K (Kajiki) range. the price should start from $400 to $1200.

Is there a difference in performance between Option 2, 3 and 4 (except option 1 which is not usually not made the same way as the aftermarket products). Well the answer, in my opinion, is part performance, part feel and part mental gratification.

So like the golf swiing, swing within your means and invest within your means too. There is no such thing as buying a game. i rather see golfers spending time and money on getting the right swing coaching than buying products that don't work because the problem is with the singer not the song.

DGman

mervyntan wrote:

botak wrote:

You had me at What is Club Fitting?

DGman, hope to see you next year when I get back to SG. I'd like to get replace my driver shafts.

and soon u will see ur drives fading like mine

You're my idol .... but I can never pull off a yellow shaft

bskt wrote:

Good write up like this should not be left to fade. Can we have this archive to an independent link to benefit the community please?

Thanks!

Already done. Made this a sticky.

It will always be on top of the 'Golf Equipment' Forum.

Just to share my own experience with custom fitting...

I started playing golf back in 2001 and played for 1.5 years, brought handicap down to 18 during that time. I started with a set of Nike Forged Blades with S300 shafts (I didnt know better back then), and moved on to a set of Titleist DCI 990B irons (aka Davis Love III irons) with S300 shafts, to Honma LB280 with S300 shafts, and finally got a custom set of KZG Forged Z0 blades done in True Temper PX90 shafts. Out of all of those I tried back then, the Z0s were the easiest to hit and I got the most consistent yardage. Only recently did I find out that the shafts were 1/2 inch longer than the other irons I had played.

Stopped playing golf from 2002.5 to 2008 as I was down with the zhng-car bug, and started playing golf again around the end of 2008.

with a bit more funds in my pocket (i was under the impression that custom fitting was an expensive exercise, which is not always true) and a lot more frustration from my game, I went to a local fitter to see if custom fitting would help my game. for some reason, I had a tendency to push (straight and rightish) with a tendency to fade.

turned out that my forged Z0 blades were 2 out of 3, i.e. my previous fitter in Singapore had got the length right and picked a set of shafts that were right for my swing (which wasn't fast, just okay). My fitter here in Dubai had me looked over, and then explained that the lie angle was too flat for my swing. He took in the irons, had then bent 1.5* upright, and voila, my shots were straighter and had more height to them. Played a couple of good round with them, but did not like how the heads set up -- for blades, the forged Z0 has large heads with a thin topline.

I later brought in another set of irons, TM TP MBs, and only then did he refuse to custom fit my irons, and instead focused on getting my swing to be more consistent and smooth -- i had a tendency to come over the top, and ball striking was around 70% consistent. Only after a few sessions of swing correction did my swing become more consistent, and then he started taking in measurements such as swing speed, tempo, used tape to check my lie angle, etc, and from there, he had me switch over to PX 5.0 shafts, cut 0.5" longer and bent 1.5* upright.

The result was pretty immediate -- on my next round, I shot an 88 with barely any effort at all. I could load the 5.0s without too much effort, and all I had to do was to get my setup right and swing smoothly (instead of swinging out of my shoes as I used to do). I thought it was taiko, so I played another round the next week at an unfamiliar course and shot a decent 90.

When I got back to Singapore, i was pleased to have been referred to DGman by two friends of mine, both very discerning when it comes to who they go to for work on their kit. DGman recently helped me with setting up the Miura Giken irons as well as my TM RAC MB Miuras, both of which are now playing consistently and I have nothing but utmost respect for DGman's work.

He also recently helped me with choosing a shaft for my wayward driver. those of you who have played with me recently will know that I have a tendency to introduce a late fade/slice into my driving, which gets me into trouble and costs me precious strokes. DGman switched me over from my 10.7* Tour Burner to my 9* Tour Burner, and swopped out the TM Grafalloy Epic 75X (a good shaft, just wrong characteristics for my swing) for a TM tour-issued Diamana Whiteboard 63x 5ct in X-flex. Based on launch monitor stats, the launch angle, spin rate and trajectory of this shaft and head combination is a huge improvement over my previous setup (more work needed on that on my next trip back during CNY). I will be gaming the new driver/shaft combo later this week and share results

For the amount of time and effort some of us spend on the game, the cost of getting one's kit setup right once and for all is a no-brainer. I have no regrets getting custom fitted, and will continue to see DGman for the rest of my kit

Nice post!

Looking forward to pics of ur tour issue clubs and equipment when u have the time.

That will be tonight, when i get home from work

I am planning to ship in a set of irons from overseas soon and I plan to get myself fitted with them, and maybe along with my current driver.

Is there anyplace where I can have a quick look at my swing speed? I am using my friend's hand me down nike slingshots stiff (true temper) and I am not sure whether I should actually be using stiff or regular shafts. Would save a bit of money if I got the correct shafts in the first place instead of buying something that is not suitable for me in the first place.

Say in order to change the lie of the irons, do the irons have to be forged? Or cast iron irons can be customed too?

ydk wrote:

I am planning to ship in a set of irons from overseas soon and I plan to get myself fitted with them, and maybe along with my current driver.

Is there anyplace where I can have a quick look at my swing speed? I am using my friend's hand me down nike slingshots stiff (true temper) and I am not sure whether I should actually be using stiff or regular shafts. Would save a bit of money if I got the correct shafts in the first place instead of buying something that is not suitable for me in the first place.

Say in order to change the lie of the irons, do the irons have to be forged? Or cast iron irons can be customed too?

feel free to contact us for a free analysis and we should be able to tell you a bit more about what you don't need.

DGman