What is Club Fitting?

Turbo wrote:

Bro uluangler, I believe the club fitter who rejected you maybe less commercial driven but more professionally and emotionally driven ... He takes pride in his work and reputation. He feared that one day if you failed to achieve something which you set up for after fitting the irons for you, you might blame his fitting knowledge and skill ... From that perspective, he may have your and his interest at heart ... That's primarily the bottom-line ...    

Bro Turbo, pardon my honesty and being direct.

My idea of being a professional - u pay money to them but have no guarantees.

Doctors, lawyers etc - top professionals. Do they guarantee your illness get cured? You win your court case? No.

But they do try their best for the better of their clients.

People who only do things within their comfort zone are not professionals. To me these people are even more commercial because they will only have positive results on their books and can have all the success stories that can be told to the whole world. 

I don't see what's so hard saying before hand that fitting has no guarantees and make the client know he will try his best.

Professionals would right from the start explain what is going to happen, how things are going to happen, what to expect to achieve and realistically speak about success/failure rate.

Sorry, these guys who only do what they are confident  with are not fitters to me.

Background info for reference.
I was shooting around 100 then.
Out of the 10 shots that i hit, 0 air balls, 4-5 were ok shots, around 140-145m, shots tended toward the right, a couple fat or thin mishits that went around 120-130m. Out to in swing path, swing speed averaging around 85mph. I had NSpro 950H in my irons and the shots were ballooning and wide dispersion.
I asked for a recommendation on a suitable shaft to lower my ball flight and tighten my dispersion and I was told to rectify my swing before getting fitted.
The issue i had was, is fitting only for a competent golfer with a perfect swing? I did not go for the fitting expecting to find a magic shaft that made everything go straight and far. And if i was hitting everything solid, and as i wanted, i would'nt need to go for a fitting. I wanted to ensure that the equipment i had was suitable and that i could practice and improve with the appropriate equipment.

I have a similar view to Turbo.
I have gone for my fair share of fitting while still having a terrible swing.
Then one day I decided to set aside a budget for new irons or lessons.

Decided on lessons and spoke to my coach. He advised me to use my old irons and try to develop a better understanding of my swing first.
Then after I became more consistent, get fitted and the shaft etc will fit my profile better.
If I had fitted, the shafts will have been fitted to my old profile and maybe have a lower ceiling in terms of potential improvements.

Having done that(after 5 lessons) I got fitted and I can see things have improved by a lot.

So the fitter who did declined to fit could be operating on this line as well. Perhaps he could have explained his stance better.


Anyway all the fitters have their own way of working and as long as you find one you're comfortable with, good for you.

Well, the truth hurts......
You may think your swing is ok but certainly the fitter does not think so

Anyway we can all agree to disagree. 

In this market, there is always willing buyer and willing seller. 

Happy golfing

Btw 145m for a 7 iron for someone who shoot 100 is wonderful

skybobo wrote:

Btw 145m for a 7 iron for someone who shoot 100 is wonderful

He prolly needs to work on his consistency before he gets himself fitted ...

If the Fitter is sincere, he should explain clearly why he rejects his client ... If he does not want to give his client an option to proceed with the fitting even after his client knows very well of the shortcoming of his swing which may not be suitable for fitting at that juncture is because he does not want any future unnecessary dispute ... As the transaction is not recorded black and white, there is no way the fitter can prove his innocence ...

I believe reputable fitter like BFG will also not hesitate to decline to fit any walk-in customer who is not ready for fitting ... But of course I stand corrected ...  

If there is any consolation....I have fitter rejecting me.....AND Coach also reject me.

Sometimes I feel lonely

As long as we dun give up, there is still hope lah.

I agree with the club fitter.

how to club-fit a guy who cannot hit a small white ball well enough?

those who have done the club-fitting for anyone is just after the money. I would say they are very unprofessional.

Uluangler, I think there was no "meeting of minds" between you and the fitter. Fitter is of opinion your swing is not sufficiently stable to have meaningful fitting. You, on the other hand, were probably looking for recommendations for a set that is easier to use/play. This is not club fitting in its proper sense.
Club fitting takes into consideration many factors. Thus if you have an inconsistent swing, then it is not practicable to try to match the swing to the equipment. It is not competency that the fitter looks for but rather sufficient consistency to do a meaningful fit. If you do not have consistency, it is unlikely you will have fair level of competency. So I would give the fitter the benefit of doubt. Cheers!

i had a different experience.

i am 185cm tall, and most of the standard iron sets is slightly on the shorter side. I have been playing high 90s, 100s, 110 (sometimes) using stock irons. I went to 3 sets of lessons trying to fix my swing, but not much improvement.

Then i get myself fitted with a set of iron. It is tailored to sligher longer shaft and a more upright lie angle. I still struggle for a year or so, but at least i don't have an excuse that the club is not fitted, confirming that it is the Indian, not the arrow.

IMHO, club fitting is a long term process. My swing may vary from time to time, I may become stronger, weaker, swing higher, swing lower. I think it is important to have a fitter that can help you along the way, not just for a 1-time-business.

does this mean we should go for 2 fittings?
once for length adjustment, the other once we've "improved" our swing to an acceptable level?

would the first time length adjustment fitting help a noob like me improve a little faster?  

My advice is go back to page one and read the thread from the beginning.....it was written in 2009 and its still relevant. 

i will give you a very simple scenario from my perspective. 

A golfer swings 80mph on his 7 iron, have a -5 degree AOA, achieve an average 1.20 smash factor and has an average dynamic loft of 31 degree. Anyone who understands launch monitor nos will know he has a swing problem. However as a fitter in this day and age, one has to make sure that the student capture this stat so that he or she can find a coach who understands where to improve.
 
Of course in this scenario, the golfer may have the ball in the wrong position, clubs that are too long, too heavy or even the reversed, too light or shaft which are too soft (unlikely cos the dynamic loft shows the impact condition). It is important for the golfer to experience difference weighted shaft, different flex, different ball position and if it does not significantly improve their swing numbers, getting a coach who can work with the golfer to optimise his or her swing, is still the best solution.

When one fit a golfer, the one consideration that we cannot see is how this person transform when he is hitting balls on the course. Versus hitting balls in a controlled environment whether in-door and out-doors, some individuals reacts totally differently. That is the one aspect that as fitters its difficult to second guess.we have our share of great fits and we do have our share of failures despite a stringent process. 

Hence fitting is really a science and an art. so usually it takes 2 to clap and to bring the house down.

Hope it helps......DGman

gd evening 

Thank you for all your sharing and comments.

I agree with DGman, it is very different on the course and from the launch monitor. And it is a 2 hands game.

In all fairness to the fitter whom had tweak my lie, he was not wrong. In fact, he had done it with professionalism and patience and I am happily satisfied with the results. Instead of digging, now my shots are much cleaner and losing lesser distances then before.

As for the costing, we did have a chat after and they had clarified on their costings.
I agreed that there will be differences in charges between different fitters, as in cars btw Jap, Korean China and Euro makes, ultimately, the goal is to fix and custom to one's level of comfortability and playability with results. 

One must be prepared and know what one is getting in for, while it would be beneficial to both if charges were made known beforehand.

To this end, I have and I reiterate again that I am happy with the results of the lie adjustment done.
And would not hesitate to recommend to have yourself fitted if you seriously want to improve on and enjoy this game we all so dearly love and wish we can spent all our waking time on.

Happy golfing

Just want to add our 2 cents here and revisit our fitting experience from Modern Golf Vancouver. Take a look, it is what a typical full bag fitting will consist of. A lot of the fitting process has to do with the actual fitter too and their evaluation of the golfer, their swing, etc.

part 1: http://www.eighteenunderpar.com/blog/2014/03/31/modern-golf-club-fitting-part-1/
part 2: http://www.eighteenunderpar.com/blog/2014/04/16/modern-golf-club-fitting-part-2/

correct me if i'm wrong.

Most swing faults cannot be corrected by club fitting... eg, out to in swing path cannot be change by equipment change.

Hi there!
Awesome thread! I am wondering if I shld get club fitted and this certainly helped alot!

We recently went though a Taylormade Tuned Performance Centre here in Vancouver (at University Golf Club) and got a club fitting for all Taylormade products versus the brand agnostic approach of Modern Golf.

It's definitely a great help - this time, it wasn't just about what clubs you should be playing, but also how you should build your bag. Our fitter asked us a lot of questions about what we like to do on the golf course and what shots we like to play as well as what our bad shots look or what we struggle with. With that knowledge, he suggested a certain club set up for each of our bags.

Very knowledgeable fitters help tremendously in the development of your golf game. At the TMAG Tuned Performance Centre, Flightscope was used in an outdoor fitting environment - we'll have a write up soon, so stay tuned!!

Oh ya, and since we're on the topic of Club Fitting, just thought I'd share this amazing Nike Golf facility with everyone here.

It's their world first Nike Golf Performance Fitting Centre at Archerfield Golf Links in the UK (opened in early July) - VERY cool and very high class. Rory was there for the opening of it too to talk about his golf clubs and more. Check it out!

http://www.eighteenunderpar.com/blog/2014/08/12/nike-golf-fitting-centre-archerfield/

Check out Rory at the facility in the video below:

Hey all,

Just thought I'd share a link here - we recently went to the Taylormade Performance Centre here in Vancouver at University Golf Club and got to test out the vast range of custom options offered by TMAG.

It wasn't just about the equipment though, but the fitting process. It's very important to get a fitter who knows what he is doing, knows how to interpret statistics on a TrackMan/FlightScope and one that will ask you the right questions in order to build the proper set up for you.

It's easy to just put a club in a golfer's hand, but much more important to explain why that club will help them - read about our experience with Vancouver TMAG Master Fitter, Andy Johnson!

http://www.eighteenunderpar.com/blog/2014/08/19/taylormade-performance-centre-university-golf-club/

is Yuji golf counted?

Very informative first post, especially about the common fitting scenarios.

Nice information.

But i find that one have to have a consistent swing and moderate golfing abilities before considering a club fitting. Otherwise u will not understand what u wanna achieve out of the exercise. Fitting doesn’t always give u that “5-10m longer” or “longer off the tee” result but instead give that launch angle, more consistent hits at impact etc which may result in better scores.