Measured or Fitted?

Were you measured or were you fitted? How do clubs get fitted to your swing. How much time does it take?

The experience of most professional clubfitters indicates about 2 - 3 hours may be needed to find the best fit of clubs to your swing. You should be testing shafts and clubheads from a varied selection that allows you to find a combination to match your swing mechanics and give the performance you seek.

The fitting system should be sufficiently large and diverse to assure that the best options for you are available. An interchangeable shaft and club head system gives you the widest range of combinations to test. For example, changing the shaft while keeping the same clubhead makes it easier to determine the best shaft for your swing.

Often a followup fitting session is recommended or needed to identify the best combination of components and properties for your swing. You may find it most effective to focus on irons in one session, drivers and fairway woods in another session, and the short game separately. Playing a test club between sessions can confirm the performance of what you tested and provide feedback to your clubfitter.

A launch monitor will be needed to collect the club performance data. Your eyes are not a good enough judge of distance and accuracy to determine what really happened. Video is a great help in evaluating your major swing traits -- you should know if the fade or slice in the ball flight comes from an over-the-top swing plane, a mismatch in club path and clubface angle, the wrong shaft, a clubhead weight and balance issue, or something else. A popular cliche applies here: if you don't measure it's just a guess.

The best clubfitting is based on professional swing analysis with 3D motion capture. If you want clubs fit to your swing, then the clubfitter needs to understand your swing mechanics. 

Clubfitting needs to be done live and in person. We have an impact tape figure or two in our website to illustrate the need for direct testing. Subtle changes in shaft stiffness or weight distribution can result in different ball impact patterns. Finding the right shaft and clubhead combination that yields an optimum clubface impact pattern requires direct testing. 

Our advice is to find a professional clubfitter with the necessary expertise and equipment for testing and analysis. And don't forget to enjoy the process. Clubfitting is part of the fun in getting new clubs.