"Rules Are Nice, But Fitting Rules"

In an AGCP post today, Russ Ryden said the quote that I used as the title for this blog post. I think it is a terrific statement of what AGCP and other professional clubfitters do – and particularly what differentiates us from folks who do clubfitting in typical golf club sales stores.

Russ, by the way, has a terrific web site for his fitting business – www.fit2score.com.

There are a lot of technical elements to professional clubfitting – analyzing launch monitor data and building test clubs to specific flexes and lengths are some examples. And I believe we all want to find elements of clubfitting that we can reduce to a formula – like for example what specific iron flex would correspond to the best fit for a specific client swing speed. And there are parts of fitting that can be reduced to following some rules.

But I think there is also some art – based on experience – in doing great fitting. Using the basics to produce some initial ideas of what the right fit might be, but also then using what you have learned from past experiences to really produce a solution that is right for a golfer. Learning to listen to customers tell you what “feels” best and factoring that into fitting recommendations is another example.

This past weekend I did a driver fitting where the ultimate value was in moving past the basics into using past experience to find a good solution. The player is someone who has the capability to drive the ball well, but also pretty consistently pull hooks the ball. We did the basic things of identifying the right length club – 44-1/2 inches rather than his present 45 inches – and the right shaft flex profile for his swing. But if we had ended then he would still pull most likely pull-hook the ball on lots of his drives.

We made an approximate measurement of the swingweight of his present driver – D0. Many stock drivers you can buy in stores have this swingweight, and for some “average” golfer that might be a good club swingweight. But this club was too light for this golfer, and as a result he had to keep adjusting his swing to guard against pull hooking and often was not successful.

We added weight to his club – using lead tape – 2 grams at a time until we had added about 10 grams to the club – about a D5 swingweight now; he hit shots with each addition of weight. When we added this weight he hit some very good drives that started slightly right and then drew back to the middle. Beautiful. Before he left to play golf in the afternoon, I put 10 grams of lead tape onto the bottom of his present driver and asked him to tell me what the results were.

Today I talked with him, and his driving results were mixed but I think positive because of one thing that he said to me. He said when he remembered that I said to him to “relax and let the club hit the ball” that he hit his best drives. He knows that some lessons will help him hit the ball better, but he also knows that when I have rebuilt his driver to a D5 swingweight with a shaft chosen for his swing, he will be a playing a driver that works for the way HE hits the ball.

Fitting really does rule!

Tony