Fit to a TeePGA.com Technical Advisor Tom Wishon offers this opinion about custom fitting:
The better the golfer, the less they need custom-fit golf clubs, and the less skilled the golfer, the more they need to be accurately fit for clubs.
One of the most common misconceptions about custom fitting golf clubs is that middle- and high-handicap golfers are convinced they are "not good enough to be custom fit."
Last year I had the chance to read a survey on custom clubfitting conducted by the leading information clearing house in the golf industry. One of the bits of information that just made me shake my head in disbelief was that the vast majority of middle-to-high-handicap respondents said, "as soon as I get better, I'll think about being custom fit."
The reason that average-to-high-handicap golfers seem to cling to this myth is because they feel they are not consistent enough in their swing to be able to gain benefit from custom fitting. What's interesting about that mistaken belief is that one of the reasons they are inconsistent is because the standard, "off-the-rack" golf clubs they bought are built to specifications that truly make it much more difficult for them to become consistent!
Here's an absolute fact about custom fitting -- the better the golfer, the LESS they need custom-fit specifications in their golf clubs, and the less skilled the golfer, the MORE they need to be accurately fit to play to the best of their ability.
Low-handicap golfers achieve their better playing ability because of two reasons -- one, they were taught proper swing fundamentals and put in the time to practice and ingrain those swing skills. Two, they are good athletes blessed with good hand-eye coordination and good control over their kinetic body motions, enabling them to train their body to develop the proper swing fundamentals. Because of their superior athletic and kinetic skills, low-handicap golfers could play almost as well with quite a wide variety of different golf club specifications.
On the other hand, most middle- and high-handicap golfers do not have the same level of athletic coordination or control over their body motions. Certainly, with enough monitored practice, many of these golfers could improve their swing skills. But the vast majority will not achieve the same level of athletic swing control and repeatability because they simply are not blessed with those attributes. As a result, if this type of player ends up with woods that are too long, a wood face angle that is not matched to their swing path, a swing weight and total weight in their clubs that is not matched to their swing tempo and rhythm, and several other custom-fitting parameters, they cannot possibly hope to play to the best of their ability
Thus, it is much more important for middle-to-high-handicap golfers to be accurately custom fit so that the clubs can be made to help overcome and offset many of their inherent swing faults. Following is a list of the custom-fitting parameters that are extremely important for middle-to-high-handicap players to investigate to get the most out of their games:
1. Club Length
While good players may have a preference for a specific length in their clubs, they have the athletic skills to hit the ball reasonably well with clubs that are longer. Thus, better golfers who buy the 45-inch/45.5-inch drivers and long fairway woods that every company makes as their standard are not going to be "hamstrung" by these long lengths as much as will middle- and high-handicap players. For them, the longer the club, the more difficult it is to control and swing consistently. Hitting the ball on-center with consistency is THE most important key to playing better golf. The length of your clubs is one of the most critical fitting parameters that can change the success or failure rate of hitting the ball solid and on-center. Unfortunately, the "standard lengths" of drivers and woods that most golfers buy and use are too long to allow middle- and high-handicap golfers to achieve their highest on-center hit percentage. Thus it is of UTMOST IMPORTANCE that middle- and high-handicap players be properly fit for the right length, resulting in their ability to control the clubs more easily, and from that, increase their percentage of solid, on-center hits.
2. Iron Lie Angles
No golfer, regardless of handicap or athletic ability, can hit the ball straight with the lie angle of each iron improperly fit to their swing. Fitting the lie angle of the irons to each individual golf swing so every iron arrives at impact with the sole parallel to the ground is the only way the clubhead can come into impact and assure a straight hit. If all golfers were the same height, had the same arm length and swung the club through impact the same exact way, then the standard lie angles designed on the clubs bought "off the rack" would be fine. But that is definitely not the case, so if golfers want to eliminate the inevitability of an improperly fit lie angle causing errant shots, every golfer must be custom fit for the lie angle of the irons. Every golfer.
3. Wood Head Face Angle
Good players have trained their swing to deliver the clubface square to the ball a very high percentage of the time. Thus, the square face angle of the standard-made woods sold today is an acceptable fit for the better golfer. Middle- and high-handicap golfers typically cannot deliver the clubface square to the ball nearly as often as can a low-handicap player. Thus hooks, but far more often slices, are a frequent or constant companion of the middle- and high-handicap golfers. Well over 90 percent of all golfers with a misdirection problem with the woods do tend to hit the ball to one side of the fairway far more than the other. Custom fitting the face angle of the woods will offset this misdirection tendency and definitely allow the middle- to high-handicap golfer to keep the ball in play a much higher percentage of the time.
4. Driver and Wood Loft
This is no BS whatsoever -- at least 90 percent of all golfers are not playing with enough loft on their driver to fully maximize their distance off the tee, and with the fairway woods off the fairway as well. And I am not just talking about changing from your 9.5-degree loft driver to one with 10.5 or 11 degrees. If your driver swing speed is 90 mph or lower, 90 percent of you are going to need a driver loft of 12, 13 or 14 degrees to be able to achieve the launch angle that will keep the ball in the air long enough to carry the ball as far as your swing speed will allow. And since at last check, 12 degrees is the highest loft the majority of the standard clubmaking companies even offer for men and 13.5 is the ceiling for women, that's a pretty good indication that to get more distance off the tee, you need to be custom fit for the loft of your driver. See the accompanying chart for a general recommendation of driver loft vs. swing speed.
Driver Swing Speed Driver Loft
50 mph 15 -- 17 degs
60mph 14-16 degs
70mph 13 -- 15 degs
80mph 12 -- 14 degs
90 mph 11-13 degs
100mph 9.5 -- 11.5 degs
110 mph 8 -- 10 degs
5. Swing Weight and Total Weight
If all golfers were of the same physical strength and swung with the same tempo, rhythm and sense of swing timing, then all golfers could play with one standard swing weight and total weight. But again, this is simply not the case. There are almost as many variations of strength/tempo/swing timing among golfers as there are golfers who play the game. No middle- or high-handicap golfer can hope to develop even a shred of consistency in their swing unless the total weight and the swing weight of their clubs are properly matched to their individual strength and swing tempo tendencies.
6. Shaft Flex and Bend Profile
If there is one area in which the better player can gain a little more advantage in a fitting than the middle- to higher-handicap player, it is in the selection of the right shaft flex and shaft bend profile (the design of the shaft's stiffness over the entire length of the shaft). This is because low-handicap players usually have a more refined sense of feel for the bending action of the shaft during the swing than do the rest of us. However, it is true that if any golfer uses a shaft that is too stiff for their swing speed and swing mechanics, they will suffer from a lower launch angle, loss of distance, and a poor feeling of impact. Thus, it becomes very important for middle and high handicap golfers to be fit with the correct shaft weight and shaft bend profile (overall flex design).
7. Grip Size
No golfer can hope to swing with any sense of repeatability unless their hands and forearms are relaxed and not in tension when they begin the swing. The grip size is a key element in allowing all golfers to be able to feel as comfortable as possible holding on to the club, and from that, to be able to keep the tension in the hands and the forearms at a bare minimum from address to execution. Because middle- to high-handicap golfers all too often grip the club too tight, fitting these players with a grip size that is more comfortable is a very important way for them to learn that grip tension is a very destructive factor in swinging consistently.
8. Clubhead Center of Gravity
Middle- and higher-handicap golfers will always be more consistent in their shotmaking if they use clubheads in which the center of gravity is located as far back from the face as possible. Most less-skilled golfers think only of choosing clubheads with a low center of gravity. However, it is the rear location of the CG that has more influence over how high you hit the ball for any given loft on the face. In addition, wood heads with a more rear-located CG are more forgiving for off-center hits because the head tends to twist less when the CG is much farther back from the face.
If redundancy is any measure of importance then I hope you'll take away from this article that custom fitting your next set of golf clubs is the best thing accompanied by practice to achieve consistency in your game.
Tom Wishon, owner of Tom Wishon Golf Technology, is a 24 year veteran of the golf equipment industry specializing in clubhead design, shaft analysis, and clubfitting research and development. He is the only designer from the component clubmaking side of the golf industry whose clubhead designs have been used to win on the PGA Tour, having designed the clubs used by Scott Verplank, Bruce Lietzke, Ben Crenshaw and the late Payne Stewart. He has written five books on clubmaking technology in his career and is a 10-year member of the Golf Digest Technical Panel.
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