A question of fitting.

[TheProfessor02]

So I've been catching up on podcasts and came across this today and Mark, Lou and Scott bring up some very good points about fittings that have always irked me. I agree and I believe most everyone else does that is better to go and actually "get fit" in some capacity versus buying off the rack. Where my questions lies is when you go for these fittings you are limited both by time and energy. What I mean by that is you are only taking 3-6 swings with each shaft and then with each club head if you were to go get fit at say a Club Champion. Even the best of the best will not have their full shot patterns come out until 30+ strikes. With all of that said how is it that these places can determine what your "best" setup will be without seeing all of those strikes for all of the setups that could be viable? I am not trying to bag on fitting or say that it isn't a good idea I just wanted to spark some discussion on something that I have always wondered in regards to club fitting.  

[RickyBobby_PR]

Fittings are designed to find optimized launch characteristics for the golfers swing to help reduce the bad shots and give the golfer the chance to play better. The golfer still has to execute the shots.

There’s a range of the launch characteristics that work for seing dperd or ball speed depending on what the fitter uses. The really good fitters also look at the golfers swing and how the load the shaft and deliver the club. Based on this and launch numbers they can narrow down shaft profiles and heads that will work for the golfer. They also use whatever input the golfer gives to make the necessary tweaks.

Watch the various fitting videos from TXG especially the older ones where they fit mid and high handicaps to see how they go about fittings.

This one from them with @Golfspy_CG2 is really good explaining what fittings are 

 

[TheProfessor02]

5 minutes ago, RickyBobby_PR said:

Fittings are designed to find optimized launch characteristics for the golfers swing to help reduce the bad shots and give the golfer the chance to play better. The golfer still has to execute the shots.

There’s a range of the launch characteristics that work for seing dperd or ball speed depending on what the fitter uses. The really good fitters also look at the golfers swing and how the load the shaft and deliver the club. Based on this and launch numbers they can narrow down shaft profiles and heads that will work for the golfer. They also use whatever input the golfer gives to make the necessary tweaks.

Watch the various fitting videos from TXG especially the older ones where they fit mid and high handicaps to see how they go about fittings.

This one from them with @Golfspy_CG2 is really good explaining what fittings are 

 

Yeah I love seeing TXG's work on YouTube and I think they really deliver a very high quality fit. Based off what I have seen from them you can really boil it down to a range of options say 2-4 in both shafts and heads that could potentially work for a player and at that point it is going to be up to the player to then adjust to those new clubs and get the most out of that particular setup. What you swing the absolute "best" on that day may not be what is the end all be all best for you but what you would be fit into is well within what you should be playing and ultimately your performance is on you at that point. 

[fixyurdivot]

28 minutes ago, TheProfessor02 said:

So I've been catching up on podcasts and came across this today and Mark, Lou and Scott bring up some very good points about fittings that have always irked me. I agree and I believe most everyone else does that is better to go and actually "get fit" in some capacity versus buying off the rack. Where my questions lies is when you go for these fittings you are limited both by time and energy. What I mean by that is you are only taking 3-6 swings with each shaft and then with each club head if you were to go get fit at say a Club Champion. Even the best of the best will not have their full shot patterns come out until 30+ strikes. With all of that said how is it that these places can determine what your "best" setup will be without seeing all of those strikes for all of the setups that could be viable? I am not trying to bag on fitting or say that it isn't a good idea I just wanted to spark some discussion on something that I have always wondered in regards to club fitting.  

Those ae great points and I tend to agree that true trends of any given head/shaft combination will not be seen in a half dozen shots.  Further, only hitting with a 6i or 7i introduces some risk whether or not the rest of the set will perform similarly.  Based on my three fittings, I do think a quick sorting of what works and what does not can be done in 6 or so swings.  True Spec did this and when we got down to a couple of shafts and heads, they had me re-hit those quite a few times before we finally settled on what looked optimum; even switching back n' forth between them. I also think my fitter did a great job "sizing me up" and narrowing the likely contenders - thus saving time to really spend on the short list. I chose to go hit the Srixon's at a Demo Day to get yet another set of numbers, this time off turf, to help with the decision.

If a customer goes in wanting to hit lots of heads and shafts, they should either plan on requesting and paying for more LM time or another fitting session. A 20 handicap player wanting to include Blueprints, T100's and Apex MB's is not helping their own cause.

 

[TheProfessor02]

1 minute ago, fixyurdivot said:

Those ae great points and I tend to agree that true trends of any given head/shaft combination will not be seen in a half dozen shots.  Further, only hitting with a 6i or 7i introduces some risk whether or not the rest of the set will perform similarly.  Based on my three fittings, I do think a quick sorting of what works and what does not can be done in 6 or so swings.  True Spec did this and when we got down to a couple of shafts and heads, they had me re-hit those quite a few times before we finally settled on what looked optimum; even switching back n' forth between them. I also think my fitter did a great job "sizing me up" and narrowing the likely contenders - thus saving time to really spend on the short list. I chose to go hit the Srixon's at a Demo Day to get yet another set of numbers, this time off turf, to help with the decision.

If a customer goes in wanting to hit lots of heads and shafts, they should either plan on requesting and paying for more LM time or another fitting session. A 20 handicap player wanting to include Blueprints, T100's and Apex MB's is not helping their own cause.

 

Yeah I have heard great things from True Spec as well ultimately I think going in with some research and honest expectations of what in theory should work will help and then going with the fitters recommendations on a short list is great. From there I think it would be best to move out onto turf and try those 2-3 options before I would make a final decision. 

[RickyBobby_PR]

34 minutes ago, TheProfessor02 said:

Yeah I love seeing TXG's work on YouTube and I think they really deliver a very high quality fit. Based off what I have seen from them you can really boil it down to a range of options say 2-4 in both shafts and heads that could potentially work for a player and at that point it is going to be up to the player to then adjust to those new clubs and get the most out of that particular setup. What you swing the absolute "best" on that day may not be what is the end all be all best for you but what you would be fit into is well within what you should be playing and ultimately your performance is on you at that point. 

A top fitter is going to give the golfer what will work for them on their hood and bad swings. So when that golfer walks out they have the best setup regardless of if they had their best swing or not during the fitting.

It’s why IMO some of the best fitters have been around for a long time. They use launch monitors to show the golfer what they are seeing and why but are using their eyes to watch the swing and ball flight and their ears to hear contact. They can use that to ask the golfer what they heard/felt and then give their opinion followed by showing the results via the numbers. Then as they make adjustments they can use the numbers for comparisons to show the golfer the difference. 
 

The fitters that know shaft profiles off the top of their head can make quick adjustments in narrowing down shafts with their eyes and feedback from customer. The best fittings I had were on the gc2 that was hardly used by the Ping rep. He would make adjustments within a couple shots. I watched him fit a buddy of mine into a driver and shaft with just two shaft changes based off flight and how my buddy felt about the shaft. Was happy for him when he left ping to be pxg good employee #4 but wasn’t happy losing simile who knew his stuff and I could get fit by. Now he’s handling lpga for pxg

[McGolf]

From a fitters point of view the 30 shot, shot pattern is not realistic, Looking for the pattern is more akin to fitting the worst shots not the best as suggest above. The sheer number of shots would make the first few set up the best and gradually decline as the golfer gets to a couple hundred strikes in a short time. If you are hitting 3- 6 shots on each set up, I'm pretty sure an outlier will show up. It would be up to the fitter to see this and talk with the golfer about the misses to ensure that is represented in a typical miss. 

A lot shots are hit during a typical fitting. A pattern does show up through out the session regardless of the set up.