Custom Golf Club Fitting – Lower Your Score and Enjoy Golf More

One of the best ways to quickly improve your golf score and have more fun playing the game is to have a custom golf club fitting. A custom golf club fitting with a professional using the right equipment will ensure that you are playing with the equipment that is suited to your swing.

One aspect of a golf club fitting is identifying what type of shaft is best suited to your swing, playing golf with the right type of shaft is a critical factor in how well you play. Most golfers are familiar with the rating of shaft stiffness that they think they play best with. What most golfers don’t realize is that the “S” you see on your shaft is completely meaningless. Whose definition of “stiff” do you want to use? Because one shaft companies stiff” is another companies “regular”, which is another companies “A-flex”. Worse, the flex rating of one line of shafts might be at hopeless variance with that of another line within the same shaft company! Is that “stiff” shaft going into an iron or a wood? In most cases iron “stiffs” are stiffer then wood “stiffs”. And you’ve said nothing about whether you want that driver in as steel shaft whose “stiff” is almost always stiffer then a graphite shaft.

The point is that if you buy a driver because it has a stiff, regular, senior, or ladies flex shaft in it, you have no idea what you are getting – nor does anyone else unless you talk to a professional club maker. They have easy access to that kind of information; golf stores do not.

From a pure shaft performance stand point, 90% of you are going to be better off with a shaft that is more flexible then what you think you need. If you happen to end up with a shaft that is too stiff for your swing, speed and your swing mechanics, first, the ball will go a little shorter in distance because it will probably fly a little lower. Second, you might have a tendency to see the ball fly over to the fade side of the target. Your feeling from hitting the ball from the center of the face will be a little more “harsh” as if the club felt like it vibrated a little more in the hands.

On the other hand, if you happen to end up with a shaft that is too flexible for your swing, first, the ball might fly a little higher and from that, possibly, a little further. Second, it might cause a fade shot to fade a little less or a draw shot to draw a little more. The feeling of an on-center impact on the club face will bring a softer or more solid feeling to your hands. Of the two, choosing the second choice is a no brainer.

Unless you work with a professional club maker to make your shaft selection, you will have to do a lot of trial and error test hitting of all sorts of shafts before you come up with a decision.

You might be able to guess that you want to have an R- or an S- flex, for example, but because the R from one company can be very different in stiffness from the R of another, you have no other alternatives but to: a) do trial and error testing to see for yourself how stiff or flexible that new R- or S- flex shaft really is compared to your old one or b) listen to a retail sales person who 9 times out of 10 won’t know enough about shafts to really help ensure you get the right one for your swing.

You might be measured for your swing speed in a retail golf store but I am here to tell you that virtually NONE of the big companies that make the standard golf clubs stocked in the retail shops ever provide their retailers with a reference chart to indicate what swing speed matches up with which flex in each shaft model they offer. So, the recommendation of the retail sales person will quite possibly be a yes or based on which flex they have more of in their store inventory.

A competent club maker will measure your swing speed, and then observe your swing mechanics to look for things like your tempo, how much force you use to start the down swing, and where in the down swing you release your wrist-cock. The club maker will then ask you some questions about how high or low you want to see the ball fly and other performance-goal queries to determine what you want to achieve that could be associated with the shafts performance. He or she will then reference the files of shaft information that he gets from his suppliers or from research on shaft testing that they or other club makers have done and made available to each other. He will also have more precise lists of what swing speed matches well to what shaft flex for what shaft design. After that, he will make a recommendation and possibly build a test club for you to hit to obtain feedback. The club maker may also have a launch monitor which can be used to actually measure the launch angle contribution of a shaft as you swing the club. And in the end, the club maker will come up with a far more accurate recommendation of which shaft is likely to perform and feel best to YOU.