It's go time on Jan 21st.
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I am heading to a full bag fitting on Saturday morning and couldn't be more excited. I am a full-fledged club tinkerer and while it's endlessly fun (and a habit I'm sure I'll never be able to fully shake), without the time to hit the range as much as I'd like and playing fewer and fewer completely casual rounds to dial in changes, I've gotten honest with myself that it's not helping my game.
My biggest golf resolution for 2020 is to commit to playing what works and this is the first step. I have pretty new equipment but it's been a while since I was professionally fit (and even then, they weren't the best fittings), so there's a chance that a massive change isn't necessary (half of me hopes it is...half of me hopes is isn't) but I'm sure that there are some tweaks I can make (more appropriate shafts, maybe a bag composition change, etc.) that'll let me focus on playing my best golf rather than hoping my equipment is best for me.
I'll certainly pop back in here to post about my Club Champion experience and share some fitting results after the weekend.
Had a great fitting experience at the Needham, MA Club Champion on Saturday. Worked with Nick who was knowledgeable, patient and game for running through anything and everything that could help my game. In short, whether you're in the market for new clubs, looking to make sure you're in the right setup for you or just trying to learn a little more about your game I can't recommend the experience highly enough. Fitting works; it's not magic, mind you, but these people know what they're doing.
I booked a full bag fitting taking advantage of the January 50% off deal. At $350, I there are those who might scoff slightly at the price tag, but for $175, I'd say I got my money's worth and more.
After chatting a little bit about my game (pretty good iron player, pretty good wedge player, way below-average driver of the golf ball), going through my current setup and perusing the golf junky's heaven that is their wall of shafts and heads, we started in with irons.
Since I have pretty new heads (Callaway Apex 19 Combos) already that seemed to be a generally good fit, we focused on getting some baseline numbers and a shaft that might make more sense for me. I’d say I had a pretty average swing for the day which was perfect and looking at the numbers using my gamer setup I saw exactly what I would have expected from Trackman – a negative angle of attack, slightly in-to-out swing path, 14 degrees of launch and a pretty low peak height of around 65 feet.
The biggest things that we saw that could use some improvement were smash factor (which was about 1.45 with an average of 114.8 MPH ball sped from a 79 MPH swing), spin rate (about 4700) and land angle (38.3). Switching out the Elevate Tours, we tried a couple of steel shafts from KBS, Nippon and Project X, we threw in some Steelfibers, KBS TGI, and a few more multi-material or graphite options. While I had initially thought maybe a move to something very lightweight would increase speed and height, my swing was just too inconsistent when we went very light. The Nippon Modus 3 105 seemed to be a winner and after dialing in a few things, we got what we were looking for – ball speed up to 120 average (with a few touching 122) which pushed the average smash to 1.51; average spin averaged up over 5,000; launch angle stayed the same but peak height was up 12+ feet to 78 and land angle picked up almost 4 degrees at 42. All in all, that actually picked up an average of 9 yards of carry and 6 yards of total distance with a much tighter dispersion.
We went right from irons into the long-game fitting starting with driver. If nothing else, taking some swings with my gamer setup reinforced all of my assumptions about my golf game. Driver has long been the weakest part of my game and that showed in this fitting as well. While I’m not as steep as I used to be (AOA varied between 2 down and 1 up with most about level), my biggest swing flaw is that I cut across the ball and have a swing path of about 4-5 degrees out to in. This causes a bunch of spin and some inefficient smash factor numbers. With my setup (Callaway Epic Flash Sub-Zero 9 degree head playing D/+2 with a Project X HZRDUS Yellow 5.5) I was getting about 88 MPH swing speed, 128 ball speed for a 1.48 average smash. Distance was (disappointingly) true to life with carry averaging just over 202 yards and totals in the 220 range (womp, womp). After running through a bunch of shafts (Smoke Yellow, RipTide, Ventus Blue) we tried the Accra FX 2.0 100 series and found some better numbers. Clearly, it’s not a magic wand, but I picked up about 4 MPH of ball speed (up to 132 average) which lead to an average smash of 1.51. Gained about 8 yards of carry and 8 yards total. I would have loved for it to be more, but part of this fitting really showed me that an driver path and hopefully in turn AOA will give me some bigger gains. In the meantime, 4 MPH increased ball speed is, in my opinion, nothing to sneeze at.
After driver, we moved into fairway woods and hybrids. Tried a few more shafts but the winners were again in the Accra FX 2.0 series. My 3 wood and 3 hybrid were among the older clubs in my bag and the Epic Flash fairway wood and Cobra F9 hybrid heads gave significantly better performance than what I have been gaming. At this point in the day I was almost 200 swings in so getting fatigued. While my swings slowed and got a little shakier, picking up 10 yards or so of carry in the fairway wood and better launch and distance from the hybrid were both nice to see. I will likely want to re-test this a little bit on a fresher day.
We finished up the nearly four-hour session with a putter fitting. I’ve never been through a putter fit before so getting some data from SAM Puttlab was very cool. To make a long story short here, turns out I’ve been right that I am straight-back-straight-through, so the Odyssey Jailbird I’m currently gaming fits my stroke well. I was already in the ideal loft, lie and length, so not too much to change here. I will make sure that my horde of similar profile putters are all set up with these specs before the winter’s out, though.
Nick then ran me through all the recommended changes and the spec sheet for a potential build. As has been noted by plenty of people in the past, the sticker shock from this is where I think the Club Champion model falls down. Even with only having two clubs recommended for purchase (the Epic Flash fairway and the F9 hybrid), the order would run me just over $2,100 (not including the fitting). While I’m all for building relationships and I understand that their business model is based on getting component parts and a tour-quality assembly, the fact that I can find everything elsewhere for maybe 60% of the cost gives me some pause on moving forward with a purchase from them. [Question for any THPers who have purchased through Club Champion: do they offer any incentives/discounts/price match?] If they were competitive on pricing, I’d be more than happy to purchase through them but the fact that, for instance, they want to charge almost $500 for the driver and fairway wood shafts + $35 for the adapter for the driver and I quickly was able to find those two with adapters for less than $400 makes it hard to justify pulling the trigger.
All in all, this was a great and eye-opening experience. I will certainly use them again for fittings in the future. For now, I will go back to perusing my build sheet/order form and trying to figure out how I’m going to proceed.
I am looking forward to mine next week as well. I am very interested what I am going to be fit to. I am also excited to see what I learn from the putter fitting.All of these great stories are getting me more excited for my fitting Monday. I had a quick tune up lesson with my pro to make sure I was going in with a close to normal swing and we chatted about what he thought might be the best type iron for me to look into. I'll probably try to get to the range at some point this weekend just to try and stay loose but will have to be careful to not tire myself out before the fitting itself.
All of these great stories are getting me more excited for my fitting Monday. I had a quick tune up lesson with my pro to make sure I was going in with a close to normal swing and we chatted about what he thought might be the best type iron for me to look into. I'll probably try to get to the range at some point this weekend just to try and stay loose but will have to be careful to not tire myself out before the fitting itself.
You are four years younger than me, but my handicap is not even in your ballpark. I appreciate your review and it is most interesting that heavier shafts worked out better raising the smash factor. I know I mess around with my swing caddie and play with my smash factor some and most of the time it has a lot to do with my stance and ball position.I was expecting a shaft change and it was eye opening to see what the final outcome was, being nearly 61 and beat up pretty good I will not bore you with the numbers but my smash with my clubs as is was in the low 1.30's not good at all. He did have the same head in the fitting area so we went with that as a baseline to try shafts and we tried a lot, Recoil protos, Steelfiber, MMT and Oban 115 in steel.
He decided pretty quickly lighter was not good for me and we focused in the 100 up range and the KBS TGI 110 was neck and neck with the Oban 115 as the best fit, raising my smash into the 1.39-1.41 range and clubhead and ball speed both went up quite bit and my hook / pull seemed to settle down.
It was surprising to me also, I thought sure something in the 90-95 weight would be best but we tried Steelfiber 90 & 95, recoil 95 and 110 protos and the KBS T GI 100 &110. The 110 was by far the best for overall everything numbers wise.You are four years younger than me, but my handicap is not even in your ballpark. I appreciate your review and it is most interesting that heavier shafts worked out better raising the smash factor. I know I mess around with my swing caddie and play with my smash factor some and most of the time it has a lot to do with my stance and ball position.
I am fascinated as to how the heavier shaft affects that, but apparently it affects the swing path forward a bit. Or at least where the arc arrives at the ball. When I get tired I tend to swing up and not as much through and down with my irons instead of my short irons. I tend to like lightweight shafts as I feel they are easier to swing, but maybe I am going in the wrong direction and need to consider a weightier shaft like you have tried just to see the results.
Curious, do you have a high swing speed with all your irons?It was surprising to me also, I thought sure something in the 90-95 weight would be best but we tried Steelfiber 90 & 95, recoil 95 and 110 protos and the KBS T GI 100 &110. The 110 was by far the best for overall everything numbers wise.
The oban 110 or 115 was neck and neck, but I wanted to stay in graphite.
Some time in the next few weeks I want to go back and hit it again just to be sure, he said he would give me 10 minutes just to retest the one shaft and head.
But work travel may keep me out of the country for the next few weeks.
I've had about five sessions at an indoor simulator now since my fitting at CC last month. I'm loving the irons I came out of the fitting with not so much with the driver. I just can't hit this M6 with the Paderson shaft. I think it's a combination of things, first would be the D6 weight. It feels like I'm swinging a wagon tongue most of the time. Of course a good part of it is probably me. For some reason Taylormade and I just don't get along very well. I have to go to CC later today and pick up my Betti putter that they were nice enough to regripp for me. I'm gonna have a talk with the guy who fitted me last month about it and see what he has to say.
I'll be interested to see what I get fit into for swing weight in the driver. CC seems to push heavier swing weights to "gain a little club head and ball speed". Their adapter on their irons adds a good amount of weight to the head so I'm wondering if they are saying that to compensate. Luckily my current irons were D6 so the D7 I got fit into was not a big change.
Had the first part of my fitting yesterday with Mike in their new Hartford location. We focused solely on irons for the first fitting and boy did we try just about all of them. Little bit of background on me and my golf game: I'm 31 and in decent shape, 6'2" and have been playing regularly for about 8 years. This past season was my best yet with my handicap dropping down to right around 1. My short game improved tremendously, but I struggled with a loss of distance in my irons, almost a full club from where I was 2-3 years ago. In that time my ball flight has changed from primarily right to left for more of a straight ball/slight fade. I had a decent swing yesterday for the fitting and was hitting a nice controlled fade for most of the night. Lets begin.
Started hitting my gamer first - Nike VR Pro Combo 6i / KBS Tour 130X soft stepped - to get a baseline. The numbers were exactly where I thought they'd be, 167 carry, 175 total with a spin rate around 6300 and launch angle of over 17*. My peak height was right around 100ft. Mike told me he'd like to see my launch and spin come down a little bit, while not sacrificing any "stopping power."
Once he had a good baseline we got into the shaft portion of the fitting. We used the P7TW head as a starting point as he said it was probably closest to the VR pro combo that I was hitting. Since I have a set of VR Pro blades sitting the garage as well, I felt comfortable with the look. We tried 5 different shafts: KBS C-taper, Project X, Modus 120, DG X100. and Oban CT125. I've never gotten along with Project X and the DG X100 didn't blow my hair back, so we were left with the C-taper, Modus and Oban. The C-taper had the best good numbers, but was a little wild in terms of dispersion. The Oban and Modus were fairly close, but the feel and consistency of the Modus 120x made it the winner for me. Just in case, we kept all 3 shafts close by to test again once we found the correct head.
Now we got into the fun/shiny new club head part. We started with the P7TW since we already had it on hand and it was clear that technology has surpassed my VR Pro Combos. I saw an immediate jump in ball speed, reduction in spin and launch and a tighter dispersion than my gamer. Even my misses with the blade were going as far and staying as close to the line as good shots with the VR's. Clearly we had something in this shaft and club head combo. In the spirit of being thorough we tried another dozen or so club heads to see if anything was better:
Mizuno JPX919 Tour, MP20 blade and HMB
Titleist MB, CB and T100
Ping Blueprint
Honma Rose Proto, Tworld 747
Taylormade P760
Cobra Forged MB/CB
One other JDM and one smaller company I forget now (edit: New Level)
There were a few close calls - the Mizuno MP20s and Cobra Forged put up some really good numbers, but all of them had something missing from either ball speed, launch, spin or general feel. Just to make sure I wasn't getting tired and hit the P7TW best because I was fresh, we popped the head back on and saw the exact same numbers as early on. Just to triple check that my gamer wasn't so far behind because I was still warming up early on, I hit one more. It was absolutely the best swing I made all night, exact same swing speed and center contact. It didn't even come close to the TWs. Here are the averages for the P7TW at the end of the evening.
View attachment 8923869
As expected, got a little sticker shock from their full build pricing but its not unexpected since the irons retail for $2k anyhow.
Can't wait to go back for the top of the bag fitting on Feb 3rd!