It's go time on Jan 21st.
Your Club Champions Experiences
bbuonic81
Active member
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.
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.
- Thread starter
- #128
Good luck with your fitting.
bbuonic81
Active member
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 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.
- Thread starter
- #130
I did my iron fitting today with Evan Addington at the Orlando shop, I have to say this is as much fun as a golf gear junkie can have legally.
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.
My swing was average and pretty typical of my normal game so that was good for the fitting, I am quite shallow and with a short backswing tend to pull out of shots quite often. My face path was really very good and peak height stayed around 90-100 ft with just about everything with a 45* or more descent angle, the spin was averaging 6,000 - 6,700 rpms. He will send me the actual numbers in a couple of days and I will put them up for reference to show what old man numbers look like.
He settled on the KBS 110 as the best with the KBS 100 a close second to stay in Graphite, I was expecting the MMT to be the one but he only had it in the 90 and it was long but hard to control.
We moved on to heads and he thought I needed to stay in the more traditional lofts and narrow soles due to my swing tendencies, I told him going in I was not distance hunting but looking for a more accurate package. We tried MB's from Honma, TM (tiger version), the PING Blueprint and the Miura MC-501. Frankly I hit them all quite well with the distance on par with the CB 301 but consistency was as expected and any kind of bad swing was real bad.
He then put in the Mizuno JPX 919 tour (did not tell me and I did not look) and wow smash up to 1.45 and ball speed up over 110, which I guess is good for my SS. The most impressive thing to me was the pull hook was gone and pretty much a slight actual draw or fade right around the center line and getting out to 168-170 yds. which was a lot longer than my current setup and felt great overall.
I am a bit suspicious of the distance numbers as I use a lazer and know I hit the ball farther than the trackman was showing but it is what it is and that is what there was to work with. It hurts the ego to see a 140-150 yd 6 iron but oh well.
We tried other CB heads but nothing came close the 919 tour for overall performance. We ran out of time before we could try the newer MC20 Mizunos and I kind of regret that, but he gave me a lot of time and was fantastic in understanding my limitations and trying to optimize what I have to work with.
Now that is the last combo I expected to work and frankly I was a bit disapointed as I wanted something more exotic to be "the" one. The total build out was a bit over $1,700 with tax so not crazy high and he would pure them for $160 more, we talked about the Puring process and he admited for me with my swing etc. it will not be a huge impact but could help with just being more consistent in the build.
He will not have the new Callaway stuff or the Miura TC201 in for a while and I am just going to sit on the fence for a bit and think about it. I may go back in when he has the new stuff and do it again or go to Tru Spec and do a grass fitting to compare the numbers.
I will say the only thing I did not like was the lighting in the bay, very bright lights above and to my right which reflected in my glasses and made focusing on the ball quite difficult and of course I hate hitting off mats. These were quite soft and not like ones at the PGA SS for instance but I still have a hard time commiting to a downward strike on a mat, always have and always will I guess.
Overall it was a A+++ experience and I would and most likely will go back and do it again prior to buying, he checked my 5&6 out and by his Loft / Lie machine my clubs were quite far off spec lie wise which was troubling and I will address that with the builder, but we have all learned that depending on the machine and who is using it those numbers can change greatly.
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.
My swing was average and pretty typical of my normal game so that was good for the fitting, I am quite shallow and with a short backswing tend to pull out of shots quite often. My face path was really very good and peak height stayed around 90-100 ft with just about everything with a 45* or more descent angle, the spin was averaging 6,000 - 6,700 rpms. He will send me the actual numbers in a couple of days and I will put them up for reference to show what old man numbers look like.
He settled on the KBS 110 as the best with the KBS 100 a close second to stay in Graphite, I was expecting the MMT to be the one but he only had it in the 90 and it was long but hard to control.
We moved on to heads and he thought I needed to stay in the more traditional lofts and narrow soles due to my swing tendencies, I told him going in I was not distance hunting but looking for a more accurate package. We tried MB's from Honma, TM (tiger version), the PING Blueprint and the Miura MC-501. Frankly I hit them all quite well with the distance on par with the CB 301 but consistency was as expected and any kind of bad swing was real bad.
He then put in the Mizuno JPX 919 tour (did not tell me and I did not look) and wow smash up to 1.45 and ball speed up over 110, which I guess is good for my SS. The most impressive thing to me was the pull hook was gone and pretty much a slight actual draw or fade right around the center line and getting out to 168-170 yds. which was a lot longer than my current setup and felt great overall.
I am a bit suspicious of the distance numbers as I use a lazer and know I hit the ball farther than the trackman was showing but it is what it is and that is what there was to work with. It hurts the ego to see a 140-150 yd 6 iron but oh well.
We tried other CB heads but nothing came close the 919 tour for overall performance. We ran out of time before we could try the newer MC20 Mizunos and I kind of regret that, but he gave me a lot of time and was fantastic in understanding my limitations and trying to optimize what I have to work with.
Now that is the last combo I expected to work and frankly I was a bit disapointed as I wanted something more exotic to be "the" one. The total build out was a bit over $1,700 with tax so not crazy high and he would pure them for $160 more, we talked about the Puring process and he admited for me with my swing etc. it will not be a huge impact but could help with just being more consistent in the build.
He will not have the new Callaway stuff or the Miura TC201 in for a while and I am just going to sit on the fence for a bit and think about it. I may go back in when he has the new stuff and do it again or go to Tru Spec and do a grass fitting to compare the numbers.
I will say the only thing I did not like was the lighting in the bay, very bright lights above and to my right which reflected in my glasses and made focusing on the ball quite difficult and of course I hate hitting off mats. These were quite soft and not like ones at the PGA SS for instance but I still have a hard time commiting to a downward strike on a mat, always have and always will I guess.
Overall it was a A+++ experience and I would and most likely will go back and do it again prior to buying, he checked my 5&6 out and by his Loft / Lie machine my clubs were quite far off spec lie wise which was troubling and I will address that with the builder, but we have all learned that depending on the machine and who is using it those numbers can change greatly.
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.
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.
- Thread starter
- #134
They will let you warm up before you get started, so don't overdue you're range time. Above all else keep an open mind, you might be very surprised by what they think will work best for you. I know I was.
Having a couple of days to digest the info, I am more confused than ever which is more important the shaft or clubhead.
CC basically finds the best shaft in your head or one close to it then goes about trying all the others, this is counter to things I have read here on THP that the head design dictates the proper shaft (or something along those lines of thought).
So which is it? How do I know the shaft that worked best to optimize my numbers in my CB301 head is best in the PING Blueprint head for instance? Now once we settled on the KBS TGI 110 all the numbers were better than my gamer (no matter which head it was) except for the true blades which are just so demanding to be unrealistic for me anyway. It is quite vexing and I am second guessing what I saw as reality or just the result of hitting 100 balls in a row.
I am pondering going to Tru Spec and doing an outdoor fitting to see it the results hold up prior to dumping more cash, I am going to demo the Miura TC201 later this week on the course but not with the KBS Shaft and I want to demo the new Callaway but they don't offer the KBS TGI 110 so it would have to be a double build anyway, but the tech would certainly help my game.....so vexing..
CC basically finds the best shaft in your head or one close to it then goes about trying all the others, this is counter to things I have read here on THP that the head design dictates the proper shaft (or something along those lines of thought).
So which is it? How do I know the shaft that worked best to optimize my numbers in my CB301 head is best in the PING Blueprint head for instance? Now once we settled on the KBS TGI 110 all the numbers were better than my gamer (no matter which head it was) except for the true blades which are just so demanding to be unrealistic for me anyway. It is quite vexing and I am second guessing what I saw as reality or just the result of hitting 100 balls in a row.
I am pondering going to Tru Spec and doing an outdoor fitting to see it the results hold up prior to dumping more cash, I am going to demo the Miura TC201 later this week on the course but not with the KBS Shaft and I want to demo the new Callaway but they don't offer the KBS TGI 110 so it would have to be a double build anyway, but the tech would certainly help my game.....so vexing..
Cjgolf25
Well-known member
Well my driver fitting was suppose to be today but CC just called me to inform me that my fitter called out sick. Ugh, they said she will call me back to reschedule the fitting and that it will be comped.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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.
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!
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.
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!
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I am about to hit a wider variety of clubs in the next 3.5 hrs than I have in my entire life.
Here goes nothing...
Here goes nothing...
Luchnia
You will never conquer golf.
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.
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.
Luchnia
You will never conquer golf.
Curious, do you have a high swing speed with all your irons?
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Well, that was interesting and a little deflating, at the same time. Two days later, and my upper back and shoulder muscles are still sore. Maybe that 50-and-older group I ranted about the other day was on to something...
I went into this primarily to learn more about my swing, which is a little worse than I thought. I can tell from divots and ball flight that things are not ideal. Early swings confirmed it. My club path is left of Sanders. Clubhead speed with my 6-iron was depressingly slow (~78 mph, I think), smash factor was depressingly low (~1.2), and height was well short of clubhead speed (fitter was hoping to get them to nearly the same magnitude). Spin rates with a PW while warming up were in the 5-digits.
We started with irons, where I had mentioned my interest in graphite because of my elbow. The first head he pulled, right out of the plastic, was a Mavrik Max W. I asked what the 'W' was for (I had a hunch). The fitter said he didn't know. ? I hit it anyway, as we started off to determine the best shaft.
I don't have a shot summary yet, and I can't recall every shaft and head we tried from memory. We settled on Fujikara Vista Pro 50i regular flex graphite shafts. Head came down to Callaway Big Bertha or Cobra F9. Dispersion and clubhead speed were better with the Big Bertha, but smash factor and height was better with the F9. It was really close, and with the price difference so much, he said he wouldn't feel right putting me in the Big Bertha. So, F9 it was. I was hoping a Cobra iron would excel for me, so this didn't upset me.
Clubhead speed was up to 83-84, smash factor up to 1.38, carry into the low 160s, and total distance in the mid-170s. I even popped one out to a total of 201 yds with this setup. With a 6-iron?!?
A problem popped up as he was trying to enter it in the build sheet. The F9 was coming back as "unavailable" now. To be continued...
I was surprised at the shaft choice. There are 3 '50i' options on the Fujikura web site, and I'm not sure which one it is without a completed build sheet, but they are in the 60-62 gram range. I have never hit regular flex shafts before, either. My irons have stiff 110 g steel DG Pros in them; apparently, way too heavy for my weak swing. I need to educate myself on what to expect with kind of setup. That seems like a drastic change.
We went on to the 3-wood next. My Fly-Z+ is a 3/4 wood (13*-16* range), and I had it set at 15.5* coming in. I've played it at 16*, 15.5*, and 14* in the past, with better and more consistent results at the higher lofts. I don't hit it very far or very consistently (or very often) off the deck, but my distances were not close to what I've recorded with GameGolf the last 2+ years. He handed me a Ping G410 to start, which looked so strange to me at address. There wasn't much difference that I can recall without the stats in front of me. Since it was getting a little late, as irons took a while, we pulled the plug on this, for now. There was no way we were going to get through hybrids, driver, and putter, anyway, within the allotted time left.
The poor guy had been watching my unsound swing for so long, and he just couldn't stand it anymore. So, I got a little bonus mini lesson before my time was up. Out came the F9 6-iron again. He gave me a couple pointers to help me on the takeaway, to help fix my club path. Within 10 minutes, I was striping slight draws down the middle of the range. He said if I could maintain that shot shape and he still fit me into the F9/Fujikura combo, I would be hooking the crap out of them in no time. He did not feel right doing that, either, so he said I should work on that and come back at a later time to finish up the full fitting, with some time spent to tweak the irons. He said an Apex might work well for me, if I can fix my club path.
So, a wonky swing with unavailable F9s and a light graphite shaft, or something else entirely at a date TBD.
I went into this primarily to learn more about my swing, which is a little worse than I thought. I can tell from divots and ball flight that things are not ideal. Early swings confirmed it. My club path is left of Sanders. Clubhead speed with my 6-iron was depressingly slow (~78 mph, I think), smash factor was depressingly low (~1.2), and height was well short of clubhead speed (fitter was hoping to get them to nearly the same magnitude). Spin rates with a PW while warming up were in the 5-digits.
We started with irons, where I had mentioned my interest in graphite because of my elbow. The first head he pulled, right out of the plastic, was a Mavrik Max W. I asked what the 'W' was for (I had a hunch). The fitter said he didn't know. ? I hit it anyway, as we started off to determine the best shaft.
I don't have a shot summary yet, and I can't recall every shaft and head we tried from memory. We settled on Fujikara Vista Pro 50i regular flex graphite shafts. Head came down to Callaway Big Bertha or Cobra F9. Dispersion and clubhead speed were better with the Big Bertha, but smash factor and height was better with the F9. It was really close, and with the price difference so much, he said he wouldn't feel right putting me in the Big Bertha. So, F9 it was. I was hoping a Cobra iron would excel for me, so this didn't upset me.
Clubhead speed was up to 83-84, smash factor up to 1.38, carry into the low 160s, and total distance in the mid-170s. I even popped one out to a total of 201 yds with this setup. With a 6-iron?!?
A problem popped up as he was trying to enter it in the build sheet. The F9 was coming back as "unavailable" now. To be continued...
I was surprised at the shaft choice. There are 3 '50i' options on the Fujikura web site, and I'm not sure which one it is without a completed build sheet, but they are in the 60-62 gram range. I have never hit regular flex shafts before, either. My irons have stiff 110 g steel DG Pros in them; apparently, way too heavy for my weak swing. I need to educate myself on what to expect with kind of setup. That seems like a drastic change.
We went on to the 3-wood next. My Fly-Z+ is a 3/4 wood (13*-16* range), and I had it set at 15.5* coming in. I've played it at 16*, 15.5*, and 14* in the past, with better and more consistent results at the higher lofts. I don't hit it very far or very consistently (or very often) off the deck, but my distances were not close to what I've recorded with GameGolf the last 2+ years. He handed me a Ping G410 to start, which looked so strange to me at address. There wasn't much difference that I can recall without the stats in front of me. Since it was getting a little late, as irons took a while, we pulled the plug on this, for now. There was no way we were going to get through hybrids, driver, and putter, anyway, within the allotted time left.
The poor guy had been watching my unsound swing for so long, and he just couldn't stand it anymore. So, I got a little bonus mini lesson before my time was up. Out came the F9 6-iron again. He gave me a couple pointers to help me on the takeaway, to help fix my club path. Within 10 minutes, I was striping slight draws down the middle of the range. He said if I could maintain that shot shape and he still fit me into the F9/Fujikura combo, I would be hooking the crap out of them in no time. He did not feel right doing that, either, so he said I should work on that and come back at a later time to finish up the full fitting, with some time spent to tweak the irons. He said an Apex might work well for me, if I can fix my club path.
So, a wonky swing with unavailable F9s and a light graphite shaft, or something else entirely at a date TBD.
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- Thread starter
- #144
Thanks for sharing, DW. My swing speed on the driver never topped 84 mph when I had my driver fitting, As for the irons my swing speed was around 76 or 77 mph. Gotta admit that with the Accre shafts that we went with on my z585 heads I'm getting at 15 yds better across all the irons. Still having hard time hitting this Paderson shaft and the M6 head I'm currently using.
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I am still at odds with my fitting, talking with some folks and they say the KBS TGI 110 is the same profile and flex as a KBS tour 130X, I still have the numbers somewhere but he deleted all the comparison stuff so I can't see the other shafts against the 110.
It is hard for me to believe I will work well with the 110 long term (or at least a few months), I may just have the KBS TGI 100 built in the TC 201 or put them in my CB 301 and see what happens.
It is hard for me to believe I will work well with the 110 long term (or at least a few months), I may just have the KBS TGI 100 built in the TC 201 or put them in my CB 301 and see what happens.
Still grappling with the sticker shock of the P7TW irons. Looking back through my fitting data, the MP20 was a close-ish second for me, but it spun a bit too much (~650rpm more). When I go back back for the second half of my fitting I'm planning on putting the P7TW/Modus120 combo up against the MP20/C-Taper combo. The c-taper gave me the best ball speed numbers but didn't spin enough in the P7TW's - I'm thinking it might be perfect in the MP20 and would end up saving me about $800.
- Thread starter
- #147
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.
- Thread starter
- #149
Yeah, I hear what you say. I don't ever remember hitting a club the heavy ever before that was a D6.
Some great numbers there and I can tell you from my time hitting the P7TW during a series of fittings, they are amazing feel irons throughout the set. If you are hitting great numbers and you get the feel, its a win win. Congrats.