Houston Club Champion fitting for Edel SL01 irons

I went in yesterday for an iron fitting. I've been thinking about doing a hacked version of the single length irons from Edel. I already have the wedges in a driver grind, and didn't want the expense or six iron length in the wedges, so I decided to go with two lengths.

This puts me into unusual territory. 6,7,8 in the six iron shaft with PW, GW, and LW in a 9 iron shaft. The fitter had never done a set like this, so it was new ground for him as well. My fitter was named Miles and he had years of experience in teaching lessons at Golftec.

I've never been on a Trackman and it was a fun experience. Depending on the shaft and weight we saw quite a bit of difference in the carry and spin, ranging from 160 to 174 carry with 87-88 mph of clubhead speed. The primary difference was in the dynamic loft as some combinations seemed to flip and raise the loft delivered to the ball, drastically increasing spin. This is something I'll watch for at the range now that I'm aware of it. Usually I'd associate higher ball flight with crushing it, but I can see that i may have been misinterpreting what I was seeing on some shots.

Edel has three shaft options in the Paderson shafts per stiffness, basically low medium or high launch. I ended up with the low (or short iron) shaft for the 6-8 and mid for 9-SW. Once the shaft was selected we played with the insert weights from 2 to 16 grams, but I ended up with the 8 team weights. This was dialed in by looking at ball height and smash factor which we got to about 1.40 for the six iron. Apparently higher than that means you are really trapping the balls, which isn't ideal for most people but explains how some pros hit their irons so far.

End of part 1

Part 2

So the trick was how are we going to do the short irons? Club Champion only has 6 irons for demos. We ended up having me grip down about an inch and put the PW head on the shaft. The idea here is to simulate a Paderson stiff 6 iron butt cut down to 36.5". Only time will tell if this works out.

https://goo.gl/MZyrxu <Trackman Report>

By the time we were working on the wedge, I was pretty tired. The Trackman report above only has 1/5 of the shots on it after we got rid of clubs and configurations that weren't working out and deleted some random shanks. We moved from a regular 55g graphite shaft on my gamers to a stiff 95g shaft, which is probably partly due to the SuperSpeed training.

I wanted to re-use and reshaft my current Edel Driver wedges, and Club Champion didn't have much of an answer for that as Edel doesn't offer their shafts to them like that. He told me my best option was going to be find some inexpensive 95g stiff wedge shafts on EBay and start from there.

Part way through I asked if I could switch to a full club fitting over a couple sessions instead of just the iron fitting and he agreed, so I ended getting charged for the full $350 up front in addition to the costs for the Edels.

So the damage is $245 x 5 clubs + $350 fitting fee + $101 tax for $1,676. Hopefully I don't add too much to this...if this pseudo one-length challenge works out I may try to find a way to do it on the hybrids.

Overall it was a really good experience. I don't have much to compare it to, but Miles was on top of his game and up to the challenge I gave him. The clubs should be here in a few weeks and if my handicap or spread of shots goes down then it will have been worth it. I will say that I liked the Edel's more than I thought I would. They feel pretty good and I'm looking forward to them getting here. Miles said he would adjust them for me when they came in to dial in the lie angles. Hopefully I'll have the wedges reshafted by then as well.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Belated welcome to THP. I am in Katy.

Thanks for sharing. $245 per club? Wow!

I look forward to pics of the setup, I’ve always wanted to hit Edel’s but have never had the real opportunity

Hope it works really well for you considering the price involved!!! It sounds like an interesting concept.

Excellent post. I’ve thought about going with a 2 length set myself

I ordered the shafts for the wedges today at golf galaxy. Since I already had the Edel wedges, this past is just reshafting them. They were the same price ($45) for UST 95g Mamiya Recoils in stiff that they were on Ebay. So basically the wedges cost me the same as one more Edel iron ($250 with grips and assembly).

And RNG, I hope so as well. I need to have a hell of an iron game coming out of this to make it worth it, right?

Looking forward to seeing how you like the set. Was just thinking that there isn't much info on the Edel SL on the forum so was curious what those who play them thought.

It’s a bit frustrating, but that still aren’t in yet. The club fitter responded promptly when I emailed him and we agreed to move the next part of the fitting out another week.

I did get my Edel wedges reshafted in the interim, and THAT has been very cool on the range. They literally feel like the exact same club, so it really simplifies that part of the game. Here’s the deal: when you pull out a normal club, let’s say switching from a 6 to a 7, your brain does some calibration based on the weight, length, and feel. Then you subconsciously slightly modify your setup so that you can hit it. I’ve never been conscious of that process going on in my head until last week. I was switching between wedges and noting that the compression of the ball, which is determined by the loft, was determining how far it travelled.

Then I picked up a 6, hit a ball, and then picked up a 7 and became aware of my brain performing this task, which I didn’t have to do when I switched between wedges. I went back to the wedges to confirm it, and it’s a beautiful thing. So in theory, that eliminates both a potential source of error (we already knew this) and unnecessary processing. So how much better can my brain perform in terms of touch on the course or learning on the range when we don’t have this variable? I don’t know. I’m excited about it, and I’ve already begun the process of simplifying my short wedge swing even more to match, but I haven’t had time to get out on the course with my new wedges yet.

An odd thing did happen though, and this may be just me. The distance for various wedge swings for the clubs is coinciding, so the carry distance for a longer swing with the 54 deg wedge matches the carry distance for a shorter swing with the 50. You would expect some of this by happenstance, but not for all of them, right? But this is what I’m seeing:

I have four lengths of swings for the wedges below a strong 3/4 or full swing. Think Pelz non powered golf swings, and for reference a swing where my arms feel like they are going back to 90 degrees would be #3 of 4.

50 degree wedge carry distances (in yards):

1: 45
2: 60
3: 70
4: 85

54 degree wedge:

1: 35
2: 45
3: 60
4: 70

59 degree wedge:

1: 25
2: 35
3: 45
4: 60

Now all of these had different trajectories and would have different finishing yardages, so maybe it’s fine or even great, but it was odd. I don’t know if it’s coincidental, physics, or just my body producing it subconsciously, but I didn’t expect it. The plus side is that if it is consistent and replicates the next time I go to the range, I’ll have less to remember on the course and just need to pick a yardage and a desired trajectory. I’d like to extend this to the PW and 9 when they get here as the Pelz-type swing is very consistent, and then I should have some low trajectory darts for the 90 - 120 range.

You would expect overlap with yardages if you are changing trajectory and the amount of speed you are putting into the ball, no matter the loft (to an extent) I find my distances on 52 and 56 to overlap a lot but it purely depends on what type of shot I want to play.
For example I can hit a 9,PW,52 and a 56 all to 100 yards but at different trajectories, shot shapes etc at least i try to

So the clubs came in yesterday. I expected to have to wait another week at that point so I was super excited and left the office immediately to go pick them up.

I was kind of expecting a little TLC when I got them from Club Champion, but we have half a fitting left so he said we’ll check them out next week and make any necessary adjustments during the fitting. We did check the length vs the wedges I had made and the wedges are about 1/4” longer. He said that different club makers measure length differently sometimes, so it’s not surprising. The swingweight of the wedges is also quite a bit different, D4, E1, and E3 going down to the lob wedge compared to D1 in my irons, which isn’t surprising. Wedges are usually heavier heads so slapping them on a longer shaft would usually produce this result. I don’t feel the difference when I’m swinging yet, but I may butt trim them 1/4” and maybe have a clubmaker do some work to get the swingweights to match D1.

So off to the range! I have to say I’m still not a fan of the graphics on the Pedersen shafts, but the heads look really nice. (End Part 1)

It took a bit to warm up at the range and I was a bit disappointed to not start flushing them right away. It has been three weeks and I’ve been playing with my swing along with hitting Honma blades in a regular shaft compared with these which are stiff.

After a few balls I did find it and man, do they ever feel sweet. I went back to what I think of my power slot, coming just a bit from the inside with a draw and it was like the ball just wanted to find the middle of the club head. No resistance at all at impact, a good natural feel during the transition, and the ball flight is high with just a gentle draw that starts right of the target and comes back.

Hitting balls at Memorial is a bit frustrating because it’s difficult to determine the carry distance most of the time due to undulations in the terrain, but it does feel like the distances are about right. I didn’t see a huge gap between the 38” 8 iron and the 36.5” 9 iron (surprising?). The real test will be on the course an hour from now. I’ll report back, hopefully with pictures.