Why Is Club Fitting Essential for Improving Distance and Lowering Scores on the Golf Course?

Okay, so obviously I swing the club quite fast, or else you would likely not be here even reading this. But to get into the extremes of why this is so important, and how I started realizing that a one-size-fits-all or just popular option might not always be the right move.

I'm going back to the beginning of when I started playing golf. I was gifted a set of "Goliath" clubs for Christmas after showing some interest over the summer. I would head over to our arena field in my small town with my childhood best friend, also named Ryan. He was a heck of a player and wanted me to learn so we could play together. He brought me out to the field to hit a pitching wedge back and forth. Once I figured out that if I just smash down on it really hard, the ball would pop up and go around 100 yards, give or take. I was around 11-12 at the time. Needless to say, once I got those starter clubs, I was super excited to learn how to actually play the game.

My first year on the course, I entered my first junior tournament and got paired with a really good golfer, who was literally half my size (no joke), but he could play and hit it pretty damn good. As I slashed it around the course, he went on to, I believe, win our age group easily and finish 2nd overall. Not only was I stuck admiring his game, but also his clubs. He had a full set of TaylorMade Ti Bubble 2 woods and the Burner Tour irons, those are the clubs I only ever saw on TV and in magazines up until that point. I thought it was so cool and must have been why he was so good. It really wasn't why he was so good; he could just flat out play. But the idea of the coolest and best clubs always sparked my interests from then on out.

The following year, I saved up a couple of hundred dollars and bought myself a new driver, thinking it would fix my problems off the tee. It was a Top Flite Intimidator 2 with this bubble thing down near the kick point, and man, I thought it was cool. Well, I snapped that shaft at the hosel from hitting too many shots off the heel with such a bad swing and a huge over-the-top slice. No, and I mean no club was fixing that slice. So then, after we got it fixed, I needed to fix my swing.

Fast forward a couple of years of me slashing it around, I actually started to develop a game from tee to green, but having cool clubs was always still in my mind. We didn't really have club fitting back then, more just trial and error as I grew up in a very small town with just a 9-hole golf course in Northwestern Ontario called the North Shore Golf Club. But what I did do is find an internet forum that had a swap section, where people would trade clubs back and forth. That summer, I don't think I had the same driver for 2 weeks before I was trading it off for another one to try this and try that. Then my little brother got involved, and we ended up with some pretty cool stuff over the years, but still, nothing was ever "fit" to us, just extra stiff and let's see how this goes. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn't. Honestly, the term is "Club hoe," and the first thing I can do is admit to it. I always liked having tour issue or prototype equipment just as it somewhat made me the only one to have it.

Now, fast forward again to my early Longdrive years. We obviously didn't have adapters on our drivers back then, and as a nobody in the sport, I was just happy to get stuff here and there at a discount or from friends I had made. But again, there was no really fitting to be done; a lot was best guess. Just get stuff, try it, and walk off yardages (still the truest way to see what is going the furthest) to see what was going the furthest and straightest. We could start to kind of figure out over a few months what had been working, but if you happened to improve your swing speed, change your launch dynamics, or any factor that relates to the angle at which you made contact with the ball, you were likely going to have to try something different to maximize distance.

Technology now and moving forward, there are zero reasons not to be fitted for clubs. Every solid fitter has an arsenal of options to hit and try for every swing on the planet, so getting fit in that moment should not really be overly difficult. You would have the number right in front of you, and based on those factors, you could make your final decision based on performance, price point, feel, and other objective data that was collected.

But here is where it gets a bit tricky: when is the best time to get fit? For now, let's keep it in the theme of being a driver. Well, if it's the time of year this is being written, deep into the fall just prior to winter starting off, going in and getting a baseline might be a good idea of where you are currently with your equipment and setup. If you don't plan to make any changes to your swing or do any intense work on your game over the winter, then it should all be just fine.

On the flip side of that, if you plan on making some major swing changes and gaining a ton of speed, the shaft that works today might not be the shaft that works at the end of your off-season. You might have gained speed, changed your swing in the process, added angle of attack, decreased spin loft, or dynamic loft (usually go hand in hand). Either way, a shaft that fit pretty well at 110mph might not fit as well at 120mph, and in long drive, 135 and 150 are definitely big differences. To make those types of changes, you absolutely made some changes to your swing in order to get there.

Saving time and money. Well, if you're like me, just a complete club junkie, you are going to want to try everything you can get your hands on. I think for some of us, it's not even about thinking we will end up using it, but more about the fact that we gave it a try. I have a thing for exotic shafts from Japan. Even though I generally end up back with an Accra shaft when it's competition time, I always find it fun to try things from the Japanese market. We can thank companies like Miura for that, as anyone who plays golf has likely heard of the aura of Miura craftsmanship with their irons. But at the end of the day, it's about what gets the job done best for your goals and, of course, your budget. I will say you would be very surprised at what is available on the market today at great prices that won't break the bank. The shaft I used to break the ball speed world record wasn't some thousand-dollar crazy expensive material golf shaft; it was the Accra FX 140 M0 flex(video below), which I believe is around $300 and would be considered a senior/whippy flex shaft. The reality is, from my knowledge, which is albeit limited, super expensive high-tonnage graphite can't really be used in these lighter and whippy shafts since their tensile strength isn't meant to bend as much. But that is definitely a deeper discussion that I would still love to learn more about. Yes, the club junkie in me still holds a strong place.

If I had to generally pick a single time to get fit, it would be mid-spring. You should be quite close to your offseason peak if you followed the suggested programming in my training. This also allows time to have things ordered and built before the beginning of the season. Find the best fitter in your area, book an appointment, always book extra time, and don't rush it. Go in fresh and prepared, not tired and exhausted. This is to put your best foot forward as to what you're really capable of. Until next time.

RG