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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2009 (Part 8)

Fitting To the Nth Degree

“Real Tour Fitting” and the “Amateur Alternative”

by Leith Anderson

There are many levels of “club fitting”. The key to a positive outcome is matching a player’s talent, goals and budget with time and expense.

A golfer who plays occasionally and shoots in the nineties and higher can’t have a consistent swing. The goal with that player is to figure out what swing will come next? Do we fit the best good swing or the average swing?

The greatest challenge for a club fitter is the very good player. The very good player has the hands to “feel” the club and the eyes to “see” the ball flight. He will make his club choice by what he feels and sees.

The ultimate question is “how do we find the right clubs for that player’s hands and eyes?”

True “Tour” Fitting

The advent of launch monitors has lulled amateur golfers into thinking that they have access to all of the technology and services available to PGA Tour Professionals. Every club fitter today advertises “Tour” fittings.

The scenario: You hit a bunch of balls. The launch monitor records your “launch ballistics”. The club fitter plugs those numbers into a software program that spits out a list of “recommended” shafts and flexes. They expect you to buy the one on the top of the printout. They call that a “fitting”.

It is a huge mistake to believe that you have received a “Tour” fitting if you rely on launch monitor data and computer software to make the choice for you.

Every Tour Players has a cadre of professionals who know their game and watch every swing, every shot, day after day. The caddy is the most committed critic since he only gets paid if his player does well. He’s “fitting” his player every day.

Then, there are the “tour reps”. Most are former Tour players – well known and skilled. Credible. Their job? Get their company’s product into the hands of a player who makes the cut. They are motivated. There’s a lot of money on the line if their “in the bag” numbers go up. Those statistics get published weekly. They have a bag full of “Tour Only” shafts just in case the standard product doesn’t feel quite right.

Imagine you’re a Tour Pro and you’re on the range at a PGA Event. You’re hitting your driver and the Fujikura rep comes up and says: Please, please, please try our new Motore driver shaft. You say, “OK, bring me one.”

Fifteen minutes later he’s back with a driver head from your private drawer in “your” Tour Van set up with the new Fujikura Motore set to the flex you’re known to favor. You hit a few drives. You’re not happy. You turn around to the Rep and say, “feels soft”. He says “sorry, no problem”.

Fifteen minutes later he’s back. This time with a brand new Motore shaft tip trimmed an extra half an inch. “Sahib, does that combination satisfy your Royal requirements?”

If not, fifteen minutes later . . . And so on . . . And so on. . .

The Tour Reps also have a “business development budget”. How about a caviar lunch for your caddy?

The Tour Player himself is no novice. He has been “fitted” dozens of times at the Taylor Made “Kingdom”, the Nike “Oven” or Callaway headquarters. He probably has a launch monitor in his back yard. There’s a long list of Tour players who have bought the $25,000 Trackman just to check their yardages in practice. He knows his “launch ballistics” and carry distances by heart.

Tour Professionals don’t trust a computer and software to recommend their “best fit”. Ask a Tour Professional how he’s going to pick a shaft, or a golf club, and he’ll say: “Hit it”.

If he hits it well, if it feels good and if the ball flight is correct, then he might make sure it’s OK with launch monitor verification.

For a Professional, the launch monitor is employed after he “feels” and “sees”, not before.

Tiger Woods Fitting

A couple of years ago a story hit the wire services. Nike wanted Tiger to play a Nike driver. Nike didn’t pick one driver from launch monitor data and say “This is the one”. No sir! They sent Tiger 120 drivers for him to hit, feel and see. 120 drivers “all the same”. Did Tiger hit them all? Probably. He was searching for his “Magic Driver”. He must have found the one he liked best. That’s testimony for “always buy the demo”.

Recently I reported a James Achenbach article about Tiger Woods testing irons. The story was that he had eight sets, some SST PUREd ™, some not. He picked the PUREd ™ irons out of the bunch. A very good player has a highly developed sense of feel. When he chooses his clubs, it won’t be because a launch monitor told him which ones are “right”.

No two golf clubs are exactly alike. The Tiger Woods examples illustrate that there is no such thing as identical when it comes to golf clubs. Shafts and heads are “hand made”. A human being wraps plies of graphite fabric on a spinning mandrel to manufacture a graphite shaft. A human being welds titanium clubheads together to manufacture a head. A human being puts them together. The manufacturing process is not precise.

The Magic Driver is all about feel and ball flight. Same for the Magic Irons. The launch monitor does a good job of comparing performance between two clubs that you are testing. The launch monitor identifies a range of club specifications that perform well. A launch monitor cannot feel and see. A launch monitor cannot write the “build out blueprint” for your Magic Clubs.

“Tour Fittings for Amateurs”

It’s a dream to imagine “Tour Treatment” if you’re an amateur golfer. You will never have access to so much professional advice, so many products, and such attention, all at zero cost to you.

But, there are things that you can do to approximate the “Tour” experience.

You need launch monitor data. There are two kinds of data. The most common is your “launch ballistics” – ball speed, launch angle and spin rate. Launch ballistics are useful when you’re trying to optimize the performance of your driver. If your launch angle and spin rate match up well for your ball speed, you can progress to “fine tuning” your driver. Your launch ballistics will be compared to “theoretically perfect”. If you’re within a narrow correct range, the only thing you can do is change the physical specifications to increase ball speed. That’s assuming that you’re looking for more distance.

The second kind of data is provided by a different type of launch monitor. Think of it as “swing analysis”. Do you know your swing path, face angle at impact, launch angle, clubhead speed and the variation in all of the readings? Those are important technical details that you need to understand the character, consistency and efficiency of your swing.

For amateurs, the primary goal of a first fitting is to understand the fundamentals of their swing, to find out the true specifications of the clubs they’re playing and to test the performance of their clubs with their swing. An experienced club fitter then evaluates possible areas for improvement.

A first fitting looks for obvious mis-matches. Are the clubs too long or too short, too heavy or too light? Are the shafts too stiff or too soft? That’s the “low hanging fruit”. The player’s current clubs are then compared by launch monitor testing with test clubs, looking for MEASURABLE performance improvements: higher ball speed, better trajectory, more consistent swing path and face angle at impact and better center face contact.

For most amateur golfers, that’s enough. If you get the shaft length, weight and flex right. If the head style matches your swing. If you’re making solid contact and controlling the club, your equipment will “take you to the next level”.

But there’s always a player who is not satisfied with a “good fit”. He’s got talent, experience, training and the desire to be as good as he can be. That player knows that he’s looking for the “magic”. He knows that the only way he will find it is a lengthy search, constantly refining his feel by hitting dozens of combinations of heads and shafts until he finds the one that’s better than all others. He will need the help of launch monitors as well as a club fitter who can supply him with a steady stream of test clubs, each built to known specifications. In the end, the very good player will choose his clubs the same way as the Tour Professionals. His hands and eyes will make the choice.

Dan and Alan Nishiguchi

Alan called from Chicago one afternoon. He explained that he was on a quest to “figure out” golf clubs – helping his son Dan – a very serious plus three handicap. I asked: was Dan on the road to the PGA Tour? Alan, a committed supporter, but also a realistic observer said: “I’m not sure he has the talent, but he’s very good and I’m going to find out”.

Dan had just finished an intensive six month program at the IMG Golf Academy in Florida. That was “all golf all the time”. The day started at 6:30 with a round of golf. Finish before lunch. After lunch, three or four hours on the range and short game area. Hit the course again late in the afternoon. Eat. Fall into bed. Sundays were “off” – a recreational round of golf.

Dan had been fitted dozens of times before. The various Tour Vans visited the IMG Academy almost weekly. In the meantime the father-son team had made their treks to the Taylor Made “Kingdom” and Hot Stix in Scottsdale, AZ. In each case, the recommendation came up a little short of what they were looking for.

Alan picked up on my offer to start a fitting with a round of golf. Alan bought tickets from Chicago to San Francisco for Wednesday, June 24th. We agreed to meet up at the Palo Alto Muni at 8 the next morning.

Over the years, I have made an offer to play a round of golf with any serious Golf Lab client. My “mornings at the Muni” became a popular way to get acquainted with a player’s personality and game. There is no better way to start a fitting process than seeing a player on the golf course.

Launch monitors, as a class of gizmos, are quirky. There are three principal technologies utilized to “measure” the ball in flight. At the Golf Lab, we have discovered that you need all three if you want a complete electronic picture of what a player is doing on the course. Even then, it is simply true that some players strike the ball differently indoors and outdoors. The very best to way to get to know what a player’s game is like is to watch him play.

In Dan’s case there were two immediate revelations. On the first hole, he showed he was a disciplined course manager and confident in his game. The range was closed that morning at the Muni so we just walked to the first tee. The first at Palo Alto Muni is a par 5 – short on the card but almost never reached in two. Dan pulled his second shot close to a tree about 85 yards from the green. He took a quick look at his shot and chipped it backwards. Not one player in a hundred would have taken that route. Americans just don’t understand going backward. They would rather hang by their knees from a tree limb than turn around. In Dan’s case it was the “sure” shot. Rather than take a chance on solid contact from an awkward stance, he simply turned around. From 85 yards he went backwards to 95. Now in the fairway, he hit a simple sand wedge close to the hole.

The next revelation was that Dan’s wedge play was superlative. The second hole at Paly is one of the toughest. If you pull your drive, which Dan did, you get behind a tree that blocks access to the green. The play is short and right of the green. The problem from there is the next shot needs to be very precise. Over a hump that guards the right side to a downhill slope. Dan hit it stiff from there. Impressive.

The forth hole is the longest par four, number one handicap. Dan hit his driver just short of the 150 pole. That was very good distance – 265 into the wind. Then he hit a six iron with a perfect draw to six feet. He made the putt. The guy could play.

As the round went on, Dan’s wedges were spot on. He birdied all of the par 5’s from 30-40 yards in front of the green. None of the birdie puts was longer than eight feet. Two were kick-ins.

At the ninth hole, Dan had a chance to go for the green. He heeled his three metal. Not a disaster, but a miss.

Conversation on the course focused on what Dan and Alan were trying to accomplish. Alan viewed the weak part of Dan’s game was his long fairway approaches. The miss with the three metal stood out. Dan’s fairway metals and utility clubs were stock Taylor Made’s. Another question mark.

The round was “semi serious”. I dropped a couple of extra balls when I missed a shot I should have made. Dan played straight. He finished a couple under par, very good after a long plane ride and a stiff start.

Now, we were ready for the next step.

Back at the Golf Lab

The first step in understanding a player’s equipment is to measure what he’s playing with. There are four key measurements: Club length, shaft weight, shaft flex and loft and lie. Grip size and type is noted.

With his irons, Dan was playing Project X 6.0 shafts in Taylor Made heads. When we put Project X shafts on our frequency meter, we get readings that show “extremely stiff”. Dating all the way back to 1974, Dr. Joe Braley used a butt clamp and a frequency meter to measure “cycles per minute” (CPM) – oscillating the shaft - and translating that reading into a “flex value” by locating a point on a “slope chart”. That came to be the “standard”.

A lot of water has passed under the dam since 1973. Since then, a competing system of measurement to interpret flexes was developed by the Professional Clubmakers’ Society (PCS). It was called the “Equalizer”. The two systems do not agree. With the Equalizer, 4.5 is “regular”, 5.5 is “stiff” and 6.5 is “extra stiff”.

We tested Dan’s iron and wedge shafts by the PCS Equalizer “standard”. No surprise, they tested very stiff – the PCS “standard” is about a flex and a half “softer” than the original Royal Precision “standard”. The “6.0” on Royal Precision was “7.5” on the Equalizer. That gave me a clue. Some players do well with very stiff shafts, some do better with a little more feedback – provided by softer shafts. I planned to test iron shafts with a little softer flex.

Dan’s swing speed with a six iron is 85 MPH with a 165 projected carry distance. Measurements were provided by our Achiever launch monitor. His driver swing speed averaged 105 MPH with a carry of 235. Those are average numbers for a very good player. The driver distance was a little short for a player contemplating the Tour. By swing speed alone, the appropriate shaft flex for Dan’s clubs would be between “Stiff” and “Extra Stiff”.

At the Golf Lab we don’t rely on swing speed to recommend flex. A far more reliable indicator comes from the Max Out Shaft Max. The Shaft Max is an instrumented club that measures the “load” a player puts on a club and plots that against a timeline. We get a graph that maps a player’s acceleration – a reliable indicator of swing efficiency. We also get a numerical value for load – on a scale of 1-12.

Dan’s load factor was “7”. There is no “right or wrong” with shaft load. Some players with very fast swing speeds don’t load the shaft all that much. Dan’s load factor indicated a flex between regular and stiff. It would be important to test softer flexes.

Indoor Testing

Some club testing can be completed accurately indoors. We like indoor testing to optimize drivers for spin rate. That is because it is so difficult to find an outdoor venue where a player can hit the balls he plays. It does no good to “optimize” a driver hitting range balls.

Comparative club performance is also accurately measured indoors. In addition to “raw” numbers like ball speed, indicating increased carry distance, indoor testing permits subtle comparisons. Does a player control a lighter weight club better? If so, that will be indicated by a more consistent swing path and face angle at impact. These are things that you can’t see in outdoor testing.

Dan’s driver proved to be a problem we couldn’t improve. We use the Max Out Launch Max launch monitor, a technology based on high speed photography. The Launch Max takes two photographs of the golf ball, and then, by registering the movement of small colored dots, gives a very accurate estimate of ball speed, launch angle, spin rate and carry distance.

Dan was playing a 10.5* Taylor Made R7 Quad. It’s a little old by today’s standards but it’s not like Dan hasn’t tried the newer versions. He has a swing that produces “high spin” and the R7 Quad is as good as any driver he has tried. In many previous tests, Dan produced spin numbers in the mid 3000 RPM. We confirmed those numbers with the Launch Max.

When we find a player who hits his driver with “high spin” we automatically go to our demos. We have the three drivers that we think are the lowest spin heads ever made. We pair them up with the lowest spin shafts ever made. Our view is that if a player can spin one of those, it’s the swing, not the club.

We handed Dan the Adams 9015 A4 shafted with a Matrix F7M2. Spin Rate: 3400.

We tried the Nike Tour Square shafted with the Diamana White Board. Spin Rate 3400.

Finally, the Bridgestone J-33 shafted with the venerable Fujikura 757. Spin Rate 3400.

With Dan’s ball speed, we were looking for about 2500 RPM. Combined with a negative “angle of attack”, we concluded that the R7 with the Fujikura Speeder 757 was going to be the “best it could be” – at least until Dan solved his swing issues.

We turned attention to irons. I wanted to see how softer iron shafts tested. Sure enough, a little more flex produced a little more distance with more consistency.

Time for outdoor testing.

“Hands on” at the Range

By Thursday afternoon we were ready for range testing.

Working from the “top down” our principal challenge was the long fairway metals. I picked a demo of every head shape available. We worked traditional pear shaped heads against the Nike square heads. I set them up with a variety of shafts, focusing at the beginning of “softer tips” – this year’s “new thing”. Since Dan is not a super-long hitter, I put a couple of fairway metals that are known to produce a little more ball speed in the mix. I included a couple of generations of the Tour Edge “Exotics” and the Wishon 919.

There’s a loophole in the USGA rules. The .83 “rebound effect” that limits the resilience of a driver face does not pertain to clubs with 15* loft or higher. Consequently, a couple of manufacturers offered fairway metals with more “pop” in the last few years. The company that set the standard was Tour Edge. They brought out a fairway metal – their “Exotic” which they sold for $399. That was a princely price for a company that usually haunts the middle to lower end of the price spectrum. No problem, they sold like water in the desert.

At the Golf Lab, we have favored the Wishon line of “component” club heads. Wishon was all over the loophole. His 949 model has been out best seller for over a year. It is built with the ability to alter weight easily. One of the things we have noted over the years is that fairway metals are usually too long and too light in the head for most players.

After trying all of the heads we could find, Dan chose the “original” Tour Edge 3 metal. A design two years old. We made it work by adding 9 grams of extra weight.

Some very good players go with “matched” fairway metals. It’s pretty common to see a 3 (15*), 5 (18*) and 7 (21*) combination. Very good players tend to be very good iron players. Our experience is that very good players get better results with utility models at 18* and 21*.
Utility clubs are the most mysterious category to me. They seem to be the most difficult for a player to find the right head shape and match it up with a shaft that works.

I had a hunch. My all time favorite utility model is the Bridgestone J-33 from a couple of years ago. I’ve played it shafted with the Aerotech 95 gram Steel fiber and the Nippon 950. I gave Dan one of each with a selection of others from Adams, Nickent, Mizuno and Nike.

The “Irons Story” was the most interesting.

My “theory” was that Dan’s iron shafts were too stiff. I wasn’t making that up. Our Shaft Max electronic gizmo was telling me that even though Dan had a swing speed in the 85 MPH range with his 6 iron, he wasn’t putting all that much pressure on the shaft.

I was thinking about iron shafts with a softer feel. When I recommended that Dan try the Aerotech Steel Fiber (graphite) shafts, he looked like I punched him in the gut.

I think he would have bet his car against a hot dog that he wouldn’t choose graphite over steel.

So we set up the irons test. I offered a spectrum of head styles: all of the Mizunos, the Adams “Pro” series including the “Tour Only” models in smoke and satin finish, KZG and every Japanese “boutique” model from Miura, Endo and Vega.

I offered all of the current shafts. The “usual suspects” from True Temper: Dyamic Gold, SL, Tour Concept and Project X. I snuck in one Aerotech 110.

There followed a few sessions of swapping heads and shafts. We mixed flexes from 4.5 to 7.0.

For irons, I was thinking a little more of a forged look and feel. I like a thinner sole grind for very good players. To me, even a slightly wider sole inhibits solid contact. I think that problem is exacerbated on golf courses with firm fairways – the certain trend of the future. I thought that Dan might like a more compact head with a thinner sole than his Taylor Mades.

On Thursday afternoon Alan and Dan headed for the range at Coyote Creek – the only public range in the Bay Area with lush grass. They knew it wouldn’t do any good to test irons and fairway metals on mats or sandy lies.

We met back up on Friday morning to go over results. There was one immediate winner. He held up the Bridgestone J-33 21* utility and said “you can’t have it back”.

Based on Dan’s feedback I swapped heads and shafts to match up the ones he liked the best. I built an 18* J-33 to match the 21*. The 15* three wood was presenting a problem. We weren’t close. I tried another bouquet of fancy shafts: the Mitsubishi Redboard, the ACCRA Dymatch series even the venerable Graphite Design YS-6. The three wood head choice was narrowed down to one of the “hot” ones: the Tour Edge and the Wishon.

After an afternoon on the range they were back again Friday evening. We did it all again. One surprise was that the 18* J-33 was “unhittable”. A perfect match for the 21*. That goes to show that matching heads don’t necessarily match. We began to zero in on the irons. Dan focused in on the Adams Pro Gold and MacGregor muscle back. He liked the Miura 301 but the other Japanese boutique irons were not interesting. For iron shafts, the first one he eliminated was the Project X. We tried the Nippon 950 in stiff and extra stiff. The front runner became the Aerotech 110 gram Steel Fiber in a PCS 5.5 flex value.

I was up early Saturday morning to work on the next set of demos. In a fit of inspiration I matched up the Tour Edge 3 wood with a Graphite Design 902 PM (Phil Michelson) model. I worked up a new version of the Adams Aerotech combo, this time with the Adams “Tour” head in a smoke finish. I went with an Adams Pro Gold 18* utility set up to match the Bridgestone J-33.

You will notice we left wedges alone. After watching Dan play, I could see no reason to change his wedges. Nothing says that all of the clubs need to “match” through your set. We left the Taylor Made wedges alone, despite their pipe-stiff Project X shafts. We also left Dan’s putter alone.

The Envelope Please

By Saturday afternoon, Dan made his choices.

3 wood: Tour Edge “Exotics” – 2007 model, Graphite Design 902 PM, stiff.

Utilities: Bridgestone J-33 21* and Adams Pro Golf 18* - both shafted with Nippon 950, stiff.

Irons: Adams “Tour” heads, smoke finish – shafted with Aerotech 110 Steel Fiber shafts, stiff.

The big surprise to Dan was the Aerotech shafts in his irons. He said he would have bet his car against choosing graphite shafts.

The big surprise for most Golf Equipment Chronicles readers should be that some golf club designs from prior years are “timeless”. With everything to choose from, Dan picked two models that were over two years old. So much for “newer is always better.”

Over the three day period, I became a close observer of Dan’s game. I listened closely to what he had to say about feel and ball flight. I built and rebuilt over 40 golf clubs for testing. In the end, we got a good result. Was it perfect? Probably not. We could have continued testing indefinitely – each time getting half the distance closer to the goal line.

I’m sure we’ll be hearing about the Dan and Alan Nishiguchi saga in the future.

Leith Anderson is a Partner in the Golf Lab, Palo Alto, CA.
He will answer any and all questions about club fitting and club making. Contact: Leith@calgolftech.com. Or by phone (650) 493-1770