So, you’ve worked hard on your game, gotten lessons, and you are now a ten handicap or less, and you find it hard to shave off additional strokes. Well, it may be time to step up to custom fit clubs. I don’t mean getting fit at a PGA Tour superstore, let’s kick this up a notch.
Custom club building is a science, and not all club fitters are equipped with the machines and experience to be able to give you a truly custom set. With your current clubs, you may be asking yourself, why is it I can’t hit my 5-iron, but I love my 7-iron. Well, your 7-iron may have the right swing weight, frequency, and shaft spline lining up correctly. Your 5-iron may have an extra stiff shaft by accident, swing weight off, or the lie is off a few degrees.
Where to start?
First, you have to find the right club fitter. Depending on where you live, this could be easy, or you might have to travel. With this, the internet is your friend! With me, I started searching for club fitters in my area that would “Hot Melt” drivers. I will explain this later in the article but know this is not something any old club fitter will do. It takes experience and understanding. For me, living in Orlando, Florida, the place turned out to be Jessy James Golf. Mike, the owner, started as an aspiring professional player and parlayed that playing experience into a job in a tour van and ultimately into opening his shop.
When you start a fitting, start with finding the correct shaft. You will hit hundreds of balls with every shaft you can imagine, a large number of them you never knew existed! After talking to him for a few minutes, you can understand their quality and why they are worth your consideration! He explains how, with the shaft, he is looking at your swing, and trying to find the perfect bend profile that fits you. He is optimizing your angle of descent into the ball, spin rate, shot dispersion, and carry distance. It’s incredible how much these numbers change from shaft to shaft. Once he narrows it down to a few good candidates, he will ask you to hit different shot shapes (if you can). Once you get to a certain level, players will want the ability to hit a shot lower, higher, fade, or draw if you need it. This level of workability is essential to Mike, as he knows there will be a day you need it on the course.
Once you have your shaft dialed in, then we start the discussion about the heads. What you like, what you look for in a club, etc. You need a golf club that not only performs well but something you like to look at. After some more testing, you have your club!
Now we are just getting started!
The Lie
We don’t just mean adjusting the lie to get the club flat on the ground at impact. That’s important, as one degree off can equal 10 yards right or left of your target (depending on distance). Pros will tinker with lies on each club. Phil Mickelson once said, if you have a 9-iron that fades and all the rest of your clubs draw, adjust the lie on the 9-iron 1/2 or 1 degree upright, and your problem is solved! For me, Mike started with a neural lie then ended up adjusting mine a half a degree upright. As I hit shots with my club, he would adjust one way or the other to find that sweet spot where my swings produced the most consistent ball flight with the shot shape I was after. One interesting thing mentioned was how forged irons are still quite soft. After you have your set made and dialed in, keep detailed notes on your club setups, because you should have them checked and adjusted now and again, depending on how much you play. Tour pros have these numbers checked every month!
Lofts, and Distance Gapping
What most people also forget to scrutinize is the lofts. You want equal distance gaps from your long iron through your wedges. Twelve yards per club is a great starting point for someone with moderately fast swing speed. What you are looking to avoid is an 18-yard gap on one club and an 8-yard gap on another. You can custom bend your lofts to make sure these distance gaps are perfect, with a little help from trackman and a good fitter. Most club manufacturers have been making club lofts stronger as a way to show a distance increase. That might be great to hit an 8-iron when you used to hit a 7, but let’s think about this for a second. What happened to that perfect gap between your pitching wedge and your gap wedge? It used to be 125 yards for PW and 110 for the gap wedge, and now the PW goes 135 yards. Now you have a 25-yard gap between some pretty important scoring clubs! You’d better be getting a stronger gap and sand wedge to get better distance gapping! Instead of 48, 52, 56, 60, now you may have to hit a 45, 50, 55, 60. Or another alternative maybe 45, 49, 53, 58. It’s up to you what feels right, but trust me, every pro on tour has this dialed in and documented. When you see a tour pro nose down in their books, they are referring to these numbers. This topic is an integral part of the discussion with your club fitter, so make sure to have it. They will surely have lots of ideas on how to address it.
Swing Weight
You hear people say, “well, mine are D2”. What does that even mean? Swing weight is the relationship between the weight of the head and the shaft. It’s a measurement of where the balance point exists in relation to the weight of the clubhead. There are two keys to Swing weight. First, you should have your clubs checked to see what they are now. Your club fitter can do this. You can work on this with the fitter, or tinker with it yourself on the range. Once on the range with some lead tape, hit some shots with a mid-iron like a 6 or 7.
Note the shot shape, fade, draw, or straight. Now add a couple of pieces of lead tape to the back of the iron towards the bottom. Now hit four more shots and see if it changes your shot shape and take note of how it feels. Continue to do this 3 or 4 more times by adding the lead tape, hitting shots, and noting the ball flight and feel. What we’re looking for is that sweet spot where you were hitting shots at your desired shot shape the most consistent with the club feeling good in your hands. Put the right amount of lead tape on that matched your favorite feel and shot shape. Now take that back to your club fitter and have them measure what the swing weight is, set up just right. Now they set up your whole set to match that same swing weight.
Usually, your wedges will be slightly heavier than the rest of your set, about 2 to 3 full swing points. That will match the feel you are looking for with every iron. It will lead to a lot of hitting consistency throughout your set. The lead tape can undoubtedly be your friend, but don’t let anyone ever put weights in the hozzle before they attach the shaft. You may think this looks much nicer than lead tape, but what happens is that adds more weight to the heel of the club, effectively moving the sweet spot of the iron closer to the heel. If you apply the lead tape to the back of the iron towards the bottom, you are placing it behind the ball. The key is distributing the added weight evenly across the entire head, keeping the sweet spot in the proper place, the middle.
For the top PGA pros, it’s important to them that the logos are visible, so they resort to more sneaky methods. They may have the club manufacturer bore out the bottom of the iron and add tungsten metal plugs to add more weight. Another way is using different grips that have a lighter or heavier weight or counterbalance the shaft with inserts inside the shaft up by the grip. One important thing to note is the grips you use. Once you have the clubs dialed in, you can’t change grips to a different model. Not all grips weigh the same, and adding 4 grams difference with a different model can mean your once dialed in clubs are now way off, and there goes all that consistency you worked so hard to get!
Staying on the topic of Swing weight for a minute, let’s talk about your woods. Have you ever gone to watch a PGA tour event and noticed that when the pros hit the ball, it just sounds different than our regular drivers? It’s not from higher swing speed, but more likely from a little-known swing weight trick called “Hot Melt.” A tool resembling a hot glue gun is used to inject hot melt inside of a driver head. By injecting hot melt in specific spots you can achieve the proper swing weight for your driver. If you need more weight towards the heel to promote a draw, they can put it there, or if you want to promote more of a fade, they will add some towards the toe. If you want to change the center of gravity, they can add hot melt to the bottom of the head, or some to the top. The custom options with Hot Melt are endless, and you have to trust this work with someone who knows what they are doing, once the Hot Melt gets injected, there is no going back, it’s in there for good.
Frequency Checking
Most people never bother to check this, but it can make a big difference! Make sure to pick a club-fitter that can do this. There are a few different manufacturers that make frequency checking tools, some computerized, and some more old school. They will put the grip end of your club in a vice and pull on the head and watch the wiggle of the club back and forth. The measurement tool will give you a readout. The readouts should start relatively low and move up slightly 8-12 units of measurement per club. As the clubs get shorter, the numbers go up. What does all this mean? When you get your set, if it is a regular shaft set, a senior club set, or a stiff club set, there is an expectation that all the clubs are the same stiffness. Well guess what, club manufacturers don’t always check stiffness in every shaft, you could have a club that is way stiffer than the rest, or way softer than the rest. Having this checked and verified makes sure you didn’t get a dud in your set, which would change the consistency of that club since it isn’t fit correctly for your swing speed. I recently bought a 3-wood with a stiff shaft off the shelf, and when I brought it to Jessy James Golf, they checked it and low and behold it was an extra stiff shaft. I certainly learned my lesson.
Almost all pros “Pure” their shafts. Why do they do this? Two reasons… 1. It’s free for them. 2. It has been proven to increase distance, provide better-shot dispersion, and consistency! This machine is a patented device that checks your shafts before a head is glued on. The fitter will put a round device on the shaft and wiggle it, much like the frequency device. A computer reads how the shaft bends and will find the truest bend in relation to the spline. Not all shafts are created equal; each shaft starts as flat material and is rolled into the shaft shape and molded together. This spot where the shaft is connected is the spline.
Now here’s where it gets interesting, if your head is glued on the shaft with the spline lined up properly, you will get an extremely consistent bend every time the shaft is flexed during the swing. Without the spline lined up, you can get a much more inconsistent bend. We all know very slight differences in the way a club behaves can lead to significant differences 250-300 yards away, so this could make a difference for you! Clubmakers usually charge for each shaft. You should have at least your graphite shafts “Pured” if having them custom-built if not all of them! Not everyone has this machine, so to find someone that can “Pure” your shafts, visit this website: http://sstpure.com/#licensee
There you can click on the map of the United States and find the nearest fitter with the proper device and training.
Wedges
Wedge, the most critical scoring clubs do need time to dial in. We already talked about gapping the lofts correctly above along with matching swing weight, but there is more to consider. Most wedge makers offer many different “Sole Grinds” for your consideration. Most club makers will tackle Wedges during a completely separate fitting session. Usually, this will happen around a real green so you can hit the clubs with the grinds and decide what feels right for you. This feel depends on what type of swing you have, steep or shallow, with course conditions, firm or tight. Usually, you can pick one wedge with more bounce, and one with less bounce for tight lies. Many pros will change out bounces from week to week, depending on the course they are playing that week. Sounds good, I wish we all had those types of endless options! You will want some versatility with a great feel, and don’t forget; the bounce is your friend!
I’m not going to get into custom-fit putters in this article, but trust me, this has a lot of data and tweaks to consider as well; we’ll discuss that another time!
Again, as a reference:
For finding someone that can “Pure” your shafts, visit this website: http://sstpure.com/#licensee
There you can click on the map of the United States and find the nearest fitter with the proper device and training.
For “Hot Melting” and Frequency checking, you will have to brush off your Google skills and look for a fitter nearest you that advertises “Hot Melt” and “Frequency Analyzer” as the services they offer. You can find them, it’s just not something most of the public knows about as even possible!
If your local fitter has these services offered above (Pureing, Hot Melting, and Frequency Analysis), they will undoubtedly have Loft, Lie, and Swing Weight adjustment tools. These are the more mainstream adjustments most people will look for with any fitter.
Thank you to @jessyjamesgolf for the great insight and knowledge!