Article #1: Why Clubfitting Matters

So you've decided to take some steps to improve your game. You may have bought MotionPro! Good choice, it's one of the best out there and one of my most important tools in club fitting. You may have even taken a lesson or two, or gotten advice from a golfer you see as much better than yourself. As with every golfing fanatic you may be considering new sticks. Would it surprise you if I said how you swing a club is dictated by the shaft in that club? This isn't as prevalent in irons as it is in woods but it's still there.

While there are definite performance characteristics associated with club heads, how we swing them is determined by what the shaft does. I've seen it many times. Same head, two very different shafts of the same flex mind you, and the golfer swings them totally differently. Why does this happen? In a word, neurons. Those tiny little things in our body that fire off messages to our brain about what is happening to the muscles and nerves in our body. And what are they saying during a golf swing that can affect how we swing that club? The shaft interactions with our hands are constantly giving us feedback about things like club head position, head orientation, and head speed. How a shaft reacts to our swing determines how we react to that shaft. With a pro they can sense these changes and react to produce a positive outcome. I'm sure given a few swings at it Tiger could hit a golf ball with a flat rock attached to a stick. The rest of us are not so lucky.

Given enough time and practice we can usually produce some positive outcomes with whatever clubs we happen to use. The problem is those positive outcomes are still too few and too far between. Isn't there possibly a better way? Yes, there is: Custom Fitting. Now before you claim that you're not good enough to be custom fitted let me ask this. If what you're hitting doesn't fit you very well how can you ever get better? It takes a monstrous amount of practice with ill fitted clubs to get any better. I know, I've been there. It's what drove me to find better clubs myself. In the process I learned a great deal about how clubs work and how clubs fit, and that process continues today with ever more knowledge as the technology and understanding of club dynamics get further defined. So the question becomes "How do I get the clubs that are right for me?". Only two ways. Find a professional fitter/club builder that guarantees his work, or do it yourself. While the first option might appear to be much more expensive it generally isn't, because if you choose the second one the time investment is huge, and can get exponentially more expensive in terms of buying things to try without success. So why not just go to a sporting good store and buy the best they have available? Isn't that exactly where you are now? Maybe you don't have the absolute best (or latest for that matter). Think your next set is going to fit you any better?

Read the rest of this article....