Driver fitting...what’s involved?

[MartynB]

Got a callaway XHot 10 degree stiff shaft which I wasn’t fitted for. Think I’m more towards regular and got my eye on a Ping G25 (last of the big spenders) on eBay.

I’ve been fitted for my irons and wonder what combinations are involved in driver fitting. Is it just shaft length, stiffness and loft? How many total combinations does the fitter have at his or her disposal?

Fancy a new driver but not willing to pay silly money and happy with a model from a few years ago, G25 or G30 maybe. Thoughts?

 

[Parsaregood]

Depends where you go, a specialist fitter would be quite thorough and fit you for driver head, flex, shaft weight, bend profile, loft, swing weight etc. If you go to a store it's likely to be very basic and not really much of a fit, probably more just like trying out different clubs and flexes

 

[Grant85]

I would hope a decent pro would be open to you paying for an hour of their time (might be £30 or £40) and have a look at you before directing you towards certain clubs.

 

[HomerJSimpson]

Got a callaway XHot 10 degree stiff shaft which I wasn’t fitted for. Think I’m more towards regular and got my eye on a Ping G25 (last of the big spenders) on eBay.

I’ve been fitted for my irons and wonder what combinations are involved in driver fitting. Is it just shaft length, stiffness and loft? How many total combinations does the fitter have at his or her disposal?

Fancy a new driver but not willing to pay silly money and happy with a model from a few years ago, G25 or G30 maybe. Thoughts?

Bit of tricky one. It depends where you go as I doubt many fitters will still stock the G25 model as it's a few releases ago for Ping. As a result your options may be limited. As far as a fitting, again dependant on where you go, you should be able to try a number of makes and models. Other than that a decent fitter should be able to fit you in a similar way to an iron fitting and find an option to find optimum launch and spin. As an alternative you could try Golfbidder (not the cheapest option) who offer a 7 day return policy but again you're tied to what stock they are carrying and you won't have the option to try different options

 

[pendodave]

Got a callaway XHot 10 degree stiff shaft which I wasn’t fitted for. Think I’m more towards regular and got my eye on a Ping G25 (last of the big spenders) on eBay.

I’ve been fitted for my irons and wonder what combinations are involved in driver fitting. Is it just shaft length, stiffness and loft? How many total combinations does the fitter have at his or her disposal?

Fancy a new driver but not willing to pay silly money and happy with a model from a few years ago, G25 or G30 maybe. Thoughts?

If you were to buy a driver with some adjustability (pings typically have very little) then you should be able to visit a pro with a launch monitors who could optimize it for you. The 2016 M1 (for example) has loads of adjustability, but would only cost about £150. Just make sure they have a decent launch monitor and some idea what to do with it...

Obviously your need to make sure the shaft is not wildly inappropriate, but that's not rocket science.

 

[Roops]

I have just gone from an off the shelf driver to a fitted driver. The difference is night and day and was worth every penny. Ultimately, we only tried two different heads but multiple shaft combinations. First stage was to gather some data from my current driver on Flightscope, then start trying shaft and head combo's. The fitter just swapped the heads and shafts around, handed me the club and I hit it. Data was gathered for every set of balls hit and mulled over. I was giving feedback on how the hit felt, what the club felt like etc etc. He added weight, removed weight, basically everything was tried and the good combos were re-tried throughout the fitting to see if they still worked.

Eventually ended up with an M4 and Accra shaft, I can now stand on the tee and pretty much hit where I want to, before I was just hoping it was going to be straight'ish, often wasn't.

Thought my wedge fitting a while back was good, this was even better, it's a game changer for me (the fairway is now in play !).

Hope this helps.

 

[MartynB]

I have just gone from an off the shelf driver to a fitted driver. The difference is night and day and was worth every penny. Ultimately, we only tried two different heads but multiple shaft combinations. First stage was to gather some data from my current driver on Flightscope, then start trying shaft and head combo's. The fitter just swapped the heads and shafts around, handed me the club and I hit it. Data was gathered for every set of balls hit and mulled over. I was giving feedback on how the hit felt, what the club felt like etc etc. He added weight, removed weight, basically everything was tried and the good combos were re-tried throughout the fitting to see if they still worked.

Eventually ended up with an M4 and Accra shaft, I can now stand on the tee and pretty much hit where I want to, before I was just hoping it was going to be straight'ish, often wasn't.

Thought my wedge fitting a while back was good, this was even better, it's a game changer for me (the fairway is now in play !).

Hope this helps.

Really useful, thanks. Can’t decide whether to go down the AG route or the local independent.

 

[SocketRocket]

In my opinion dont spend too much on driver fitting unless you have a reasonable swing. No amount of fitting and spondulas will get rid of a slice, a duck hook, a thin, a steep a-of-a etc. Spend some money on sorting out your swing first, when thats giving acceptable repeatability then consider getting fitted.

 

[Roops]

The above is true, however a couple of minutes on a trackman is gold for that sort of info. I always had a thought that my swing was better than the results my driver showed. Trackman showed that to be the case, path was 0 into the the ball, slightly upward strike, only issue was the occassional slightly open club face. That manifested itself as a slice with my old driver, and normally a fairway missed or worse. Now it's just a tiny fade or dead straight (a draw is also available if I setup for it). The club is set neutral and with it's stock loft. Main thing is I can just swing with freedom now and the ball is in play. The beauty of the modern driver, so much more forgiving for imperfect strike/club face delivery.

 

[SocketRocket]

The above is true, however a couple of minutes on a trackman is gold for that sort of info. I always had a thought that my swing was better than the results my driver showed. Trackman showed that to be the case, path was 0 into the the ball, slightly upward strike, only issue was the occassional slightly open club face. That manifested itself as a slice with my old driver, and normally a fairway missed or worse. Now it's just a tiny fade or dead straight (a draw is also available if I setup for it). The club is set neutral and with it's stock loft. Main thing is I can just swing with freedom now and the ball is in play. The beauty of the modern driver, so much more forgiving for imperfect strike/club face delivery.

sounds like you have a pretty repeatable good swing.