HomerJSimpson
Hall of Famer
Wouldn't that be good. A fitting trolley and an empty golf course. Do an initial fit indoors and out and then onto the course the same time with the ability to tweak as you play off the trolley.
Fitting frustrations. Anyone had similar?
- Thread starter sjw
- Start date
nickjdavis
Head Pro
The best you will likely get is to have a single club made up for you (if being fit for a set of irons) which you can then use out on the course, alongside your normal set, for two or three weeks and then report back to the fitter with your practical observations....at which point some tweaking might be done and away you go for another week or so, or, the specs are settled on and the full set of clubs are then built for you.
Top fitters will then give you two or three months to play with your built set and within that time offer further tweaking.
But I'd say that there are only a handful of top independent fitters who offer such bespoke services.
jim8flog
Journeyman Pro
I remember going for an iron fitting on a range.
The fitter was obsessed by what his tracking machine was telling him whereas I was more interested in where the ball was going.
The two were quite different.
Ended up sticking with my existing irons.
The fitter was obsessed by what his tracking machine was telling him whereas I was more interested in where the ball was going.
The two were quite different.
Ended up sticking with my existing irons.
jim8flog
Journeyman Pro
That very much depends on the club and your location.
We have a fitting room which the pro will use followed by hitting on the range with the suggested club fit but some manufacturers on demo days prefer to use the rang and tracking kit.
HomerJSimpson
Hall of Famer
Which is why I ask to do my fitting without seeing the data. I'll hit it and see how it flies and how the shaft feels in terms of weight etc and then get the guy to give me his take on the numbers until we can get a match
evemccc
Well-known member
Yeah exactly this. I have to go for it now anyway, and when I look back at the optimiser numbers, it really seems like ball striking and therefore smash factor is the bit I was losing out on. Close club face, more toe strike is going to result in more ball speed and a straighter shot, both things I was lacking.
I'll give it 4/6 weeks and make the trip back
This is also a good point. I suppose it's a possibilityI'll bear it in mind next time
Your ‘on the plus side’ points in the OP are all v good. Not a pushy salesman and the fitting became more of a (dare I say it) much needed lesson on a day when you weren’t at your best…..you now know what to work on etc.
The 2 hour drive is your choice and I get it’s frustrating to make the time commitment but to not be at your best. I think it’s better to first get a better swing and then get fit…
If I were you I’d definitely spend the next 4 weeks getting a lesson or two and practicing and then going again and getting fit for what you have embedded
You don’t need to swing like Scotty before getting fit, but it’s preferable to make easy ‘gains’ where you can IMO
Hope it works out
HomerJSimpson
Hall of Famer
Just needs to be vaguely repeatable in the same part of the face. hard to fit if one is a hell strike and the next way off the toe. Think the OP knows what he needs to do and once his driver is back in a good place can sum it up again. Think I'd be going back just to enjoy a fitting processYour ‘on the plus side’ points in the OP are all v good. Not a pushy salesman and the fitting became more of a (dare I say it) much needed lesson on a day when you weren’t at your best…..you now know what to work on etc.
The 2 hour drive is your choice and I get it’s frustrating to make the time commitment but to not be at your best. I think it’s better to first get a better swing and then get fit…
If I were you I’d definitely spend the next 4 weeks getting a lesson or two and practicing and then going again and getting fit for what you have embedded
You don’t need to swing like Scotty before getting fit, but it’s preferable to make easy ‘gains’ where you can IMO
Hope it works out
sjw
Well-known member
Your ‘on the plus side’ points in the OP are all v good. Not a pushy salesman and the fitting became more of a (dare I say it) much needed lesson on a day when you weren’t at your best…..you now know what to work on etc.
The 2 hour drive is your choice and I get it’s frustrating to make the time commitment but to not be at your best. I think it’s better to first get a better swing and then get fit…
If I were you I’d definitely spend the next 4 weeks getting a lesson or two and practicing and then going again and getting fit for what you have embedded
You don’t need to swing like Scotty before getting fit, but it’s preferable to make easy ‘gains’ where you can IMO
Hope it works out
I have a more general update but I'll post it as a reply to this, because yes, I agree to an extent. The advice from the fitter gave me something to look at when I got back to the range, which I did last night.
I spent a little while yesterday watching drills for keeping the rear heel on the ground (mine comes up insanely early a la JT) and getting the hips moving and working properly, mainly Padraig Harrington's video. This gave me a better idea of what to try and feel on the range. The fitter had advised me that my hips were firing too early, but a) I hadn't thought before it would be affecting strike, maybe that it was just losing me power and b) his wording just wasn't getting through to me, I didn't know what he meant.
The second thing I realised was just how open I set up to target, particularly my shoulders. It's no wonder I either pull it a mile or get stuck and fire a massive block. The fitter had tried to correct me on this, but because being square feels really closed to me, I just thought he was deliberately putting me too far the other way just to see me hit one left. Last night at the range, I managed to get a bay in front of a mirror, and get my alignment sticks out, and now I realise that he was actually trying to get me neutral and not going too far.
The outcome of the range is that while I did still hit some blocks/slices - it's obviously not going to be forever fixed in one evening - I did get a better feel for how I can improve and what a good strike should feel like. The frustrating thing is I had good results swinging like this, with a more upright and closed-feeling stance, a few weeks ago but I thought the ball was launching too low and I got myself out of it. Now I'm trying to get back to where I was before. At least I now know it's "right" and can persevere with it.
It's only Toptracer and not Trackman but on the ones I creamed, I saw a big boost in ball speed and carry, which allowed me to trust that this swing works, because at setup it doesn't feel very athletic. It was VERY windy though and I'm not sure in what direction so as always I take the numbers with a pinch of salt. Things could be looking up though.
PS I'd rather not swing like Scotty!
I forgot to mention in the OP - because it's not strictly relevant - the other way in which the fitter helped, with my irons. He took a look at my irons and had a chat about them - he apparently used to be a Nike athlete for a few years. Anyway, he had a look at my 7i and found that it's about 4 degrees upright! This is obviously quite a lot anyway but if anything, I think I need them to be slightly flat - that's how I was fitted for my previous set. That might go some way to explain why I am a bit inconsistent with them. He would have bent them for me but his bending bar had broken the day before, typically. I had been meaning to get them sorted sometime soon anyway, but that might need to be sooner rather than later!
sjw
Well-known member
That's the one way the "part-fitted" clubs, as I'll call them, helped. The strike points were way more consistent with a stiffer shaft. Still out of the heel, but much more tightly grouped.
sjw
Well-known member
Following up to this...
Yesterday I went back to PXG for the rescheduled fitting. An already-log 2 hour journey turned into 3 with traffic so I wasn't in the best of moods when I arrived!
Started out by hitting 7i really well as a warm-up. Once I started hitting my driver they were back to being big right pushes again. There must be something about swinging indoors that I just can't cope with. Anyway, we moved on to the driver that I kind of got fitted for last time and went from there. A few shaft changes and changes of weight in the head and eventually got to something that was working for me.
Now, my thoughts are still along the lines of, if I wasn't swinging as well indoors as I do normally, how can we tell if the fit is right? We can't. And I wish the fitter (different guy to last time) was a bit more open about why we were changing to certain things. Sometimes he mentioned it but sometimes he didn't. I was too wrapped up in trying to work out what was wrong with my swing to think to ask.
Only time will tell, and I'll have to give the club a go on the course. I saw a couple of really good strikes during the fitting, so I know it's in there somewhere, but if in time it is not right, then I will just have to get it changed or sell it. I am sure a new (or at least fitted) driver will help my game, I'm just not sure yet if this is going to be it.
I was expecting to get an email through with the specs but I haven't received that yet, so I'll have to chase them up. Wondering if my email address was taken down incorrectly.
Yesterday I went back to PXG for the rescheduled fitting. An already-log 2 hour journey turned into 3 with traffic so I wasn't in the best of moods when I arrived!
Started out by hitting 7i really well as a warm-up. Once I started hitting my driver they were back to being big right pushes again. There must be something about swinging indoors that I just can't cope with. Anyway, we moved on to the driver that I kind of got fitted for last time and went from there. A few shaft changes and changes of weight in the head and eventually got to something that was working for me.
Now, my thoughts are still along the lines of, if I wasn't swinging as well indoors as I do normally, how can we tell if the fit is right? We can't. And I wish the fitter (different guy to last time) was a bit more open about why we were changing to certain things. Sometimes he mentioned it but sometimes he didn't. I was too wrapped up in trying to work out what was wrong with my swing to think to ask.
Only time will tell, and I'll have to give the club a go on the course. I saw a couple of really good strikes during the fitting, so I know it's in there somewhere, but if in time it is not right, then I will just have to get it changed or sell it. I am sure a new (or at least fitted) driver will help my game, I'm just not sure yet if this is going to be it.
I was expecting to get an email through with the specs but I haven't received that yet, so I'll have to chase them up. Wondering if my email address was taken down incorrectly.
Orikoru
Tour Winner
Swinging different indoors is definitely a thing. I had an iron fitting once where I just kept shanking it, despite rarely doing that on the course at the time. Also at the driving range as well as indoor studios, you subconsciously feel a bit claustrophobic with a long club such as driver and maybe your backswing is a bit restricted. It's difficult of course since most fittings are done that way.
On the part about him keeping you in the dark about what he's changing - the guy I've done fittings with also does that, but he tells me he's doing that on purpose. He doesn't want me to have any preconceptions about what I'm hitting - i.e. let's say he gives you a lighter shaft and tells you this and you think "God I'm always terrible with lighter shafts, I'd better swing slower" or something like that - he just wants you to keep swinging your swing without changing so he can get a better comparison on the results. Another example, he might give you something that's more draw-biased, and you think 'I'll probably hook it now, I'd better hit more of a fade swing' whereas if he doesn't tell you what you're hitting, you'll just keep swinging the same. Of course, my fitter normally reveals what he's changed after I've hit a few balls with it.
sjw
Well-known member
Yeah I did think there was something in that. I'd told him earlier on that I was going to try and avoid looking at the numbers too much, as I felt that last time I got a bit too fixated on them, and like you say, stopped swinging naturally to try and fix them to what I thought was good. The main issue I had was getting the face closed, so I know he put me in something with a slightly softer (lighter? weaker?) tip section, and I know he moved the weights around, but that's about the extent of it. I've just had the email through that says I will receive the specs soon (not sure why it's not just one email) but we'll see. Quite exciting nonetheless - I did notice that on a decent enough strike, the dispersion was VERY tight, so that'll be great.
Orikoru
Tour Winner
So all you have to do is strike it well? Can't see any issues there.
sjw
Well-known member
Ah now the stiffer shaft did help me find a more consistent strike point nearer the centre of the face as well! Honestly it all sounds good on paper, I think I might just be forever wondering if it's the best it could beSo all you have to do is strike it well? Can't see any issues there.
While I don't know the exact specs, I know that the shaft is stiff, half inch shorter, slightly lighter tip section. Head is set at 10.5 degrees. Not sure of the weight setup. Golf Pride multicompound grip.
There are little things that I wonder about, and I asked him the question and it did kind of give him pause and make him think. Specifically, I asked if a 10.5 degree head delofted is the same as the 9degree head and the opposite. He said that if you add loft to the 9, you'll close the face a bit. So my question was, if I was struggling to close the face, wouldn't that help? I think we decided there are too many other factors that will make that negligible.
Orikoru
Tour Winner
Yeah, adding loft closes the face and lowering loft opens it. But probably not by a vast amount. I use the Ping SFT head in a 10.5 lofted down to 9.5, so unfortunately means opening the face on a draw-biased driver, but it's only because they don't actually do the SFT in a 9° head so we didn't have much choice. And in the fitting he had me at 9 but I use it at 9.5 for a little bit of added security.
Imurg
The Grinder Of Pars (Semi Crocked)
On Mizuno drivers 1.1 degree of loft change equates to 1.5 degrees of face angle change
They use a similar system to Ping so I guess the numbers would be similar too.
Orikoru
Tour Winner
I don't know what that means in real terms. As in how much more fade that would produce or how much further right the ball would start with the same swing.
sjw
Well-known member
I think I saw that if you leave the face open 4 degrees, you end up 50 yards wide of target, if that helps!
