Custom-Fit vs. Off-the-Rack Golf Clubs (Video) - by Pete Styles
Custom-Fit vs. Off-the-Rack Golf Clubs (Video) - by Pete Styles

So I’m sure you’ll agree that golf’s a hard enough game as it is without having substandard or poor equipment to blame as well. Face it, when you’re standing over the golf ball and hitting shots, you want to make sure that you’ve got the right equipment to do that job for you and any fault that happens to the shot either goes too short or left or right. You kind of want to be responsible for that yourself. As soon as you get the feeling that you’re doing the best you can yet the clubs are letting you down, your confidence that you’re enjoyment of golf is ruined.

And that’s not necessarily to say that the clubs you’re using aren’t good clubs. They could be top of the range brand new straight off the rack from the shop and spent a lot of money on them, that doesn’t mean they’re going to be great for you and your game. So this is why we have to experiment with the idea of custom fitting. Now anyone that’s been playing the game for more than two years should really go for some custom fit golf clubs and if you can’t, go to custom fit golf clubs right at the start of your playing career as well.

Your first set of golf clubs ideally would be custom fit but if you’ve been playing for more than two years, categorically you must go for some custom fit golf clubs next time you’re changing them. Now custom fitting, well actually look at a few difference areas, quite a lot of different areas in fact. Wes start off by looking at the profile of the player, their height, their weight, their build, their wrist of full measurement, their hand size and actually their playing characteristics, their standing ability and their club hand speed. Then we could start to get a little bit more detail and look at a dynamic custom fit, so the static custom fit is measure the custom wrap and see what he looks like. But a dynamic custom fit actually takes into account the way they swing the golf club and their impact factors.

So we might see a very tall player standing up very tall to the golf ball but when he stand over the ball and he dips into impact he’s right down low through the impact terrier and that’s maybe a swing flow that the golf id grained into their game over a long period of time. We need to account for that swing factor, that swing flaw in that custom fit. So we actually do a dynamic custom fit with somebody that would hit lots of shots maybe with some face tape, maybe some light tape stuck to the bottom of the golf club would hit off at impact with a nice big plastic tray. We’d start to see the impact conditions and we measure how that affects the flight. Then we’d look at the changing the loft, changing the length, changing the grip, changing the line angle.

Making some alterations given the feedback that the tape gave us, given the feedback the ball flight gave us and try and just tune in a bit to the conditions that we can change of the golf club to maximize the potential a play can achieve. So if you still got a swing flaw, yes I would encourage you to take lessons to improve on that swing flaw but if you’ve had that swing flaw for a while and you’re not interested in taking lessons, you have to just live with that swing flaw. We can probably build a golf club that would actually help you be a little bit more consistent.

So go and find a reputable club fitter or go online and find someone that has an online form that you can fill out to work out whether you can do a static custom fit for your build and your type of play. Right, you go on and find a good club fitter and do the dynamic club fitting where you actually hit shots, change clubs try again, hit shots, change clubs until you really nail down exactly what your specifications of clubs might be. You might actually have to all that process come out with a specification that is just dead standard, standard lie, standard length, standard grip and you think what was the point in doing all that?

But at least you now know that the club is perfectly made for you, there’s no problem with the golf club at all, therefore any shots that you hit that aren’t accurate, it’s effectively your fault. There are no excuses. That kind of gives you that idea that then you have to go to the practice round and work on your technique and you can’t simply just blame the golf club for not being right for you. So make sure the clubs that you’re playing don’t give you any excuses, get them properly custom fit and make sure you can start playing the best golf of your life.

 2012-06-06

So I’m sure you’ll agree that golf’s a hard enough game as it is without having substandard or poor equipment to blame as well. Face it, when you’re standing over the golf ball and hitting shots, you want to make sure that you’ve got the right equipment to do that job for you and any fault that happens to the shot either goes too short or left or right. You kind of want to be responsible for that yourself. As soon as you get the feeling that you’re doing the best you can yet the clubs are letting you down, your confidence that you’re enjoyment of golf is ruined.

And that’s not necessarily to say that the clubs you’re using aren’t good clubs. They could be top of the range brand new straight off the rack from the shop and spent a lot of money on them, that doesn’t mean they’re going to be great for you and your game. So this is why we have to experiment with the idea of custom fitting. Now anyone that’s been playing the game for more than two years should really go for some custom fit golf clubs and if you can’t, go to custom fit golf clubs right at the start of your playing career as well.

Your first set of golf clubs ideally would be custom fit but if you’ve been playing for more than two years, categorically you must go for some custom fit golf clubs next time you’re changing them. Now custom fitting, well actually look at a few difference areas, quite a lot of different areas in fact. Wes start off by looking at the profile of the player, their height, their weight, their build, their wrist of full measurement, their hand size and actually their playing characteristics, their standing ability and their club hand speed. Then we could start to get a little bit more detail and look at a dynamic custom fit, so the static custom fit is measure the custom wrap and see what he looks like. But a dynamic custom fit actually takes into account the way they swing the golf club and their impact factors.

So we might see a very tall player standing up very tall to the golf ball but when he stand over the ball and he dips into impact he’s right down low through the impact terrier and that’s maybe a swing flow that the golf id grained into their game over a long period of time. We need to account for that swing factor, that swing flaw in that custom fit. So we actually do a dynamic custom fit with somebody that would hit lots of shots maybe with some face tape, maybe some light tape stuck to the bottom of the golf club would hit off at impact with a nice big plastic tray. We’d start to see the impact conditions and we measure how that affects the flight. Then we’d look at the changing the loft, changing the length, changing the grip, changing the line angle.

Making some alterations given the feedback that the tape gave us, given the feedback the ball flight gave us and try and just tune in a bit to the conditions that we can change of the golf club to maximize the potential a play can achieve. So if you still got a swing flaw, yes I would encourage you to take lessons to improve on that swing flaw but if you’ve had that swing flaw for a while and you’re not interested in taking lessons, you have to just live with that swing flaw. We can probably build a golf club that would actually help you be a little bit more consistent.

So go and find a reputable club fitter or go online and find someone that has an online form that you can fill out to work out whether you can do a static custom fit for your build and your type of play. Right, you go on and find a good club fitter and do the dynamic club fitting where you actually hit shots, change clubs try again, hit shots, change clubs until you really nail down exactly what your specifications of clubs might be. You might actually have to all that process come out with a specification that is just dead standard, standard lie, standard length, standard grip and you think what was the point in doing all that?

But at least you now know that the club is perfectly made for you, there’s no problem with the golf club at all, therefore any shots that you hit that aren’t accurate, it’s effectively your fault. There are no excuses. That kind of gives you that idea that then you have to go to the practice round and work on your technique and you can’t simply just blame the golf club for not being right for you. So make sure the clubs that you’re playing don’t give you any excuses, get them properly custom fit and make sure you can start playing the best golf of your life.