Club Fitting: The Science of Feel

Filed in archive Golf Equipment on March 8, 2007

I made an interesting discovery yesterday.

I learned that my off-the-shelf TaylorMade driver works pretty well for my swing.

And I learned that after visiting McMahon Golf, a family-owned company in Toronto, Ontario, that specializes in club fitting.

McMahon has been in business for more than 30 years and they have worked with many different professional golfers, including the famous Canadian, George Knudson, whose swing was so good, Jack Nicklaus called it "a million dollar swing".

I arrived just after noon and Mike Smith, a nephew of one of the McMahons, greeted me.

Mike grew up around McMahon Golf and, after university, joined the family firm in 1999.

I was in good hands, in other words.

Mike had me fill out a simple form to assess my ability as a golfer.

I had to indicate what the best part of my game was, what the weakest part was, my current handicap, my distance off the tee. That sort of thing.

Then Mike explained how the Vector Launch Monitor worked and what it was going to measure.

Launch angle, clubhead speed, ball speed, ball spin rate, flight pattern and variance from dead straight were just some of the elements the Vector was going to calculate.

After warming up with a five iron, it was time to test my R5.

But first, Mike wanted to know what kind of ball I usually played with. I told him "a Top Flite XL 3000".

So he marked a black equator around an XL 3000 and that became our "control" ball.

Mike had me hit about half a dozen shots and then he let the software crunch the numbers.

It turns out there were a few issues. For example, I was pushing my shots an average of 22 yards off line. I offered that I was not in mid-season form. I had to say something!

While my ball speed was consistent over seven shots, my launch angle varied as much as six degrees at times. The lower the launch angle, the shorter the distance no matter how good my back spin rate was.

And my back spin rate was lower than the magical figure of 2500. Back spin, Mike explained, helps to get the ball up in the air and more height means more distance.

Next, Mike gathered together four drivers with different shafts but clubheads that were as identical to mine as possible in terms of loft.

I hit more balls. And more balls. And now I was starting to get tired.

In the end, Mike determined that two shafts would help me realize my goal of more distance without sacrificing accuracy.

However, the gain would be in the neighborhood of only 10 to 15 yards, tops.

And it would cost me up to $160 to get those extra 10 to 15 yards.

Mike was very clear on one thing: as far as club fitting has come in the past 10 years, and as much of a science as it is, there is still a lot of gut feel involved on the part of the club fitter.

Call it an inexact science. There are too many factors that can't be controlled, starting with the repeatability of my swing. I just can't swing the exact same way every time. And no golfer can.

There is always a compromise, as well, Mike said. More distance comes at the expense of accuracy. More accuracy means less distance.

And so it goes.

But I came away from the experience with McMahon Golf, knowing that my driver, off the shelf, wasn't too bad at all. The numbers confirmed it.

What they also confirmed was that I need to continue to improve my swing in order to increase my distance.

Or I just cough up the $160 and be done with it.