Are you about to get a golf club fitting at a Club Champion, True Spec Golf, GolfTEC or elsewhere? There are five things you need to know before stepping into a fitting bay:
0:00 Start
0:52 You won’t hit the ball as well as usual
4:29 You need to know your golf game
6:05 You need to know your budget (and ask for options)
8:17 You have to keep your expectations in check
10:58 You may actually hit your new clubs worse
What things do you think golfers should know before getting a fitting? Let me know in the comments!
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So, you’re about to have a golf equipment fitting. Maybe you bought one, maybe you had one purchased for you, but here are the five things that you need to know before you go to that fitting so you have the best experience possible. I’m Ryan Baly. Thanks for checking out the channel once again. Over the summer, I had a fitting at a PXG retail location in Northern Virginia. It was a great experience, but I wanted to make a video about it because I’ve been through a lot of fittings over the course of my life as a golfer. Whether that’s at a retail location like PXG or Dick Sporting Goods or more likely at fitting events for new equipment releases from Tailor Made to Cobra to otherwise. And the experiences are all different, but there are common threads that develop between all of them that I’ve learned over the years to make sure the experiences are efficient and are successful for me and my game. And I wanted to pass those along to you. So, the first thing I want people to know about fittings is you’re probably not going to play your best golf when you’re at a fitting. You’re not going to hit the ball flush every time. You’re not going to hit it perfect. And there are a couple of different reasons for that. One, a lot of people get fit indoors, right? You get fit on a simulator with a Trackman or similar to capture all the data. You’re in someone’s studio in their indoor business. Well, that’s not exactly how you play golf, right? For one, the temperature is different. The temperature is different in an indoor location, usually around 70°. Well, when you hit the ball, your farthest off the tea is in the summer when it’s maybe 80, 85, 90° outside. Temperature has an impact on the ball. So, you need to know that you’re not going to hit it as far as you think you can or you know you can when you step into that simulator bay in an indoor fitting. You also don’t use a traditional tee. Most times you can’t. You can’t stick a traditional tee in the ground low enough for your setup. You may tee the ball up high and this may work for you, but I tee the ball a little bit lower. So, it’s a struggle for me to be able to do that. So, at this most recent fitting, the PXG folks have what look like kind of tiny upside down range buckets, and that’s what you put your ball on. They have different heights for them. But it took probably 10 or 11 balls for me to find the right size for how I like to tee the ball up. And even then, it still felt a little uncomfortable because it felt like the little range bucket that was with the little teeth that stuck into that mat was kind of protruding out and it just didn’t feel comfortable with the way I was hitting the ball. So, I knew that going into it. I knew that might impact my performance and I might have to adjust some things in my swing and setup to account for it. Again, that means I’m not going to ideally hit the ball exactly how I want. So, you have to know that going into it. This is less of a problem for irons, of course, and that that seems to make sense, but you tend to kind of pick it a little bit better off the turf anyhow. So, you may be overperforming when you’re hitting off of a mat. When you’re trying to get fit for wedges, you’re definitely going to suffer because the bounce that you pick is going to be based on the situation that you’re hitting into, right? You have to know the turf that you want to hit off of, the courses that you typically play, what kind of shots you like to hit. You’re not going to be able to reproduce those as easily in a simulator if you’re trying to get fit for wedges. I would strongly recommend if you can to get fit in an outdoor setting as best you can, especially when we’re talking about wedges. I would also say for drivers, at least you can kind of get in your head how irons might perform a little bit differently. You probably know the difference between how you hit the ball off of a turf mat at a range as opposed to off of actual turf grass on a golf course, but you need to know these things coming in. What you do in that fitting is not going to be ideal. It’s not going to be perfect, and it’s not going to be exactly what you do out in the golf course. You need to know that upfront. It’s also really important to get loose beforehand. If you walk into that simulator bay and you are absolutely stiff and you haven’t done anything that day, then you need to hit a bunch of clubs. Don’t hit a bunch of wedges. A lot of fitters will like you to do that because it kind of speeds up the process. Hit some clubs. Hit some full length shots. Hit some partial shots. Hit some drives. Bring your bag. Make sure you have that ready to go. You want to know and you want your fitter to know the equipment that you have in your bag and how it compares to what they are handing you and taking back from you through the fitting process. The second thing that I think is really important for people to know before a fitting is their game as best you can. A lot of people go into a fitting expecting everything to be cured in just 30 minutes or an hour and that’s not how this works. You are a a help to the fitter. They’re going to figure out a lot of things about your game as much as they can over the course of you hitting what amounts to be a small bucket of balls for them. But you need to know something about your game to help them out. You need to know about how far you hit the ball off the tea and be honest. How far you carry it, how much it rolls, what kind of shot shape do you like to see. What do you want to see in your resulting fit set of clubs? Do you like to hit a high ball, medium high ball, a low ball, draw or fade, big hook, big slice? What are you trying to correct for here? And is it something you think you can correct with equipment? Or is it something you have to correct with instruction and swing changes? But you need to know upfront, here’s what I am, here’s what I do, and here’s what I’m looking for. You also need to know if you haven’t played much recently, that the swing you show up with that day could be radically different than the one you show up with to the first te next time. And if you don’t have any measure of consistency in your swing, then what you’re getting fit for is what you show up for that day. The fitter doesn’t know any different and they’re not going to know any different after the fact. So, you need to know that upfront. And if you’re worried that you haven’t played enough, if you haven’t had enough time to kind of figure out where you are in your game, postpone that fitting. Third thing I think is really important is that you should know to ask for multiple fitting options. This isn’t a universal problem, but there are plenty of horror stories I’ve heard over the years of people who have been fit and then recommended the most expensive options possible. And the reason they were given those recommendations for a fitting is because they produced the best results of anything that they saw. However, if the best result that you saw from the most expensive option is only marginally better than the best result you got from a cheaper setting setting or set of options, then maybe you want to go with option B for a couple of different reasons. One, you might have a budget, right? You you don’t want to spend three or $4,000 on a bag of clubs. Maybe you only want to spend $2,000 or depending on what your budget is, you work around that. A lot of fitters are cognizant of that and if you tell them upfront, hey, here’s what I’m willing to spend for, they can work with you and give you a set of options that will be more budget friendly instead of you walking out there feeling like you just got handed an enormous bill for a what could be a significant improvement in your club performance, but maybe not enough to justify spending that amount of money. And I I think you need to ask yourself upfront how much you’re willing to spend and you need to know kind of what you’re looking for in terms of overall performance and if you intend to make changes to your game either through instruction or otherwise how long this is going to last you. Because if you buy a set of clubs that you were fit into or a new driver that you were fit into or whatever you’re going to get fit for and your game changes, you may need new equipment sooner than later. So, if you’re on a path to improvement or you’re on a path where you’re aging and you’re starting to lose distance somewhat precipitously, you need to know that you may need to change clubs or options in those clubs more often than you think. So, think about that in your budgeting. How long are you going to get to use this equipment and how much enjoyment are you going to get out of it as your game changes for whatever reason? The other thing I think and the fourth thing I think and this one is really important to me. You need to temper your expectations before fitting. I think a lot of friends that I’ve talked to over the years who have never been fit for equipment, they tell me how they’re going to get fit. They think they’re going to get a lot of things fixed in their game by getting new equipment. Maybe they have club, maybe they have a driver that’s 10 years old or irons that are seven or eight years old or or what have you. Technology has dramatically improved in the last 10, 15, 20 years. Obviously, things have changed and gotten a lot better. We have so much more information and fittings go so much better than they did even 10 years ago. However, that doesn’t mean that’s going to turn you from a 25 handicap into a five overnight. You have to have a reasonable set of expectations. If you have older clubs, I guarantee you whatever you’re going to get next is going to go farther off of every shot than what you have currently. Clubs are more forgiving. They’re made with better materials. Quality control is better. There are more options. Everything is set up to be a better performing situation than what you probably have in your bag if it’s at least 5 years old, right? However, there are situations where I’ve talked to fitters who have put their customers through the rigomear roll to try to find better options for them, but for whatever reason, they can’t find something better for this player than what they have in their bag. And that is totally possible for you. You may walk away thinking, “What seems to be a better fit for me is not that much better than what I have in my bag right now.” And it is absolutely okay to have that experience. And because you have to temper your expectations, you also have to widen your appetite. You have to open your mind to what’s possible. If you are someone who swings a stiff shaft iron today and the fitter says, “Hey, let’s try you in a regular graphite instead of your steel.” And it goes longer and straighter. That’s a good thing. It’s okay. There is nothing. No one’s going to ask about what kind of stiffness of shaft you hit a certain club unless you hit it so well that you’re scoring great. That that’s the reality of it. No one cares about your equipment except you. It doesn’t matter how long it is. It doesn’t matter what flex it is. It doesn’t matter how many wraps you have on your grip. If it works for you, it works for you. Let the data tell you. Be open to different ideas. And that may send you down a path that may feel like a waste of time in the end, but it may lead to a better answer. And that’s okay. That’s okay to work with. But the last and I think most important thing that people should know going into a fitting is that you may ultimately hit your new clubs worse than what you hit today in your bag. And there are a couple of different reasons for that. One, your swing might change. If you are a player who shoots anywhere from 120 to even 85, your swing is not the same from one day to the next. What you are getting fit for in that fitting is your swing that day on that equipment through the eyes of that fitter. You’re getting what you get that day. And you need to know the limitations of that upfront. You’re basically hitting less than a medium-siz driving range bucket and getting fit into a very expensive set of equipment. Even if you have a budget, you’re still paying a lot of money for equipment. It’s not cheap, right? So, you need to know that what you’re putting in, the input you’re putting in is not going to be perfect and it could be different that day than what you normally do. And that could ultimately be a problem. If you’re getting lessons, you work on things, that may change your equipment needs. If you’re starting to do the stack system, for example, and you’re starting to speed up or you’re doing weight training or you’re losing weight or you’re changing your body in some fashion, your game’s going to look different at the end of that transformation. And that may mean you need to get fit again. You may want to postpone things. If you’re trying to purposefully change either your golf game or your physical appearance or anything like that, just be very careful and cognizant of that. The fitter isn’t going to know all of that and the fitter isn’t going to be prepared to give you options for all of those things that could happen if you intend to make certain changes in your game or your life. But buyer beware, know what you’re getting into. Know a little bit of something about yourself. Know it’s not going to fix everything. and know that things can change even from the day you hit the clubs and got fit to the day you get them and you may be prepared for that change. If you have any advice about your fittings, about things you’ve gone through, things you’ve experienced, I would love to hear them. This is certainly not a comprehensive list, but this is based on my experience. It would be really helpful. Have a good dialogue in the comments section about what interests you in these fittings, what you’re looking for, how to learn, just your experiences. It’s a good conversation to have and I I don’t think enough people kind of talk about it. It It’s just kind of a black box you show up for and then you show up with a bunch of equipment and an invoice. So, thanks for watching. I appreciate it. We’ll talk to you next time.
