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How to Improve Your Golf Game

3. Clubs that fit you

Dave Tutelman -- June 28, 2006

There is no magic! Technology has put a few extra yards on how far a club can hit the ball (compared with ten or fifteen years ago), but claims of 30 extra yards are completely bogus and even 10 extra yards must be viewed with a lot of skepticism. The most important thing about your clubs is that they are the right clubs for your game and frame -- that they fit you. If they don't, you could indeed be losing a lot of yards and adding a lot of strokes to your score. But the answer isn't spending more on "the finest clubs that money can buy;" it is a competent club fitting.

I'm going to spend a little more time here than I did on lessons or practice, not because it's more important -- actually, it's probably less important -- but because it's what I know best and you probably know least. The vast majority of golfers have preconceptions about choosing golf clubs that are totally wrong. Let me dispel a few for you.

Let's start with a few critical properties of golf clubs that can damage your golf game. I'm going to just mention them, but there's a lot to each one.

Club length - If your clubs are too short for you, they will affect your posture and make it hard for you to make a good swing. If they are too long, they will affect your balance and your swing plane, and make it nearly impossible to hit the ball consistently on the "sweet spot."
Grip problems - The golf club's grip is the connection between you and the club. If there is something wrong with that, it will hurt your ability to make a good swing. Common things wrong with grips are the wrong size and an old, hard, slick grip.
Lie angle - If your clubs' lie angles are wrong for your swing, then you will be hitting the ball left or right of your target -- even if you make a perfect swing. Everybody has their own ideal lie angle, and it varies a lot from golfer to golfer.
Loft - Drivers come in a variety of loft angles. There is one that is right for you. If you get one that's either too high or too low for your swing, you will lose distance.
Shaft flex - It seems to be a testosterone thing; golfers like to think they are "big hitters", so they get clubs with stiff shafts. In fact, the wrong shaft flex -- especially too stiff a flex -- may keep you from being a big hitter.

There are lots of other specifications that a good club fitter will take into account when matching you to a golf club, but these are some of the major ones. Getting any of these right -- or wrong -- will make a substantial difference in your golf game. In truth, it will make a bigger difference than choosing between Callaway or Taylor Made or even a set from Walmart. That is not what the manufacturers want you to believe. But it's true.

What does this say about how you should buy golf clubs? First and most important, you should have your clubs fit to you by somebody who knows how to fit clubs. That just about eliminates anybody selling clubs at the "big box" golf stores, and probably doesn't say much more for most smaller "pro shop" operations -- even those run by the teaching pro at your country club. Club fitting and custom club making is a specialty. If the shop doesn't have a true specialist, then they can't do a true fitting.

Let's take lie angle as an example. (I choose it because it is easiest for you to determine that the person selling you clubs hasn't the slightest clue.) Every club manufacturer except for Ping makes their clubs in just one lie angle. You can't simply buy a set and expect the lie angle to fit you; if the one they make happens to be your ideal lie angle, then you just got lucky.

If somebody who knows what they're doing fits you for lie angle, they will have you hit balls off a hard board (typically plastic or wood). There will be tape on the sole of the club, and the fitter will look at where the tape is being scuffed by contact with the board. Based on what they see, they will actually bend the club so the lie angle is right for you. If the person allegedly fitting you for clubs doesn't do this -- without your prompting him -- then you don't want to buy clubs there.

Each of the fitting specifications has:

A way to determine what the golfer needs.
A way to determine whether a given club fits that need, and sometimes even a way to make it fit -- like bending the lie angle in the example above.

You need to have your clubs fit by someone who is competent in all this. As I said, that means you should forget about the golf club salesmen you meet in big golf shops. Oh, they talk as if they know all about it. But remember, confidence is not the same as competence. You are better off finding someone who specializes in custom golf clubs. The clubs will cost you somewhere between bargain brands and the expensive big names. You may never have heard of the components they use, but rest assured that there are quite a few "unknown" companies making components that meet and often exceed the quality of the Callaways of the world. And the clubs that you end up with will be better for your game than anything you could buy off the rack -- no matter how much you spent.

There is another aspect of getting a set of clubs that fit you: set makeup. Traditionally, golfers buy a set of eight irons from the manufacturer that contains the 3-iron through 9-iron plus a pitching wedge. They add to that a putter, a sand wedge, a driver, and a couple of fairway woods, typically #3 and #5. That makes 13 clubs, one short of the maximum allowed by the rules. Most golfers today buy -- with encouragement of the manufacturers and their salesmen -- a "gap wedge" or "approach wedge" to round out the permitted 14 clubs. (This was written in 2006. The typical set makeup is a little different today -- and probably better for most golfers -- but the guidelines below still apply.)

But is that the right set makeup for you? Actually, there are very few golfers who are well-served by that "standard" set of clubs. Here are some of the questions you should ask yourself -- or expect your clubfitter to ask you:

"From the tee, do I hit my driver as well as I hit my 3-wood?" For your driver to be useful, you should hit it significantly farther than your 3-wood (at least 10 yards longer), and be able to keep it in play almost as often as the 3-wood. We're not talking about your personal best drive; you need to compare your typical drive and 3-wood shot. If your driver doesn't meet this criterion, don't waste space in your bag -- nor shots on the course -- with it. Yes, I am actually saying the driver should not be in the set makeup of a lot of the golfers I see out there. One of my regular foursome took five strokes off his score when he started leaving the driver at home and teeing off with the 3-wood.
"Do I hit my 3-iron significantly farther than my 4-iron?" If your 3-iron isn't consistently at least 10 yards longer than your 4-iron, get the 3-iron out of the bag. Then ask the same question about your 4-iron vs your 5-iron, your 5-iron vs your 6-iron, and so forth until the answer comes out "yes".
"Can I consistently distinguish distance between adjacent clubs in my set?" For instance, can you tell the difference in distance -- with reasonable consistency -- between your 7-iron and your 8-iron? Between your 8-iron and 9-iron? If your shots for the adjacent clubs are practically indistinguishable, then one of two things is true. (a) One or more of your irons is out of spec; have the lofts checked. (b) You don't need to carry all the irons to have a club for the right distance. If it's (b), then you would do well to play just the odd-numbered or just the even-numbered irons. (Jerry Perrich reminded me of this one, but I should have remembered it from my own teen years. I played with such a set into my early twenties, and shot some of my best rounds with it the summer I turned 20.)
"What sort of club that I don't have will improve my game?" If you have been honest in dealing with the previous two questions, you now have at least one, and probably several, open slots in your bag. There are clubs that might improve your game, certainly compared with the ones you just got rid of, and perhaps even compared with the set you have retained. Just a few examples include:

Hybrid clubs to replace your long irons, and perhaps even your fairway woods.
A lob wedge, if you are willing to practice it. (It is not trivial to hit, but if you practice you can improve your short game.)
A chipper, if you find you can chip better with it than with an iron.

This is just a short preview of set makeup, certainly not a textbook on the subject. Your clubfitter will have a more detailed, organized, and effective approach to what belongs in your bag.

I am involved in design and engineering for golf clubs -- I'm into "golf technology." What does that mean?

Let's start with what it doesn't mean. I'm a comfortably retired engineer. The engineer part means that I have a pretty good idea of the physics of golf, and I know what can -- and can't -- be done to improve the performance of golf clubs. The comfortably retired part means that I'm not looking to make my fortune selling snake oil golf clubs to wishful-thinking golfers. I'm going to turn my attention to what will work, whether or not it's a commercially attractive scheme.

My work in golf technology mostly involves better ways to fit golf clubs to golfers, instrumentation to measure the actual performance of golf clubs and golfers, and educating both golfers and custom clubmakers. Some examples:

This article is part of my effort to educate golfers. Other articles on my web site are to educate custom clubmakers on aspects of technology that are not yet in the common clubmaking literature -- or areas that I feel are usually treated inaccurately.
I was the engineer on a team that designed an instrument to measure the flexing of shafts for golf clubs. The instrument makes the sort of detailed measurements that the shaft manufacturers do in their own labs, but is affordable for small custom clubfitting shops.
I have researched ways to match sets of clubs. What's that? Suppose you are a clubfitter, and you have determined that a golfer needs a 5-iron with a certain set of specs. What conclusions can you draw about the specs for his/her 6-iron, 7-iron, etc? Do you have to do a complete fitting for every club, or can you deduce the specs for the set by fitting for just one (or just a few) clubs?

So no, Roberta, I'm not going to invent a golf club that will make your husband a great golfer. I don't know how to do that, any more than I know how to invent a perpetual motion machine. The way your husband will become a great golfer is "in the dirt". But I'll be there providing technology to his custom clubfitter, if he decides he's serious about improving.

Last modified 9/16/2013