The Measured Golf Podcast
With so many amazing things happening in the Measured Golf Community, we have decided to start a podcast to discuss all of the amazing things that we are seeing have a positive impact on our athletes. Whether it be Ground Reaction Forces, Golf Biomechanics, or strategies for making the most out of your limited practice time, we hope that this podcast becomes a resource for you to finally become the player you know you can be!
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The Measured Golf Podcast
Why Fittings Typically Don't Help Your Game, And How To Optimize Your Bag
Tired of hearing that the “new face is hotter” and you’ll gain 20 yards overnight? Let’s cut through the noise. We unpack why many golf fittings overpromise, how launch monitor “totals” mislead you on soft fairways, and what numbers actually predict better scores on real courses. You’ll learn why carry should be your north star, how modern heads underspin on mishits, and the simple way to pressure‑test a setup against your typical misses instead of your single best swing.
We walk through the Ping optimal launch and spin chart so you can walk into a fitting with a plan: match launch and RPM to your attack angle, then verify that your good and imperfect strikes still carry strong. If you’ve been tempted by ultralight or super‑whippy shafts, we explain the biomechanics of why they rarely add meaningful speed without adding chaos. A smarter move is to find a shaft profile that complements your delivery and echo that feel across driver, irons, and wedges for consistent launch windows and tighter dispersion.
Indoor bays and mats hide the truths that show up on grass. That’s why we lay out a practical checklist: ask for carry numbers, fit to your misses, watch spin stay high enough for stability, and test wedges outside on bunkers and tight lies to dial in bounce and grinds. We also talk about the business side—why shops push aftermarket shafts and “services,” and why stock options from major brands often serve 80% of golfers just fine. Bonus: last year’s heads and lightly used gear can be absolute steals, delivering the same on‑course results without the premium price tag.
If you want gear that works where it counts—on your course, in your weather, with your swing—this guide gives you the tools to push back on hype and make smart choices. Subscribe, share with a golf buddy who’s eyeing a new driver, and leave a review with your biggest fitting win or regret so we can dig into it on a future show.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Measured Golf Podcast, where you, the listener, sit down and join me, Michael, as we discuss all things golf. And depending on which part of the country you live in, we have got to that time of year to where a lot of us are putting up the golf clubs. But for the real gearheads and the real junkies out there, the fun has just begun because maybe you're seeing some of the new drivers that are coming out and hitting the USGA conforming list. Maybe you're uh watching some of the content that's put out there on social media, and we're seeing a lot of the equipment that we can expect to hit retail in the spring start making its way out onto social media, which gets everybody excited. And wouldn't you know it, this year, like every year, all of the club companies are promising us that we're going to gain significant distance, significant speed if we simply pony up the money and get fit for one of their brand new options. So one of the big things that you commonly hear in the golf space these days is how you have to get fit to play better golf. And I 100% do not agree with that and think that if you give a good golfer uh a rental set of golf clubs, they'll figure out a way. And maybe they're not fit for them, and maybe they're not the right club, and maybe it's not the right spec on the shaft or the right length or the right line angle. But the good thing about good golfers is generally they'll make it work. And a lot of the people who are going to get a fitting tend to be people who struggle with their ball flight and struggle with contact and struggle with club delivery. And for those people, you know, they tend to show up at the fitter, you know, maybe a few times a year because they go get fit early in the year and they're struggling with the hook. They get a new driver, and now they show back up and they're struggling with a slice. And now we need something to fix that. And a lot of people, you know, generally don't stick with golf equipment very long uh at all. And I think one of the biggest problems within the golf industry is that all of the golf clubs have been now made to be disposable. And it's kind of like a one-time use thing almost to where, you know, every season it seems like every golfer feels the need to go out and have a new driver or to have the new irons or to get new wedges because the grooves are worn out on this one. And we've all heard it before, but what we're gonna get into uh in this podcast today is we're gonna talk about why fitting doesn't work for a lot of people. And we're also gonna talk about what you can do to arm yourself with better information so that when you do go in for a fitting, you're not at the mercy of the person doing the fitting. Because I think what really happens is there's a lot of vanity fitting out there. And what I mean by that is a lot of people have already made the decision that they want a new driver or they want new irons or whatever the case may be. And when they go in to get quote unquote fit, basically the fitter is just there as a salesman to make them feel better about spending the money they've already decided to spend. And then if they're a good fitter, then they really bump up the price tag by getting you into this shaft that's going to really help you, uh, whether it be with the slice or the hook or help you get some extra distance or whatever the case may be. But generally speaking, there's a lot of vanity fitting out there. And the reason I feel so confident in saying that is I myself have been fit several times, and they never ask me, you know, what's my miss? They never ask me, you know, what do I need to see the golf ball do on the golf course? Now, you might say, well, that's because they're not good fitters, but by and large, most of us are getting fit, going in for our appointment, and it's like, okay, let's figure out which driver goes the farthest for you. And just because that particular driver goes the farthest that day doesn't mean that that driver is going to work for you on the golf course. So we're going to get into some of the reasons why that happens. We're going to get into some of the things that we can do to kind of help better arm ourselves with better information. And we're also going to talk about, you know, why fitting doesn't work for a lot of people. And the obvious reason that fitting doesn't work for a lot of people is that a lot of people don't make very consistent golf swings. Um, they have a hard time with low point, they have a hard time with delivering the shaft with some forward shaft lean if it happens to be an iron. They just generally have a bit of a tough time with the golf club in their hands. Now, you know, we're not talking about the better players right now, but we're talking about the average players and the slightly worse than average players. And by and large, these are the people going to every fitter and trying to get equipment that solves all of their problems. Because it's much easier to try to buy your way out of this problem than it is to put the work in in a lot of cases. So I think a lot of people, you know, go into a fitting thinking that a club can really change their ball flight. And in some cases, maybe it can, but by and large, you know, you making your swing and your movement pattern producing that swing is what really is shaping the golf ball one way or the other. It's not the golf club. And the golf club is not going to be able to address all of these issues. Now, if you're somebody who goes and, you know, you overfade the ball a little bit, but generally you're pretty consistent at that, you know, maybe fitting is something that could help with that for sure. But when you're somebody who has a two-way miss and you're somebody who really struggles with controlling where you contact the ground at, that fitting is really not going to do you a whole lot of good. So one of the big things that I think is important to consider when it comes to fitting and whether you should get fit or not, is kind of thinking about, well, how consistently do I hit these clubs? Do I hit them generally on the heel? Do I hit them generally on the toe? Do I hit them generally in the sweet spot? And if you are generally hitting it in the sweet spot and you're producing a predictable ball flight, you might have the magic club for you already. And I hate to tell people this, but the people who are writing about these golf clubs and these shafts, it's not the engineers that are doing the brief that's being published to the public consumer. The engineers design these shafts and design these heads to generally fit about 80% of the population. That's what they're trying to do. Now, when they kind of design the specs and get it where they think it needs to be, they then hand that club off to the marketing team. And the marketing team, they're trying to sell this to the best of their ability. That's why they're a marketing team. If you've ever seen Mad Men, you know that they're trying to make it sound appealing to us. So they'll use very kind of vague terminology like high launch, low spend, because everybody thinks that's what they need and want. But a lot of us don't really get a lot of information from the information that's provided by these companies, which is why we feel compelled to go and hit the clubs and kind of see what works best for us and maybe even go into a fitting. So I think the information that's available is not really there in a way to where people can make educated decisions for themselves. Now, a big part of that is because these companies, especially when it comes to the shaft companies, don't want you knowing exactly where the stiffness is laid out through that shaft, because some of that is proprietary information. And if we had a list to where everything was kind of on it and we knew the exact specs of what's out there, then if something does very well, like a FujiCura Ventus, which won all the majors this year on the PGA tour and has been a very big seller, if the specs were known for that, well, then a lot of other companies would probably just clone that shaft, sell it at a cheaper price point, and now FujiCura is at a disadvantage, even though they did the RD figuring out what was going to work for the broad base of golfers that that shaft appeals to. So from a from a selling the club's perspective, the the club companies and the shaft companies aren't really incentivized to share that information, which is why it tends to be hard to find. And as somebody who does a lot of coaching and a lot of teaching, people come to me and ask me, hey, do you think this golf club is right for me? You know, is there something out there that could be better? Well, I would love to be able to go and just have, you know, a big Bible of golf shafts and club heads and know exactly where the CG is within each head and know exactly what the shaft profile is for each shaft company, and then be able to go, well, these shafts here would work really well for you, but generally there is not this Bible or this big list of this information that exists anywhere. So it's a lot of having to test and do the research yourself to kind of figure out what's what out there, because just about everything is either like a mid-kick point or a low kick point or a high kick point or a high launch and low spin or a mid-launch and you know, low spin, or whatever the the analogy or not analogies, but whatever the terms that the marketing team came up with to make that shaft or that club head sound appealing to the consumer. So there's a lot of kind of smoke and mirrors and a lot of hype that goes into this. So one thing that I want to be crystal clear about is that the USGA limit for the springiness of the club face has been the same now for I think roughly 20 years. So the smash factor limit is 1.50. So essentially what that means is that if you swing a club head at 100 miles an hour, the fastest that ball can leave and be legal is 150 miles an hour. They can't violate that, they can't cheat that. There's no silver bullet for that because if the ball leaves faster, then the smash factor is higher. And now all of a sudden, that is a illegal driver. So for the people out there that think that these driver faces are getting hotter year over year, it simply isn't true because they all have to go through the USGA conforming test and get on the list and approved. And the club companies don't want to make illegal drivers because then people can't play with them. The last uh kind of big, you know, melee about all this, uh, I remember when I was younger, Callaway came out with a non-conforming driver. It was called the ERC2, I believe. And the ERC was a little hotter than the 1.50 limit, and it didn't really sell very well because a lot of people couldn't play with it. And if they did, they were accused of being cheaters. And like it didn't work very well. And I can't remember a club that has been known to be illegal with the springiness of the face coming to market since then. And and generally I would say it's because it doesn't sell as well. So generally, you know, when we think about buying a new driver, I think a lot of people think this somehow, some way, the thing's just gonna go faster. And the reason people think that is because that's what the club company says. But they are trying to sell more golf equipment. So if they can convince you that it goes farther and you purchase that driver, they win. Now, it's not going to, because, like I said, the legal limit is the legal limit. So I think that that's very disingenuous. But one thing to keep in mind is that it doesn't actually help TailorMade or Titleist or any of these other companies to sell you the last driver you're ever going to need. Because if they did, they would go out of business. So it's important to keep in mind that they are trying to sell you golf equipment. And generally, when it comes to a driver, distance is what sells, which is why the marketing is always 17 yards farther, whatever numbers they come up with this year. But that can't be true because the face is the face and you're swinging it as fast as you swing it. So, where does all this extra distance come from? And that's what people generally don't think about and don't understand when they go to buy that new driver, is that it's maxed out. They're not making drivers go any farther. What they're actually doing these days, in the days of the 10K heads, right, is that they are making the drivers more forgiving. And if I give you a big watermelon on a stick, then you are going to feel more incentivized to swing it faster. That's what they tend to do, right? Is they've made the drivers super forgiving. Now everybody can kind of swing like they're doing long drive, and no matter where you hit it on the face, the ball flies pretty good. Versus back in the day when we had these little tiny heads, and what we were seeing is that because the head was smaller, you had to find some kind of way to hit the middle to keep the ball on the planet. So by making the drivers bigger, more forgiving, we're up to 460cc now. By making them bigger and more forgiving, that's where people think the drivers are getting better. But they're not actually getting better, they're just getting easier to hit. So if you're somebody who consistently hits the middle of the face, the idea that you're gonna go out and buy a driver that's going to help you hit the ball farther, I'm not buying it. I just don't think it's true. Now, a lot of other people kind of look at the shaft and go, oh, well, if I get this upgraded shaft, that's really gonna help me swing it faster. Well, maybe and maybe not. If you're playing with a shaft that's way too stiff, then yes, maybe going to a softer shaft may help you swing the club head a little faster and may produce some more speed. But generally speaking, we're not just going to gain tons of speed from a shaft. It can help, but generally what people fail to realize is if you are kind of stuck swinging at the same speed, generally that's because of how we're moving our body during the swing. And the thing that actually creates the speed with the shaft is when we take the club back and away from the ball, and then we start moving it back towards the ball in transition, we bend the shaft. Okay, that's really important to understand. So we are actually bending that shaft in transition. Now, if we want to make speed, we have to get that bend point or that kick point of the shaft to actually kick and release in the downswing. That's how we make this extra speed. That's the quote unquote cracking the whip model that a lot of people like to use. But if you're somebody who doesn't use your body very well and don't create much braking force with your body, it's going to be very hard for you to unbend that shaft or to get the kick point to release. Now, if you're somebody that kind of falls into that camp, you're not going to be able to get a driver shaft soft enough to really help with that. So a lot of people uh a few years back really fell in love with the autoflex shaft. And a lot of these companies came out with these super lightweight, super bendy shafts because what they understand and what their engineers understand is exactly what I'm talking about. And without this ability to break the body and then the club, we're not really able to get that shaft to do much work for us. So they came out with super whippy soft shafts because in their mind that's going to help golfers release it even more. But the problem is that the shaft now bends easier, but people still don't have the brake in order to unbend it. Now, because the shaft is super whippy, you might be able to stall out enough to get it to kick a little bit for you, which did help certain players when they went to the autoflex shafts. But a lot of people that I've worked with and know that have an autoflex shaft, they didn't really see any significant speed gains. Now, the benefit of having a stiffer shaft, unlike an autoflex shaft, is that it tends to reduce twisting a bit more than let's say the autoflex does. So people were gaining a little bit of speed, maybe, but the problem was is when they miss the middle, the thing twists all over the place, and now the ball is going everywhere. So they're kind of you know gaining a little bit of speed, but now their discrepancy and the ball flight is way wider, or I'm sorry, the dispersion and their ball flight is way wider. And now that little bit of speed they've gained really isn't worth it because they tend to be in the woods and in the pond more often. So, you know, this idea that we can simply go and buy more speed, I just don't think it's a true statement at all. So, you know, whether you think that you can buy more speed, whether you think you can't buy more speed, you know, that's up to you. That's a personal choice. People are going to listen to this podcast and go out and want to buy new golf clubs because we're all kind of golf junkies. But at the end of the day, I think that we have to understand that this idea that speed is free or can be purchased, uh, it just doesn't hold up. The other thing that I think is super important and relevant to this conversation is that when a lot of people go in for a fitting, when they get fit, they're getting fit on a launch monitor. Now, I'm a big fan of launch monitors. I think they're great. I think we can learn a lot from these. But one of the things that we have to learn is that the ideal land angle for your golf ball is about 38 degrees with a driver. And it doesn't matter whether it's a foresight, a track man, a sky track, uh full swing, whatever device you use as a launch monitor and get fit on, it is assuming that it's hitting a hard and firm ground when the ball hits the ground. Now, if you have a golf ball hitting the ground at 38 degrees and it's firm and there's not a lot of resistance, the math works out to where there's roughly 35 yards of rollout. Now, that's like the optimal rollout as the math kind of states it. So if we understand that the total number, which is what most of us are being shown in a fitting, because it's much easier to tell people they're hitting it farther than shorter, especially if we're trying to sell them a driver in one of these vanity fittings. If they are only showing you the total number, and the total number is including 35 yards or more of rollout, we have to start thinking about where we play golf. And we, I currently live in Michigan. You know, it's generally not that firm and fast here because we get plenty of rainfall in the summertime. Golf courses tend to be pretty plush. And what we find is that we don't get a ton of rollout here in the state of Michigan. And I can assure you that even in the middle of August or July, when it's as firm and fast as it's going to be, you're generally not getting 35 yards of rollout on the golf course. So why is that important? Well, a lot of the times when we get fit, they are trying to get the total number as big as they can, which tends to include a lot of this roll. Now, the thing is, like I said, you may get fit and find out that you carry the ball 250 yards, roll it 35 yards, and hit it 285. Now, I don't know how far you hit the golf ball, but maybe 285 sounds really good to you. Like, man, I haven't hit one 285 in a long time. I love that. Okay, great. So you do your fitting, it says 285. You can't buy this driver fast enough, and then you go to your local golf course. And now all of a sudden it's a little softer. It doesn't necessarily even have to be wet, but you go out there on the first T, you hit your driver, and when you know it, it only goes 240. And you're thinking, well, that can't be right. I was just hitting this thing 285. Am I fitting? How does this one only go 240? Well, here's how that works. When we do a fitting for a driver, for an iron, for any club for that matter, the number that we really want to look at is carry. And carry is what we're guaranteed to get because the ball is in the air. That is super duper important when we are doing a fitting, is we have to maximize and or optimize the carry number because the carry is what we can guarantee we're going to get. Now, it would be nice if we got some rollout. It would be nice if we got the golf ball to land at 38 degrees and run out a little bit for us. But let's say you're going to go out and play golf after it's rained the past couple days. You're not getting that rollout. So now instead of hitting your new driver 285, now maybe you only hit it 240 because let's say we're not optimizing the actual carry number and we're trying to still get to that 285. Well, heck, you might carry your old driver that you spent a little bit more, 285. I'm sorry, 250, but this new one that rolls out farther because it has less spin, it only carries 240 because it's not as up in the air and doesn't have as much hang time. So now all of a sudden you've kind of robbed Peter to pay Paul, but Paul doesn't always show up. So we have to really be aware of what we're looking at in these fittings, and we want to make sure that we are optimizing or maximizing our carry number before we worry about the rollout. And the way that I often describe this to people is if you're a salaried position employee, the carry is going to be your paycheck you get every two weeks. You can count on it, you know it's showing up, it's all great. You kind of learn to expect that. Now, when you put that paycheck into the bank and it incurs interest, that's your rollout. And sometimes interest is good and sometimes interest is bad, but we can't count on having that interest going to be there to pay our bills. We have to depend on paying our bills with our paycheck, and that's why we have to optimize the carry number. Now, a lot of people don't like to do that, especially golfers who aren't that proficient, because now all of a sudden they realize that they don't hit the ball 300 yards. They probably carry the ball closer to 220 yards to 240, 250 yards. That's okay, but we need to understand how far do we actually carry it and are we optimizing that number? Because that is going to be a way bigger predictor of performance of that driver for you than not. So I think it's really important that we pay attention to that number. The other numbers that I think we really have to look at are launch and spend. And that is something that I think is widely misunderstood. Um, and the reason for it, once again, goes back to fitting. And the problem with fitting is fitting generally is based off of the good ones, not the bad ones. So generally, let's just stick with the driver. We go in for a driver fitting, and you don't look at the bad ones, you look at the good ones because we want to sell you this driver, so we're only going to look at the ones that make you feel good about yourself. But in reality, fitting somebody off the good ones really is disingenuous. And here's why we no longer play with the Balata Wound golf ball, we no longer play with persimmon or small heads, we're playing with these big forgiving driver heads and urethane golf balls that don't want to spin. And here's why that's important. When we mishit a driver, by and large, it is underspinning. Okay, let me say that again. When we mishit the driver, especially off the toe, the ball underspends. It doesn't overspend like it used to. So here's why this is important. Once again, you're in for your driver fitting. We're trying to make the total number as big as we can so it's an easy sell for the fitter. And like I said, to get more rollout, which is kind of free yardage, if you will, according to the launch monitor, we want the ball spinning less than more because the more the ball is spinning, the less of that rollout we get, the smaller the total number is, the harder it is to sell a driver. So when we start lowering that spin rate, what ends up happening is we start losing trajectory and we start losing carry. But it kind of makes up on the back end when the ball rolls even more than the 35 yards, but you're not seeing that, you're only seeing the total number. Now, the problem is, is let's say that you're aware of this and you're like, okay, I want to see the carry number. And let's say that you hit one and you carry it 250 and it rolls out to 285, and you're like, see, that's the one. That's perfect. Well, it is perfect on a good swing. But once again, if we are fitting to optimize this thing off of a center punch or a center strike, what happens when we miss this thing a little bit? Well, like I said earlier, it's going to underspin. And now all of a sudden that ball is falling out of the sky and it's not creating a stable ball flight because it's not spinning fast enough to kind of hold its shape or hold its line. So when we get this ball under spinning, it really creates a lot of issues for us when it comes to predicting what the ball is going to do when we're outside playing golf. So where I think a lot of people are kind of misinformed is that for the most part, we don't want to fit somebody into a driver that is spinning anywhere close to like 2,000 RPMs unless you are a crazy high ball speed guy. That's generally not what we're trying to do. And most golfers that are out there who are, you know, a 15 to a 20 to a 25 who watch a little golf on TV and maybe watch a little bit of golf content on social media or YouTube, everybody kind of acts like 2,000 RPMs is this golden number. And it's absolutely not the golden number. So, what I want to show you, if you're watching this on YouTube, uh, you can see here on the video, but if you are listening to this, no big deal, I will tell you exactly where to go to find this for yourself. But we are now looking at the ping optimal launch and spin chart. Super, super important. So if you're somebody who's interested in doing a fitting and getting into a new driver, this is definitely something that should be on your phone. And you can Google ping fitting chart, you can Google ping optimal launch and spin chart, you can save this to your phone, and now you're armed with some data that is super helpful for you. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not sharing this, and nobody can see this that's watching on YouTube. So one moment, let me share this for the people. But we want to actually have some information available to us because we don't want to be beholden to the fitter. So let me throw this back up now that we have this actually showing. Okay, here we go. So now we're looking together at the paying optimal launch and spend chart. Now, why this is important is because it tells you the exact recipe that you need to optimize your new driver. Now, for a lot of people, we're just going to kind of use some general references here. On the left, we have driver ball speed, okay, which is a very easy number to get, and almost every single launch monitor provides that number. The numbers across the bottom are the angle of attack, and a lot of launch monitors provide that as well. But that's really kind of what we need to know about ourselves. So if you know that you are consistent in your attack angle in between, let's say negative two and positive two, that would be pretty neutral and a good place to be. That kind of puts us in the middle of the chart across the bottom here. And then what we do is we go, well, okay, what's my ball speed like with my driver? And let's say that we're at 150 miles an hour. Okay, so if we know that 1.50 is the uh USGA legal limit for the springiness of the face, then we can assume 150 miles an hour is for somebody swinging the golf club right around 100 miles an hour. It's pretty easy math. So if I go to 150 and I go over here to the middle where zero degrees is, it says here that for us to have a well-fit driver that's optimal, we want to be launching that driver at 12.5 degrees at 2600 RPMs. Now that's nowhere close to the 2000 RPMs that we talked about earlier. The other thing that I think is interesting is we have to launch that thing at 12.5 degrees. Now, if we start thinking about this a little bit, this is assuming a zero attack angle, which means we're gonna need a fair amount of loft in our hands to probably get to that 12 and a half degrees. And a lot of people really struggle with launching the driver, typically because of an ill fitted shaft. So We need something that is going to kind of help us shaft-wise create some launch, which isn't going to hurt us because we now can see that we need to be at about 2600 RPMs of spin. Now, if you swing up on it a little bit, okay, let's say you're two degrees up, now you're having to launch that thing at 13.7 with a spin rate of 2450. Okay, so the spin rate came down a little bit because we're launching the ball higher. But the inverse is true as well. If I swing two degrees down on it, let's say you maybe are a little steeper with your delivery, maybe you tend to fade the ball a little bit more, a little more out to end club path. Now of a sudden, because we're a little steeper and a little more down and across, we're only launching this at 11 degrees. That seems a lot more reasonable for a lot of people. But to make up for the lack of launch, we can see that the spin rate goes up to 2750. And I used to work at a place that did a lot of fitting with drivers and irons and all that stuff. And I never saw them ever fit anybody into a driver that spun 2750. They would all say that that was way too much spin and that was going to kill their distance. But right here, we can see that that's where we want to be if we're hitting the driver 275 yards approximately. So I think having this information available to you is super helpful because now you don't have to trust what the fitter is saying. You can compare what you're seeing here with the data that's being provided in the fitting and make sure that you are getting the right numbers produced by this driver that you're going to make honestly a pretty big investment into. So I think it's super helpful to have this available on your phone if you're thinking about getting some new or thinking about getting a new driver. So one thing that I also think is worth mentioning is once again, most of the fitting that occurs is based off of the good shot. So if you hit your most perfect one and it's at 12.4 degrees and 2600 RPMs and your attack angle was zero, I would say this. I don't think that's spinning enough because once again, that is a centered strike. We are not going to hit the center of the face every time. It's an unfortunate part of golf, but true. Now, let's say that we tend to miss a little bit towards the toe with our driver. Like I said earlier, that ball is going to spend less, and now I'm losing carry. So where I think a very good fitter is going to step in is A, we're going to make sure that the launch is a minimum of 12.4, and we're going to get the spin rate maybe up to 2800, 2850 on a good one. Okay. And the reason I say that is yes, we may lose a couple yards of rollout, which we probably won't get anyway. But more importantly, when we miss it a little bit, instead of the spin plummeting and the ball falling out of the sky and us not getting our carry, now the ball still spins enough to carry roughly the same distance as when I hit it off the toe a little bit, or on the middle, I should say. So I think we want to look at these numbers as a guideline. But if we're going to miss these numbers a little bit, I think we should be missing them high. Now, I'm not saying that we should be trying to launch at three degrees high or anything like that, but we want to make sure that we can get to these numbers very easily with our good and bad swings. We don't simply want to look at the center strike one and go, oh, okay, well, here you go. The other thing that I think we have to look out for when it comes to fitting is we want to make sure that when we are doing our fitting, that we are actually swinging the club more or less the way that we generally swing the club. And where a lot of people get in trouble is that when they go into a fitting and they start feeling good and there's not a fair way that they're trying to hit, what ends up happening is they swing harder. And when people start swinging harder, it gets more difficult to fit them because they maybe don't swing that hard on the golf course. The other thing is a lot of fittings now take place indoors, which generally means that it's warmer. You're probably not wearing a midlayer or a jacket or anything like that. And as we add some layers, generally we're not going to swing it as fast. If it's cold outside, you're generally not going to swing it as fast. We don't move as well. So we want to be able to hit these numbers that are ideal for us with relative ease. We shouldn't have to be kind of ramping up and trying to get the club to do more than it should be doing. We want the club to do the work, similar like a singer would say, let the microphone do the work. But getting fit is something that isn't helping a lot of people because we are just basing it off the good one. The other thing I see that goes terribly wrong in fittings a lot of time is they show you the averages. And we don't get to play golf with our averages. We have discrepancy and variation. So we don't want to be letting a fitter go, well, your averages are here, so this is kind of where we need it to be. Well, that doesn't really tell us anything and is not an accurate predictor of how we swing and move. So we want to stay away from getting into um, you know, the law of averages, so to speak, and kind of fitting off of that. So long story short, a lot of people they're going in for a fitting, they're getting fit to these numbers that make the biggest total number, but as we've already discussed, that isn't necessarily how it works when we go outside and play golf for real, because typically we're not getting the same amount of rollout that the launch monitor is predicting we're going to get. The other big problem is that a lot of times when we go in for this fitting, it turns into buying the one that goes the farthest. But what we should be doing is talking to our fitter and saying, like, hey, I overdraw the ball a little bit, hey, I overfade the ball a little bit, whatever the case may be, but we need to be trying to solve for our problem instead of just finding the club that goes the farthest. And that's where I think a lot of fitters aren't fitting to a need, they're simply fitting to distance. And I get why, once again, because that is the easiest selling point, because we all want to hit the ball farther. But the problem with the fitters is that they are not golf swing instructors. And generally they are fitting this person to the swing they brought in today. And I think that's where things really go wrong for a lot of people, especially as the handicap goes up, because if you are a 15 to 30 handicap, you're probably moving a little different and making a different swing as a consequence day to day. Some days you hit it fatter, some days you hit it thinner, some days you move it more right to left, some days you move it more left to right. And if that fitter is fitting off of kind of your swing tendencies, then when you make a slightly different swing, that driver or those irons no longer work for you all that well. So I think it's really important to understand that if you're going to get fit, there needs to be a certain level of consistency within your golf swing. That's really, really important. Um I think, you know, the big thing too is that with so many of these fittings happening in indoor or indoor outdoor spaces, we tend to be hitting the ball off of a mat. Now, when we're hitting the ball off of the mat, the biggest issue becomes turf interaction isn't a real thing anymore. So when we hit the ball off the mat, generally speaking, we don't want to dig into that mat. That doesn't feel very good. So we tend to favor things that have a little more rounded leading edge, maybe a little wider sole, a lot of these, a little more offset, maybe, but a lot of these things that we kind of prefer off of that firm and tight lie that the turf creates isn't what we find when we go out and play golf. Now, obviously with a driver, we're teeing it up, so that doesn't really factor in. But when we do an iron fitting, or more importantly, a wedge fitting, that turf interaction is huge. So if you go and look at, you know, title's latest offerings, they have a million different grinds, a million different bounce options, and that is so we can get the turf interaction as good as we can make it based off of how you're delivering the club. Now, if you are hitting it off of a mat, all the wedges are gonna feel about the same. Okay, so I think for a lot of us that go in and kind of off season do our fitting and are like, oh, this feels really good, or you know, whatever the case may be, yeah, it does because it's off a perfect lie. But how is that club gonna work for you when we get out onto the turf? And I think a lot of us need to kind of realize that, you know, if we're steeper, you know, we probably want to find a club with a little thicker sole. Because as that leading edge goes into the ground, that fat sole is gonna help kick the club back out of the ground and keep it from digging. Now, if you're somebody who tends to be a little bit shallower, you know, we don't want that club bouncing off the ground. That's not gonna help anybody. So maybe that player would benefit from more of a thinner soul. So it's really understanding how you deliver the club, having some consistency in how you deliver the club, and then trying to match the club up to what you do and what you do well. So we want to build in some forgiveness for the swings that aren't so great, and we want the club to perform then as well. But generally, we want to try to figure out what works best for us when we swing it well. So the fitting thing is kind of a mess because it's asking a lot of the fitter to kind of understand all these things about you when maybe this is the first time you've ever met that person. And I think that's where there's a real benefit in kind of having a fitter that you've been with before and can kind of know your game a little bit. It would be ideal if they'd been on the golf course with you and seen how you kind of swing and how you play. But for a lot of us, that's just not really an option. But I also think that all of us should kind of start learning that maybe we don't need a fitting every year, and maybe we don't need new golf clubs every year. Because, like I said, generally speaking, they're not making these massive changes year over year with golf equipment, even though the marketing teams at these companies say that. Um, they're really not. So I think where golfers could really benefit is getting something that is consistent for them and then sticking with it for a while. So when I say consistent for them, what I mean by that is, you know, if you go into a fitting and let's say you do a driver fitting, and let's say you find one that works really well for you. Well, I think something important to understand about why that works well for you is it probably has a lot to do with the shaft profile, which generally is a description of where the stiffness lies in that handle, or I'm sorry, in that shaft. So if you find a shaft profile that works really well for you, generally that is because it matches your delivery style. Now, whether it's a driver, whether it's an iron, whether it's a wedge, you're kind of making the same motion with your body and more or less making the same swing. So if we find the shaft profile that works best for your type of delivery, we want to try to match that up throughout the bag. Now, that doesn't mean it's the same brand all the way through the bag with the shafts, but when you're working with your fitter, it's like, hey, I really like the profile of this shaft and my driver. This is working really well for me. What iron shafts kind of share a similar profile? And now all of a sudden we kind of start getting that same profile throughout the entire bag, which is going to make it much more consistent for you in terms of what to expect out of the club shaft when you're swinging all of your golf clubs. I think that's super, super helpful. I don't think a lot of people really think about that that much, but getting a consistent shaft profile, not brand, through the bag can be really advantageous for a lot of players. The other thing that I think really kind of goes amiss is we want to kind of understand that the way that we used to gap golf clubs and the way that we currently are, you know, using the golf clubs with the modern ball, the gaps don't always work out perfectly, even though the club companies sell them that way. So what I mean by that is generally speaking, every golfer runs into this issue to where they cannot hit a certain club far, I'm sorry, high enough in the sky to get the needed distance out of that club. So if you think about this, for a lot of people, we used to have three and four irons in the bag. Well, now if you go to your local golf course, you're probably gonna see a lot less three irons and a lot more hybrids. Okay, so the three irons have kind of come out of the bag. Well, the reason that the three iron doesn't work for a lot of people is because they can't get it high enough in the sky to fly farther than their four iron. So, you know, I think for a lot of folks, we kind of, you know, hey, I'm gonna start with a five iron, I'm gonna start with a four-iron, and then I'm gonna do four degree intervals on each club from there, as the club company recommends, and that's gonna fit perfect. Well, based off your delivery, based off how you're kind of interacting with the turf with that golf club, we might need to actually bend a little loft one way or the other to kind of help you get the ball high enough. One of the things that I think a lot of people don't understand about trajectory is if you're a tour player, you hit all your clubs the same height. They do. They hit their four iron the same height as they hit their seven iron. They really do. And for a lot of us amateurs out there, we're not hitting that four, five, even six iron nearly as high as we hit our eight, nine iron. And that's a problem. And that's why we're having these gapping issues and not having the stopping power that we need to have with the longer irons when we hit it into the green. So once again, finding a shaft profile that's kind of consistent throughout the bag that works for you is key. But then it's like, okay, well, you know, we start hitting the clubs, and it's like the seven irons at 90 feet, great, the six irons at 90 feet, great, the five irons at 70 feet, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. That's not going to work as well. So we've got two choices. We can either bend a little bit more loft onto the golf club, okay, and try to see if that doesn't get the trajectory where we need it and get it to be able to be at that 90 feet like everything else, or we can start moving the center of gravity around, which generally requires a hybrid or a high-lofted wood or something like that. But we need to get the ball up in the air so that one, I get the carry distance where I need it to be, and B, I can get that ball landing soft enough to where when I hit it into a green, it has the stopping power I need to stay on the green. So I think that's really, really important for golfers out there to understand that generally speaking, we want the apex of all of our shots to be the same. Now, I understand we get into our wedge game, maybe we're trying to hit them a little lower, whatever the case may be. But when we're talking about full swing, we want that apex to match throughout the bag. So, you know, it's really tough, like I said, to get a quality fitting because a lot of these fitters are meeting you for the first time and they're there to make you feel good about what you've already decided to spend. Now, with that being said, there's a lot of stuff going on out there that I don't agree with. And the truth of it is, is that club, I'm sorry, fitters make very little money off the club heads anymore. Um, they do. So word on the street, if if you want to believe me, if you don't, that's fine. But the reality of it is, is that these retailers are lucky if they're making 15 to 20 percent on the club heads. There's just not a lot of margin there. So they, you know, bring in the club from titleist, tailor-made, whoever, and they mark it up, you know, and they're lucky at the end of the year by the time their accountant does all the math, if they made a 15 to 20% margin on that golf club. That's the reality of it. So if you think about these these companies that do only fitting, it's really hard to stay in business on a 20% margin. So where's the margin at these days? Well, that's a great question. And the margin these days is in shafts. That's where the margin is. That's the only margin left in golf, to be honest with you. And the margin in shafts can be, you know, anywhere from 30 to 50 percent, which is a whole heck of a lot better than 20%. So if you go and get a fitting at a fitter-only facility, what you're generally going to find is that nobody walks out the door without an upgraded shaft. That's kind of what happens at a lot of these fitters. And there's a particular company that does fitting all over the country, and I always know when one of my clients has been fit by them because two things are there. It's an acro shaft, which I'm not saying anything negative about acrous shafts. I really like them, but it's an acro shaft and it's been pured. And I always know where that comes from. And the thing is, is that they are selling these clubs to people because they can make the weight lighter. It's a composite shaft, which generally produces a little bit more ball speed, but it also tends to spin a little less. And now the distance is higher. But I can't tell you how many people have come to me with one of these$5,000 sets of golf clubs, and they can't hit them any farther or any better, or even really hit them at all. And the club is getting too light, and that's where I think a lot of people think that lighter is always better. Lighter can be a very good thing for a lot of people, but if we're going lighter and not addressing the swing weight, then we're in a lot of trouble. And I think that that's where a lot of the club building has gone to the wayside. And club building is very, very important. But this puring the shafts and doing all these extra add-ons, for most people, they can't tell a difference, and it doesn't help them. It's just an add-on and it's a service add-on, so the margin's really good. So, generally speaking, I think a lot of people are being bamboozled into these shaft upgrades and these service upgrades, and it just doesn't really help them play better golf, and it doesn't translate to the golf course. So if you're somebody who is interested in getting new golf clubs, once again, download that ping chart that I showed you earlier. I think it's super, super helpful. It at least gives you a starting point to have a conversation with your fitter. And then once you kind of figure out which shaft profile kind of works for your delivery, I would try to get that same shaft profile throughout the entire bag, but I would make sure that with that shaft profile, you're keeping your trajectory consistent throughout the bag, because that's what we need to be doing in order to get this gapping scenario correct. Who cares about how far the ball goes in a linear fashion? We've got to get that golf ball to stop. The only freaking club in the golf bag that we don't want to stop is the driver. Everything else we want to stop. So that's why kind of getting this formula right is so important for so many golfers. Now, when it comes to wedge fitting and putter fitting, I think that always is putter fitting can be done inside fairly well. Uh that's a whole other discussion. Um, but once again, like the wedge fitting, I would never get fit for a wedge to where I wasn't outside. And who cares how you hit it with a full swing? That's gonna be pretty easy to do. But what you want to be able to do within your wedge fitting is you want to be able to go and hit some out of a bunker. You want to be able to go and chip some from greenside and short-sighted. You want to be able to see, like, hey, can I make this ball do some different things like I'm gonna have to do when I play golf? But once again, you're gonna have to go into these different scenarios and try that stuff out. And you're gonna have to work with a fitter who's good, who understands the different soul types and the bounces and all of these things. So, you know, I think it's really important that when we look at wedges, that A, we get the distance and the gapping correct. So getting the lofts correct and getting that shaft profile correct is important. But then we also want to hit a lot of those touchy-feely shots and make sure that that wedge is working for us and not digging, not bouncing, none of those things. But the turf interaction is good. So, you know, I I would really, if I were you, you know, a lot uh like I said, the club companies are picking and choosing shafts that they believe are going to work for 80% of the people that are out there. So all of the driver manufacturers generally have, you know, two, three, four, five ver versions of the head. And the reason they do that is like, hey, we got something for you. You know, it used to be considered that title as clubs were only good for better players, but now, you know, if you look at the GT line, we've got a GT1, a GT2, a GT3. Um, you know, that GT1 man is like super easy to hit. Okay, the GT3 is a little more pear-shaped, uh, spends a little less, you know, works with people with higher speed, but they're kind of trying to make a different head that fit different populations of golfers. But when they do their RD and they kind of figure out what's going to work best for their consumers, they're doing that kind of homework and figuring out the shaft for you. And generally speaking, unless you're doing some crazy stuff with your golf swing, their stock offerings, one of them should work for you. Now, do you need to get the shaft flex kind of figured out? Of course you do. Do you kind of need to get the shaft profile figured out? Of course you do. But they have multiple stock offerings, and there should be something in there that kind of fits for you. If you're going in for a fitting and they're not talking about any of the stock shafts and they're only trying to upsell you, that's all it is. It's an upsell. And generally, I don't think people need to be upsold because these companies do a very good job of kind of figuring out what's going to work best for 80% of the population. I know we all want to feel special, like we're out on the 10% on either end, but in reality, most of us are going to fall into that 80%, and there is going to be an offering for you that works. So once again, we've talked about it. Get that fitting chart kind of on your phone and hold your fitter accountable. You know, ask them to see the carry number instead of the total number. Make sure we're getting that number before we worry about the rollout. And then once we kind of have that figured out, then we can use that to start kind of filling in the gaps and figure out what we need. But this in general is why I think the fitting doesn't work, is because generally we're just chasing pure distance. But unless you're a long drive person, you're going to need 13 of the, I'm sorry, 12 of the golf clubs to stop and not just go forever, which is generally how they're selling the drivers. So long story short, I think that's why fitting doesn't work for most people, um, generally because we're fitting off the good ones, which can be different day to day depending on your skill level and how consistent your golf swing is. So hopefully this podcast has kind of armed you with a little more information, uh, is going to help you make better decisions when you go to get your golf clubs. Another thing I would say is that, you know, last year's model driver, just as good as these years model. Uh, this is why I don't do staff deals because they can't yell at me for saying these things. But there's incredible value in the used market, and you can find really great equipment that's maybe a season too old. You know, I still have an R7 uh Super Quad TP driver from TaylorMade from 2007. I love to death. I play with it all the time. I have new drivers too, but you know, I really like that driver. Um, it works and performs when I hit it out of the middle just as good as any of the new equipment does. So there is value out there. If you're somebody who's maybe newer to the game, uh, or maybe somebody who doesn't have the money to just throw at these new golf clubs year after year, you know, it's it doesn't hurt you to look at the used stuff. Now you have to be, you know, picky. You want to make sure you're finding new stuff that's, you know, lightly used and been taken care of, but generally that's not a bad place to look either. And the fun thing about the used stuff is you can you have way more options. You know, they only bring out so many new clubs every year. So if you're somebody who, you know, isn't worried about having the latest and the greatest, and that's not what motivates you, I think the used market is a great place. And not only that, but generally if you're buying something used, when you go and look it up online, you can find a lot of information about that club and that shaft and see if that kind of is going to work in the kind of system that you need, whether it be based off of, you know, when we're talking about that shaft profile, we can kind of find some more information when it comes to figuring out the loft. Like you obviously know that one, but you can find a lot more information about these older clubs because they've already kind of cycled through and people have already shared their personal experiences with them. So even though that's a little subjective, it still kind of helps us figure out, like, eh, this is maybe right for me, or maybe this isn't right. But I think the used stuff is super cool. Uh, there's a lot of things that, you know, from yesteryear uh that I think are way cooler than a lot of the new stuff, but that's a personal preference of mine. But I think if you're somebody who is looking for some new golf clubs, I don't think there's anything wrong with looking at the lightly used stuff because you really can find some deep discounts, save some money, and get equipment that works just as well as any of the new stuff. So I hope this helps people who are looking at new golf clubs, thinking about new golf clubs. I want to give people like the real story. Uh, I don't have a marketing team telling me what to say and all of the new stuff goes way farther or anything like that because it doesn't. So at the end of the day, if you want new stuff, by all means, go buy the new stuff. If you don't want to spend that kind of money, maybe look at the lightly used. But at the end of the day, I think understanding the shaft profile, understanding what works best for you, getting all of your clubs at the same peak trajectory, I think those are things that are really going to help us actually play better golf on the golf course versus just make the ball go farther. So I hope you found this podcast uh interesting. Uh, I hope you found some usable information in it as well. If you're interested in more of our podcast, you can find it wherever you download your podcast by searching Measured Golf Podcast. There is a video component to this as well. You can find that on our YouTube channel by going to YouTube and searching Measured Golf. If you're interested in following us on social media, you can find us at Measured Golf, or you can find me at the Forceplate Guy on social media as well. And for those of you that have reached out about working with me that don't live near our facility here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, we do have online and virtual options for you. And you can find out more about that by visiting our website at measuredgolf.com. So thanks so much for tuning into this episode. Make sure you download uh and subscribe to this so you don't miss any of the future episodes. And until next time, keep grinding.
