The dreaded question of club fitting: is it your clubs? Or your golf swing? The question rattles around the heads of almost every player who wants to Play Better Golf, but it also applies to some of the best players in the world including those who carry PGA TOUR cards. In short, poor to average players stand the most to gain from a fitting at Cool Clubs, but – like we will see in this case study – even competitive players find themselves thinking it could be their golf swing, especially when something feels “off.”
Pete Weber, Cool Clubs Master Fitter out of Atlanta Georgia talked to us about a TOUR-level player who came into the shop looking for an answer to a perplexing problem: overcompensating for a miss was causing a further miss in the same direction. Was it the equipment or the player?
“A really talented player was gearing up for a big-time tournament and didn’t feel like his game was there in the way it needs to be,” said Weber. “We did our blueprint – make, model, shaft description, loft and lie, length, cycles per minute and a swing weight analysis – and look for deviation from the target. When we saw the data, we knew the answer right away. Improper equipment was causing a poor golf swing. Less of an either or and more of a chicken/egg problem.”
Dynamic loft analysis from Trackman pointed Weber in the right direction to fix the underlying issue.
“Dynamic loft on his irons were off by three degrees – too flat. That alone, with that leading edge, is going to throw the ball out to the right, but this player was missing left. When we went back and looked at his previous swings from other fittings, we could see the problem plain as day. The player was twisting and contorting his golf swing to compensate from the too-flat lie of his irons. We bent the irons back to where they needed to be and we were back to a tight dispersion.”
Weber noted this player will have to practice with a little bit more focus to get back to the more natural golf swing now that his equipment was back to where it needed to be.
“There was a little bit of overcompensation after bending the clubs back to where they should be, for sure, but the size of the miss reduced dramatically. The twist or manipulation of his golf swing caused by the incorrect dynamic loft he came in with will be a mild challenge to correct, but that’s certainly better and easier to do than continue to struggle and grind with equipment that is actively working against you.”
Are you changing your golf swing to match your equipment? Book a fitting at your Cool Clubs location and Play Better Golf.