Where to Focus - Club Fitting

Where to focus during a club fitting session is an age old question.  As you already know, no two golfers are exactly alike.  Players of all skill levels have certain portions of their swings that are similar, but ultimately they all have different needs when it comes to their clubs.

Often times, when players compare their swing to some of their favorite tour stars, they also begin to make their product choices based upon what that same player has in their bag. The major difference we see in the amateur player vs. the tour player is not necessarily swing technique, but ball speed. Let’s take a look at how ball speed can be the deciding factor on where to focus as a club fitter.

The average driving distance on the PGA Tour in 2007 was 289 yards, while the average amateur drives the ball 212 yards. Unfortunately, most amateurs hold a belief that they hit the ball much farther, sometimes only remembering their best drive.  What this means is that in order to have an optimum driver fit a tour player with a ball speed of 160 MPH needs to have roughly 2200 rpm of backspin.  Conversely, the amateur, with ball speed of 125 MPH, needs to be in the range of 2800 RPM’s for optimal ball flight.

Within this scenario, for the average player to hit the fairway, he can have up to nearly 800 RPM’s of side spin while the tour player must have fewer than 400 RPM’s or else they risk routinely missing the fairway. Tour players are regularly searching for accuracy, while distance is often the overriding concern of amateurs.

Understanding the impact of both back spin and side spin in relationship to ball speed will result in a higher quality fitting session.  Knowing where to focus your efforts as a club fitter will help you be more efficient during fitting sessions and will lead to better fittings and more sales. 

Contact us today to find out how you can make your Vector Pro launch monitor an integral part of your fitting process to get the most out of your fitting cart.

LAUNCH MONITOR TIP

Don’t forget the Reports: You can generate six printable reports from the Reports menu.  Use them!  They contain all the information from the current fitting session and customers love having something they can take home with them.