Green Grass Golf Shop

Yes, absolutely yes, and always, unequivocally, 100% yes you certainly do.

End of blog!

Kidding of course, can you imagine? Before we really start, I want to say this first, in case nobody reads further than this, it’s the most important myth I need to bust here: MOST FITTINGS AT YOUR LOCAL GOLF COURSES ARE FREE WITH THE COST OF THE CLUBS YOU ARE FIT FOR. The only times you are definitely going to be charged for a fitting these days on top of the cost of the clubs are dedicated fitting centers like Club Champion and the like, retail locations and performance centers run by the club manufacturers that focus on creating a Tour level experience. Now of course, the short answer is simply that no matter who you are, no matter your size, swing speed, skill level, how many lessons you’ve had, your golf swing is your unique fingerprint. Once you’ve taken a few hundred swings, it becomes hard to change it a ton without a ton of work dedicated to those changes, but that bodes well for your fitting experience. Very few people in the world, if anyone at all, will have the same exact combination of your swing speed, angle of attack, shaft angle, tempo, swing direction, loading pattern, striking pattern, height, weight, strength, arm length, and all the rest of the dozens of other factors that go into a proper golf club fitting. Seriously, who else would swing a club like Riggs on purpose?

Thank you Trent. Just like your sweet kindergarten teacher Mrs. Blake, your mother and therapist tell you, you are a beautiful unique flower and nobody else out there is exactly the same that you are. Isn’t that special?

Nope, not at all, it would be easier to just fit a bunch of Iron Byron machines. I’m just talking about club fitting, I’m not the metaphorical antagonist in a George Orwell novel telling you that we all need to conform. I say that because it makes our job as club fitting professionals so much more complex, and the club fitting process, when done properly, much more complicated than many realize. Your (beautiful and special) unique golf swing isn’t the only reason for this. It’s been getting more and more complicated every year with all the advances in modern golf technology happening every season. Back even as recently as the mid-2000s fitting for your shaft and head could have been as simple as knowing your swing speed and how close to the center of the face you make contact. That’s because there were only, like, 20 total shaft options, broken down into lighter graphite or heavier steel, 3 flexes in senior, regular and stiff that most players fit into, end of options. Not that we’ve done much better in recent years, but as a female you were even more SOL with basically just the one option between a handful of manufacturers that even made ladies clubs. You used to be able to dial in your launch and spin simply with your shaft weight, material, or just the flex. If you were spinning it too much, launching too high, you needed a heavier shaft, a stiffer one or both. If you needed more forgiveness, help with a slice or a straighter flight, just get a bigger head with more offset, lemon squeezy. These days, not to mention all the different golf swings there are out there, there are also 100x more shaft options to choose from and fit with. You have heavier graphite options, featherweight steel options, graphite shafts that launch wormburners with knuckleball spin when compared to some newer lightweight steel options that send the ball to the moon with enough spin to float like zeppelin. With all of that out there, you really cannot fit yourself online, there is no one magical stairway to fitting heaven. I fit people for a living for a very long time, I can’t fit myself online either, it’s not about knowing your swing or all the equipment out there, you need to actually hit the shafts to see how they work in your swing.

I want to keep this short and sweet, as this will be the first in a long series of shaft comparisons and very detailed reasons as to why every golfer needs to be fit for their clubs. But just to summarize this bright and shiny intro here in a nice organized way:

• Most of your fittings these days, especially at golf courses and other green grass golf shops, are FREE with the cost of the clubs you purchase through that fitter.
• Your swing speed and handicap is not nearly enough information to start the fitting or even the narrowing-things-down process. Swing speed in 2024 doesn’t even always help narrowing down the flex that you need in your clubs, let alone the make and model of the shaft.
• Even if you had all of your swing mechanic readings from a launch monitor or previous fitting session, there is no set standard on how shafts are measured or what specs are advertised or published. Trying to compare shafts with the same weight, torque, kick point, everything could be the same on paper and still lead to wildly different results. Those “same shafts” on paper, both advertised and labeled to launch and spin the same by different manufacturers, can vary multiple degrees in launch angle in the same swing, or they could actually have the same exact launch angles in another completely different swing.

Visit the website of your favorite golf club manufacturer, look up or ask a chat representative for their local fitting locations near you, and please, your game is absolutely begging you, get a fitting for your clubs before you make any decisions. And please subscribe, because we didn’t even get into club heads, length and lie fitting yet!