cmow
New
I was in LA this week for business, and had a few hours to kill, so I set up an appointment for a driver fitting at the CoolClubs location in Irvine, CA. They use Trackman outdoors to do the fitting. Just wanted to share some of my experience.
First of all, because I was travelling for business, I didn’t have my own driver for a baseline, which would be the ideal thing to use for a before and after comparison. He first built a club with roughly the same specs as my driver and had me hit a few shots. On about the second or third swing I hit a ball that really looked like my typical ballflight with my driver. He told me it was about a 50 degree landing angle on that shot, and we went to work on finding a better fit.
We went through a few combinations of different heads and shafts. It was pretty neat when he pulls the shaft out of a head and puts a different shaft in the exact same head, and you get totally different ballflights. Before, I was a bit skeptical about how much difference a shaft can make, but now I’M A BELIEVER.
I’m not sure that I can describe the following in the right words, but I’ll try. The properties of the shaft can cause you to swing differently even on the first swing with that shaft. There was 1 shaft that I used that I just couldn’t get back square – I was hitting huge blocks to the right – also this shaft just didn’t feel right to me – I told the fitter that I couldn’t feel the head. We found a shaft that was working pretty good for me, and thought we had pretty much optimized me, when on a whim he asked me to try this other shaft. On my first swing with this shaft I picked up 2.5 mph of club speed. I’m not sure if I can describe this (and you’ll probably think I’m crazy), but during the swing, I “knew/felt” that I could just let it rip with this shaft. Sometimes in this forum, there is talk about feeling/monitoring the pressure in the shaft, and I think I now know what they mean.
I was not getting the raw Trackman data during the session (which was probably good, because I would probably start fooling around with my swing instead of testing drivers), but he emailed the reports to me after the fitting. Lo and behold on the shaft that didn’t feel right and I couldn’t get square, my swing speed was in the 102 range. The original good fit was in the 104-106 range, and the really good fit was in the 108 range. On the really good fit, I hit 3 shots in a row that were all within 3 rpms of each other in spin rate (now that is consistent).
My averages on the best fit were:
Club Speed: 107.7
Attack Angle: 5.1 up
Club Path: 6.4 to the right
Horizontal Swing Plane: 10.7 to the right
Face angle: 5.1 degrees open to the target
Ball speed: 160.1
Smash Factor: 1.49
Vertical Launch Angle: 12.3
Horizontal Angle: 5.3
Spin Rate: 2031
Carry: 264.6 (longest was 273.5)
Landing Angle: 34.2 degrees
Total Length: 296.1 (longest was 305.1)
The only bad news from this experience is that the shaft that was working the best for me is really expensive. The ballflight from the “second best” shaft is definitely better than my current driver, but the premium shaft is better in feel and performance. Last year, I was really anal for a month or so, and was tracking my driving distance using a golf GPS. If I remember right, my average was something like 274. The calculated total distance for the “second best” shaft was 283, and the premium shaft was 296. If I played golf for a living it would be a no-brainer, but I’m not sure right now how much dough I’m willing to drop. If the difference was only a couple yards, I’d definitely go cheap, but this is a significant difference in performance.
There is another thread about “swinging left” going that is kind of getting at the question that I had in my head once I started looking at these stats. It is the correlation of the Horiz. Swing Plane, Angle of Attack and Club Path. In the other thread, it is talking about an iron swing. My stats are with a driver, so with the upward hit I would think that you would need to have the horizontal swing plane aimed a little right to deal with the upward hit vs. the plane to the left to deal with a downward hit.
Does anyone with Trackman experience have any suggestions after looking at the stats vs. what you’ve seen with other students? I would think that to get more neutral, I need to work on moving my plane to the left. Just wondering how much left it would have to be assuming that I kept the same 5 degree upward hit (or should that be reduced).
In summary, if you get a chance to get on Trackman, take it. Secondly, if you’ve never been fitted for shafts, you should try it, it can make a BIG difference. Also, the guy from CoolClubs was really cool (no pun intended). He wasn’t pushing any manufacturer – just looking for what worked best.
First of all, because I was travelling for business, I didn’t have my own driver for a baseline, which would be the ideal thing to use for a before and after comparison. He first built a club with roughly the same specs as my driver and had me hit a few shots. On about the second or third swing I hit a ball that really looked like my typical ballflight with my driver. He told me it was about a 50 degree landing angle on that shot, and we went to work on finding a better fit.
We went through a few combinations of different heads and shafts. It was pretty neat when he pulls the shaft out of a head and puts a different shaft in the exact same head, and you get totally different ballflights. Before, I was a bit skeptical about how much difference a shaft can make, but now I’M A BELIEVER.
I’m not sure that I can describe the following in the right words, but I’ll try. The properties of the shaft can cause you to swing differently even on the first swing with that shaft. There was 1 shaft that I used that I just couldn’t get back square – I was hitting huge blocks to the right – also this shaft just didn’t feel right to me – I told the fitter that I couldn’t feel the head. We found a shaft that was working pretty good for me, and thought we had pretty much optimized me, when on a whim he asked me to try this other shaft. On my first swing with this shaft I picked up 2.5 mph of club speed. I’m not sure if I can describe this (and you’ll probably think I’m crazy), but during the swing, I “knew/felt” that I could just let it rip with this shaft. Sometimes in this forum, there is talk about feeling/monitoring the pressure in the shaft, and I think I now know what they mean.
I was not getting the raw Trackman data during the session (which was probably good, because I would probably start fooling around with my swing instead of testing drivers), but he emailed the reports to me after the fitting. Lo and behold on the shaft that didn’t feel right and I couldn’t get square, my swing speed was in the 102 range. The original good fit was in the 104-106 range, and the really good fit was in the 108 range. On the really good fit, I hit 3 shots in a row that were all within 3 rpms of each other in spin rate (now that is consistent).
My averages on the best fit were:
Club Speed: 107.7
Attack Angle: 5.1 up
Club Path: 6.4 to the right
Horizontal Swing Plane: 10.7 to the right
Face angle: 5.1 degrees open to the target
Ball speed: 160.1
Smash Factor: 1.49
Vertical Launch Angle: 12.3
Horizontal Angle: 5.3
Spin Rate: 2031
Carry: 264.6 (longest was 273.5)
Landing Angle: 34.2 degrees
Total Length: 296.1 (longest was 305.1)
The only bad news from this experience is that the shaft that was working the best for me is really expensive. The ballflight from the “second best” shaft is definitely better than my current driver, but the premium shaft is better in feel and performance. Last year, I was really anal for a month or so, and was tracking my driving distance using a golf GPS. If I remember right, my average was something like 274. The calculated total distance for the “second best” shaft was 283, and the premium shaft was 296. If I played golf for a living it would be a no-brainer, but I’m not sure right now how much dough I’m willing to drop. If the difference was only a couple yards, I’d definitely go cheap, but this is a significant difference in performance.
There is another thread about “swinging left” going that is kind of getting at the question that I had in my head once I started looking at these stats. It is the correlation of the Horiz. Swing Plane, Angle of Attack and Club Path. In the other thread, it is talking about an iron swing. My stats are with a driver, so with the upward hit I would think that you would need to have the horizontal swing plane aimed a little right to deal with the upward hit vs. the plane to the left to deal with a downward hit.
Does anyone with Trackman experience have any suggestions after looking at the stats vs. what you’ve seen with other students? I would think that to get more neutral, I need to work on moving my plane to the left. Just wondering how much left it would have to be assuming that I kept the same 5 degree upward hit (or should that be reduced).
In summary, if you get a chance to get on Trackman, take it. Secondly, if you’ve never been fitted for shafts, you should try it, it can make a BIG difference. Also, the guy from CoolClubs was really cool (no pun intended). He wasn’t pushing any manufacturer – just looking for what worked best.
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J/K. Better yet, your country is in a recession. It is your patriotic duty to buy that shaft and help stimulate the economy. So to quote Billy Ray Cyrus, "love your country and live with pride," and get the shaft. As a last alternative, Christmas is coming and remind your family about the joy of giving. 