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| Tech Talk - How and Why Custom Clubs
A Scientific Approach to Club Fitting
Introduction
“This is the easiest set of clubs to hit that I have ever owned.” This is a comment from a customer of Lotus Golf, the custom club making division of Perfected Golf Group, Ltd. He was a 30-year-old single digit handicapper who came to Lotus Golf to try the FitChip Fitting system.
The evolution of Perfected Golf Group's place in club fitting began when Lloyd Hackman, it's founder, was appointed group leader of the structural development group at North American Aviation. His primary responsibility was the development of composite materials for aircraft structures. When graphite filaments first came on the market they were recognized as being ideal for making golf shafts. In 1968, Mr. Hackman personally began to develop a system for making filament wound golf shafts. When building the clubs with the shafts, it was necessary to find a better process for matching the finished clubs to each other. The primary reason for this was the inconsistency of the shaft. A new approach using natural club frequency was developed as the better approach. With natural frequency as the basis of fitting the golf club, there must be some associated parameter in the player's swing that would enable one to compute the natural frequency the player requires for his clubs. This line of thought led to the discovery of what is considered the critical timing element in the player's swing, the time between club release and ball impact.
Some players question weather they are good enough to have a custom fitted set of clubs. Look at it this way. The pros and very low handicappers have enough feel for the club to be able to adjust eir swings and play well with almost any golf club. Most of us are not that good, which means YOU need properly fitted golf clubs that fit the swing that you have established. You need custom fit clubs to maximize your swing strengths.
The equipment that doesn’t fit – that is the wrong frequency, or loft, or weight, or balance – can keep you from being all you can be as a golfer (at any level), and it might even keep you from becoming a golfer at all.
The idea of custom fitting is to have clubs in which the individual design characteristics of the clubhead, shaft, and grip are matched to your swing. Further, they are assembled to allow you to maintain your established swing throughout the set, yet give predictably different distance and trajectory results because of the way each club is designed and built. This is the essence of custom clubmaking and design. Unfortunately, that almost never happens because so few golfers ever do more in their search for their perfect golf clubs than to drive to the local golf store or click on their computer and fit with club head speed which says nothing about the players ing patern.
The average golfer could limprove by five to six strokes by simply realizing that the golf club is not just a “club.” It really IS a superbly designed, quality instrument, if you will take the time to discover how it can be fitted to complement your swing. The idea here is to play the game with one swing and 14 controlled results – NOT 14 different swings. |
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