27 hole ‘Club Day’

This week the Ladies had a tough day on Wednesday for the 27 hole ‘Club Day’, although nearly 50 golfers played and battled round in dreadful conditions - sometimes there’s a downside to playing at a very well-draining course! Jill Pedley was the only one who managed to play under handicap for the day and I’m not sure how anyone could even manage that - I was struggling to hold not onto the club and I was just teaching!

I tell a lie, I was actually indoors all-day teaching and fitting on the simulator and it always proves an interesting day when the environment is the same, but every solution is different.

Today went like this:

1st session - lesson

A member was struggling to achieve the same consistency with their 5 iron as the rest of their clubs. This can show a need for a hybrid alternative but in this case it was 2 simple fixes. #1 was to release the club earlier and fix #2 was to shorten the club by 3/8” to make it lighter and easier to swing. Each club needs to the correct job - they don’t need to match each other.

2nd session - club fitting

Another shortening was done here, making a driver 1” shorter (yet still longer than average shaft length on the PGA Tour). Then we ascertained the longest club off a fairway which was an ACCRA powered TaylorMade M5 titanium fairway. followed by the longest club out of a less-than-perfect lie which was a Fujikura powered Mizuno 22 degree hybrid which we could adjust up and down by 5 degrees to dial it in for the right yardage.

3rd session - wedge fitting

Two wedges were required here, a low wedge and a high wedge, both with reasonable amounts of relief from digging into the turf.

4th session - lesson

We set the simulator up at Kingsbarns Golf Club and replicated our tee shot on the 13th at Brocton as this golfer wanted to make sure they could carry the hedge off the back tees. They started at 125 yards (which is 10 yards short) and ended up carrying the ball 165 yards with less effort. The solution here was to focus on what we wanted the clubhead to do, not the handle. This is a common fault that golfers slip into, they try to operate their body, head, arms, weight transfer etc and don’t simply get the club to impact the ball correctly.

5th session - Loft and Lie adjustment

This golfer was hitting good shots but always left of the target as the clubs were between 1 and 3 degrees too upright for them. Easily bent and fixed on our Tour Van Mitchell machine.

6th session - wood fitting

The longest club off the fairway is an important stick and for this left-hander. A Fujikura powered Cobra F9 5 wood did the trick accompanied by a more lofted Mizuno hybrid instead of a 4 iron to get the ball landing softer on long shots and to allow easy height from shots out of the rough.

7th session - driver fitting

Launch monitors can mislead us sometimes as this golfer appeared to be hitting the ball with a perfect club path and upwards angle of attack, but they simply weren’t efficient. I’ll cover this in a future newsletter but basically there are two ways to get the club moving upwards through impact - a way that creates long solid shots and a way that creates a glancing blow, both would look identical at first glance on a launch monitor. We fixed the power leakage and created a better flight with more shaft kick, a more upright lie angle, a shorter shaft and a heavier head. A Miyazaki powered Srixon 785 driver was the saviour here.