My fitting experience... sorry long read

[DucksnBobs]

I was absolutely surprised with the fitting experience. Now, mind you, i went in with the full expectation of spending more time on my irons than anything else. So I get there, warm up, hitting wedges, building all the way up to my driver. My fitter comes in and kind of gets an idea of what I want and Im very honest. I tell him I feel that my irons are a little all over the place. Tell him ive swingweight all my clubs to D3 but that D4 was a better feel, but I felt the overall club was a bit heavy so I back it down to a D3. He could see the lead tape and all the work. I told him im curious in a lighter shaft for my irons that could maybe get me close to that D4 weight without all the weight. Tell him I love my 3w/5w and im ok with my driver. Admittingly tell him, im generally 280, somewhere in green, and I practice the absolute least with it and that I just dont care too much about bombs with driver. I tell him ive been a mizuno iron guy my entire life but im open to other companies and want to be fitted as if im a new player. He giggles and tells me im not like most, but ok, but I can sense he thinks maybe im kind of full of BS. But im not, im taking his time and my time seriously.

So we get started with irons, I hit 15 with my 6i and he tells me my swing looks good, numbers are good, but can tell I do struggle a bit as my smash factor is 1.32. He says he wants it around 1.4. I am playing the JPX tour irons, so he goes and gets the new S3 head, closest thing to what im playing. If anyone is wondering, I held the S3 next to my JPX and the are the same size head, look identical at address but I did notice on the sole, the toe end of the club is ever so slightly narrower than the JPX, but not enough change to make me want to run out and buy the S3. So he lets me hit a few with my exact shaft, just to see if the feel is close to my JPX, and honestly, I cant even tell a difference between the two and the numbers are very similar. So it turns in to rapid fire with shaft switches. 5 with this and 5 with that and so on and so forth. He tells me, we are going to land on one that gets me that 1.4 smash factor and thats going to be liquid gold for you. He also is listening to my feedback saying, this feels stiff, or this feels good, or theres something I dont like about this... etc etc. Then he puts me in a C taper lite 115x and holy bananas.... what a shaft that sucker is for me. Hit 5, dispersion was 4.2 yards, center lined, and smash factor was 1.41. He stops and says, thats it, theres your shaft, then puts my original shaft back on, just to ensure I didnt have some crazy 5 shot run, and the numbers didnt lie, back down to a smash factor of 1.32. Let me say, the S3 is a very nice iron head if anyone is wondering. It doesnt feel too much different than the JPX tour head, but there maybe a slight better feel to it, and i couldnt pinpoint what it was, and it could of been 100% mental.

So now onto irons heads. I hit the Cobra tour, the srixon, pxg.... and they all SUCKED! I couldnt hit any of them consistently, all over the map. Then he handed me the t100 from titleist and I fall in love again. I ask about the MP series and the 243 was no slaunch and felt amazing, smash factor went way up but got all over the place again. Actually had a worse dispersion than with my own clubs. He moves me onto the p770 head, and Taylormade has done a fantastic job on this iron head. I thought after hitting 5-7, im moving to that iron, then I saw it added ~20 yards distance. I just went from hitting my 6i 195 to avg 215. I instantly looked at him and say... This creates all kinds of issues in my bag. He giggles and says, like what, and I tell him that I would have a 20-30 yard gap between my GW and PW and im not going to allow that. So he knicks that iron head, but if anyone needs distance in their irons or starting to slow down, I would say take a hard look at the 770 head. It was HOT and very forgiving. I actually think it was one of the better irons i hit yesterday, and if I could find a way to fill in the gap, I would consider these. Other one that felt good was t100, but end of the day, it was a toss up between the S3 and the P770 based on feel. 770 was only out because of the distance issue. I admit, the S3 doesnt wow me enough to buy new irons. He agrees and chalks this up to just needing shafts for my irons.

Move onto woods. Explain they are some of my highest confidence clubs in my bag. I stripe 5 shots with the 5w, carry 245, roll out 265ish. Striped down center, smash factor way up there. Asks if i want to try anything, I tell him I kind of love my woods since the day I bought them, and he says good I dont think I can help you or get you into anything better. I tell him maybe the new Qi35 woods, and he is very honest tells me he isnt sure anything is going to produce better results than what he just saw. But he would sell me anything I wanted, but very very honest as he was very impressed. Hit 5 shots with the 3w and same thing. Says lets move on, no reason to change a thing. Carry was 265, rollout on screen was 285. Generally i dont get the rollout on the course, so I was happy with the numbers, the height of the shots and the attack angle. Smash factor around 1.45 for both woods. He says we are moving onto driver.

Driver, im playing the TM sim max2. I have the Mizuno ST Max. On sunday, I took both to the range and let them duel it out. Sim max2 did just a touch better, decided its the driver im keeping in the bag for awhile. Again, I hit low straight bullets. Mishit is a low duck hook though, ill be the first to admit. So I hit 5 shots with it, hit my low boring driver, carry 240, roll out 280. Smash factor is 1.48, speed and spin hes in love with. He asks if i normally hit those low ones, I tell him yes, and he just tells me.... im not going to beat those numbers with anything I put in your hand. It all of a sudden turns into a golf lesson and he is telling me to do this and that and swing like this..... next thing I know, im hitting it WAY higher, carrying 295 and roll out 312-318 and smash factor stays 1.47. I tell him I want to try newer stuff, he says sure, but hes not going to beat those numbers. So I try a lot of them, why not im there, and not a single new driver performed as good as my sim max 2. Love the guy, tells me to stop and go back to my club. He puts 1 other shaft profile in it, I went from a 1.47 smash factor to a 1.49, but he even said, $450 shaft for .2 smash factor isnt worth it. So we put the driver away, but now I actually have to go to the range and find that new swing as it wasnt overly comfortable by the time he got changing about 2-3 different things in my driver swing.

Wedges, I hit a ton on the range, so I step up, hit my numbers on the monitor. Show him every wedge, from full shots (and calling my yardages) down to my half swings and what they should do and how they should perform. I hit all but one exactly how I told him I would and my yardages were within 4-5 yards when I called them out. He checks my spin rates and tells me every wedge head is still very good and no need to touch them. Doesnt want to play with a thing.

So end of all of this, I need new shafts for my irons. Great, super dude, loved his time and knowledge, tell him exactly how I would want the shafts built and grips, oh and by the way, he tells me my swingweight that worked best was D3.7, so my original D4 weight was spot on based on feel when I originally did my swing weight finding at the range by myself. He keeps telling me about puring the shafts, how he guarantees his shafts are within 1 gram weight of each other, otherwise he doesnt buy them, and hes expensive. I still tell him to do draw up the build price for 7 shafts in my current set of irons. I about shit myself when I see the bill. $1607 for 7 shafts for my irons. Almost feeling guilty because the experience was SO good, but I cannot justify $1607 for 7 shafts. I shake his hand, I pay for my fitting, and I know I can build my own irons, I just cant pure them. Ill take the risk and do it myself and not get the pured shafts. I may kick myself, and he said he can always do it for me in the future and the shafts can travel from iron to iron. What are all your thoughts on pured shafts?

Overall, pretty damn good experience that I wouldnt mind doing every 3-5 years. BTW, he showed me pics of the new titleist t100 line, theres also a new 250 line thats coming out. Looked pretty sweet. He said hes going to text me when he gets them and wants me to come in for 20 min and just hit them when they show up.