WHY FITTING IS MORE IMPORTANT FOR AVERAGE GOLFERS

[@mikefick6725]

Hey Mr Wishon I had a custom set of 560MC irons built in Woodstock Ont. about 6 years ago and I have to say, first I can't believe how few views this video has, secondly how much I believe in you and your designs and methods. For anyone looking to purchase a new set of clubs or even just some pieces, I absolutely recommend these products and this system. I will have this set of irons the rest of my life, even if I have to re-shaft them from my old age. Fitting to your swing makes more difference than can be convinced by words. Do it! I promise you, you will be amazed at the difference in your game. Mike Fick, Tillsonburg, Ont. Canada

[@IAMT3XAS]

Tom thank you for all the knowledge and wisdom you have brought to the golf world. you are absolutely correct with this video.

[@peterqvarfordt1959]

Tom! This is great and lot of golfers needs to hear this! Thanks!!

[@TGO88Video]

most "average" golfers bought 9.5 degree driver and a stiff flex shaft. And they go to the 1st tee hoping to hit it 30 yards further.... thats why.....

[@18lees6]

Hello Mr. Wishon, I have been watching most of your KZbin videos, very easy understanding and really learnt a lot from you. I am an amateur golfer for 30 years, I would like to study to be a qualified Club Fitter, could you advise where I shall head to? Pls advise. Thank you

[@jelenajurkovic5307]

I love your videos, I do not feel that i am ready for cub fitting yet as i do not think i have repeatable swing. I am going on my 4th season now and finally i am understanding what club fitting is.I do feel that my current clubs are holding me back though ,and that i am being forced to swing "easier " so that my clubs would perform the way they were made to. Does that make sense to you? Given that observation better golfers should be able to adjust their swing to the type of the club they have in their hands. It may not be their best potential , but they will adjust. ??? Interested to know what you think. Thanks for your videos. Dario/ Toronto/Canada / Playing with off the rack , standard length, regular flex, no brand name clubs/ last season played in low 90's, this season going for high-low 80's :-) Will get fitted with new clubs next year FOR SURE/ hopefully breaking 80. :-)

[@wishongolfvideo]

+Jelena Jurkovic Jelena Where custom fitting truly helps the golfers like you is because so many of the standard specifications on clubs you would buy off the rack to start the game are really very bad in terms of getting in the way of you being able to adapt to the swing coaching you receive from your teacher. Drivers bought off the rack are too long, much too long. Wood sets automatically include a 3 wood and 80% of all golfers do not have the skill or the clubhead speed to hit that low of a wood loft high to fly off the fairway so they should never buy it or have one. Fwy woods are too long as well and prevent average golfers from being as consistent hitting the woods off the fwy, well up in the air. They need to be shorter. Lofts on iron sets are too low so most avg golfers who buy a #3 to wedge set or even a #4 to wedge set cannot hit the 3, 4, 5 and sometimes even the 6. So don’t even try to hit those lower number irons and instead this is where being fit for hybrids or high loft woods that are not too long is so much better for avg to less skilled players. Every golfer needs to have the weighting of their clubs fit to their strength and their swing force and natural sense of tempo and timing, regardless if you have never hit a ball before or if you shoot 100 or play to scratch. Here again if the clubs are too heavy or too light for YOUR natural sense of strength and athleticism, you won’t adapt as easily to what your teacher is telling you to do in your swing. And of course every golfer has to have his/her grips fit for size so they are completely comfortable. These are the basics for fitting that anyone who thinks they are not consistent enough to be fit has to have done. Do this and you learn the swing techniques sooner because your clubs are not making it more difficult to do that.

[@betavulgaris7888]

Hi Tom, fantastic channel you have here. Just a quick question, discluding the obvious like club head weight, lie, loft etc, and just focussing on shaft length of the driver - for those of us who can't afford to be fit to our existing equipment, is gripping down the shaft 1.5-2 inches a good compromise for those who use 46" drivers? I noticed i strike the ball much better if i grip down on the driver and stand a bit closer than gripping at the end but not sure you would agree?

[@wishongolfvideo]

Gripping down to make the club play shorter works just fine to help improve control because it lowers the actual MOI of the whole assembled club relative to your spine as the axis of rotation for the club during the swing.

[@betavulgaris7888]

Tom Wishon Ah right excellent. Until i have the money to have a real club fit by someone like you i will have to compromise by doing things like this. I presume a proper clubfitters services are 4-figures and over? Funnily enough, i've just played a round with 'ultra forgiving' irons that are supposed to go further and i couldn't hit them at all compared to my unforgiving Mizuno irons which i can hit solidly every time and i'm a 28 handicap.

[@tdelrio]

how do you become a "PROFESSIONAL" club fitter or for that matter, where can one go to take classes and become certified as a club fitter etc... ??

[@wishongolfvideo]

TERRY, The combination of clubmaking and Clubfitting knowledge/skills of a professional in this field are very much analogous to an iceberg in which the part you see above the water is only 10% of the whole iceberg. The 10% above the surface in this field is the club MAKING part - the assembly/disassembly of golf clubs done accurately to the required specs and cosmetically correct. That part you can learn in a one week school or even by searching on You Tube for clubmaking and club repair videos. If you have the proper equipment and hand skill coordination, you can learn that in a couple of months, easy. Tough part that takes a LONG time is the club FITTING side, the 90% of the iceberg under the water you do not see. Unfortunately there are not many if any schools anymore trying to teach fitting, but even so, you cannot learn fitting in a week, and no training programs of quality or length exist to teach this because there is just not enough demand for anyone with the knowledge to create one. So the people who do this have done it over a period of at least 1-2 yrs of hard work on their own. They start by studying the heck out of my textbook, Common Sense Clubfitting. Then they start by fitting friends, family, acquaintances so when they make mistakes, their reputation is not soiled. Only when they start to feel comfortable and confident in fitting friends/family should they move into fitting strangers. And in that, you start with average players who shoot between 85-110 because those players are very easy to fit correctly. Then from there you move into the good player, low handicap player fitting. So there is no short cut to this. Once you get into it, there are two professional organizations that offer seminars, accreditation testing - Google AGCP clubmakers or ICG clubmakers for that. Hope this helps and thanks for your interest. TOM

[@Lee_yourboylee]

Your videos and books are great Tom and have helped me a lot. But my question is, what if you get fit and then have a few lessons and much practice which help to sucessfully change your swing? Perhaps you now have a much later release, a more forceful transition, a more closed (compared with before) clubface at impact, a more in-to-square-to-in path......you'll now need a whole new set of clubs, surely? And that's an expensive business.

[@wishongolfvideo]

If a golfer is to be custom fit but then take lessons and work on his game, these are the conditions of change in the golfer and his swing that would dictate whether the golfer needs to be re-fit. 1) if you increase your clubhead speed by 8+mph or more, this would probably require one flex stiffer shaft and possibly a degree less loft on the driver; 2) if you were to change your swing tempo dramatically this could dictate a change in the total weight and or swingweight of the clubs; 3) if you lowered your handicap/avg score by >6 shots, this could require a change in the set makeup for the golfer. 4) if you were to both increase your downswing aggressiveness and change the position of your wrist cock angle to be much later in the downswing, this could require a change to a shaft with more of a stiff tip section in the bend profile, 5) if you reduced a slice or hook by 10-15 yds from what it was before, this would require a change in the face angle of the driver and the woods. All this is predicated by the clubs having been correctly fit to the golfer BEFORE he would go out and achieve these improvements by working on his game. Also, many of these swing changes most certainly are significant changes that most golfers never achieve when they do decide to go work on their game and take lessons. Sometimes for sure this happens, but less times rather than more often. Hope this helps and thanks for your kind support.

[@Lee_yourboylee]

+Tom Wishon Thanks, Tom. I would agree that a lot of those swing changes tend to prove somewhat elusive. Keep up the good work, you have empowered me as a consumer of golfing goods, you show great integrity in your work. Regards, Lee.

[@junkname9983]

Tom, and anyone out there, not to doubt your expertise in the subject but can you show me hard statistics that shows a properly fitted club yields results that is above the noise floor of the statistics? Can you point me to data that shows inconclusively that there's a improvement of any significance gained? Don't show me ball flight average of just 3 or 5 ball strikes. I am interested in seeing vigorous double blind studies of long term data. Perhaps hundreds of strokes over span of several months, wearing different clothing, different weather and lighting conditions, etc. I want data that does not discard mis-hits or shanks only to write them off as outliers either. If I'm being sold a club that is supposed to be more forgiving, then those mis-hits has to count too because they effect actual game scores. It is my believe that the average amateur player changes their swings from day to day, and what looks like a pattern while getting fitted in the shop might be very different out on the range or on the course. What ever minute differences that the player thinks he's feeling when trying out different clubs might all be just his imagination because he was pressed to make a choice on the spot between one set up vs another. Show me the data or else I will remain skeptical of the necessity that much of the fine-tuning matters much. Perhaps the difference are in immeasurable things like enjoyment and fatigue, but majority of the consumers has to be able to justify spending well >$1K on a bag of clubs beyond just some intangibles feeling.

[@wishongolfvideo]

There is no national gatherer of fitting statistics in the golf industry, just as there is no gathering of statistics to indicate whether golfers play well or not with any company’s clubs. Within the fitting side of the industry, all I can tell you is that if you are doubtful, first find a good clubfitter in your area and ask him to provide you with names of people he has fit so you can contact them directly to ask their opinion of the fitting analysis they went through. I can only tell you that in my career of teaching clubfitters and doing the research to provide them with the best info to learn the craft, if I had a dollar for every golfer fit by an independent clubfitter who did achieve improvement, I would be sitting on the beach and playing golf every day. When done by someone good, it most certainly works.

[@betavulgaris7888]

Who cares about data? Shots taken to go round 18 is the only parameter that matters. It is inconceivable that you won't knock out a certain percentage of poor shots and poor distance control etc with clubs that are specifically built to your measurements and swing.

[@michaeljflynn7527]

at 6.07 in video....professional "clufitter" videos are very interesting but probably too long for most people Tom rgds M