Question: I see all the latest clubs that just came out in the Hot List, and I’m fired up to check them out. But I’ve been sitting here in the ice and snow for the last two months. With all that rust, is this really the right time for me to get fit for new sticks? Is there a “right” time for a fitting?
Answer: If you’re looking for a definitive answer that March or June or October is the perfect time for everyone to get fit for new clubs, understand that it’s more of a discussion than a flat answer. “Number one, golf is an imperfect game, and we as human beings are imperfect, and fitting is an imperfect science,” says Chris Marchini, director of golf experience at Golf Galaxy and lead fitter for the Hot List. “So a perfect time of year doesn’t exist.”
The idea that your game needs to be dialed in before you go for a club fitting is a fool’s errand. While you wouldn’t want to waltz into the fitting bay after shoveling your driveway and your mom’s and your neighbor’s, whether it’s pre-season or in-season isn’t going to fundamentally alter the chance for a proper fit. That said, you need to be in some kind of golf shape before you start the fitting process. Even if your range is blanketed in snow, getting somewhere for a few hitting sessions should be enough to get you ready. Remember, a fitting is going to require you to make at least 45 minutes’ worth of swings. If the only grips you’ve held for the last month are those on your snow blower, maybe put in a little time on a simulator. But feeling “rusty” shouldn’t enter into the timing for a fitting, says Craig Zimmerman, general manager at Oregon’s RedTail Golf Center, a perennial selection on Golf Digest’s list of America’s Best Clubfitters.
“One of the major misperceptions is that clubfitting only benefits ‘good’ players,” Zimmerman says. “I still get asked nearly every day, ‘Am I good enough to be fit?’ If a fitter is engaging with the golfer to understand their game and goals, there is no right time to get fit other than right now . . . because fitting will benefit your game dramatically no matter the time of year, your ability level, the form of your golf swing or when the latest equipment is going to be released.”
Conversely, Marchini says, showing up in July after winning the club championship is a bit counterintuitive. “If you come in telling me, ‘Man, the swing feels great, I’m striping every shot, contact feels great,’ I’m going to look at you and say, ‘Then what the heck are you doing here?’”
Timing often can be overthought. Marchini says he ran an experiment several years ago with Mizuno’s Shaft Optimizer, a motion-capture fitting club that essentially diagnoses a golfer’s unique swing profile to come up with specific shaft recommendations. He ran the same group of golfers through the Shaft Optimizer in late winter and in mid-summer. The recommendations were consistently the same in-season as they were immediately coming out of the off-season when those same players insisted they were “rusty.”
Still, for much of the country, the spring is an appealing time to get fit: First, the array of new equipment offerings is often the broadest coming out of the winter; and second, it gives you the time to get the new clubs and work them into your bag before the season gets into full swing. It’s one reason you’ll see attractive incentives like Golf Galaxy’s free fittings through March 9.
J.D. Cuban
So, if you’re coming to a fitting from some downtime, Marchini says getting in some physical reps is worthwhile, but so, too, is doing some mental prep. Know what your game really needs, understand what misses you’re trying to overcome and be honest about what a fitting might do versus what an overall commitment to improvement might mean.
As Marchini points out, no matter how good the fitter is, it’s not going to be a good fitting if the golfer doesn’t have a plan. Having access to your in-round stats or a readout from recent sessions on a simulator could give you and your fitter some direction about your tendencies. Ideally, you’re not guessing or spending the first 20 minutes trying to find the clubface.
“Nobody’s ever going to come in for a fitting and say, ‘I want to make a lateral move,’” Marchini says. “But to know what ‘better’ means you need to be doing kind of a self-assessment of how you’ve been playing the last several months, years, whatever. Fact is, there are 26 million golfers and each one’s definition of ‘better’ is different.”
Getting fit for new clubs should be a commitment, not just an impulse buy. But that doesn’t mean that impulse shouldn’t play into the equation.
“When my wife and I were thinking about having children, something my mom told me has stuck with me,” Zimmerman says. “She said, ‘If you wait until you feel like you’re “ready” to have a baby, you never will.’ The connection to me between the best time to make a big life decision and the best time to be fit is that in both circumstances the best time is now. Every golfer—regardless of consistency, ability, time of year—can benefit from a proper fitting today.”
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
