A Layman's Guide to Custom Golf Club Fitting

While there are many golfers who know every technical aspect of their golf equipment, most golfers just know that when they hit the ball it goes forward. It can become complicated very quickly if you get caught up in the terms associated with your golf equipment. This is a brief overview in common terms of why custom fitting will benefit your game.

In simple terms, your golf swing is different from every other golfer you know. Small changes in your swing produce sometimes huge results. With this in mind, remember that when you have your clubs custom fitted, it is a way to adapt your clubs to swing. If you keep swinging the same way, these small adjustments can greatly improve your game.

The first thing most fitters look at is where you are impacting the ball. With a little masking tape on the impact, you can hit a few shots and see exactly where you are impacting the ball. If you are off center, you can make small adjustments to fix that. While measuring your swing impact zone, you also have the clubhead speed and tempo measured. Simply, clubhead speed is the speed of the clubhead upon impact and tempo is the time it takes from when you start your backswing until you impact the ball.

The tempo and clubhead speed can be used to determine what type of club you need. The faster you hit the ball, the more stiff your clubs can be and vice versa if your swing is slower.

Another measurement is the lie angle. This is done simply as well by placing masking tape on the bottom of the club and hitting off a black matt that will leave an impact mark on the tape. The measurement of this is very important because it determines the direction the ball will go when it comes off the club.

By factoring in all this information, a skilled club fitter can make a huge difference in your game. On top of that, it usually is quite inexpensive unless you need major changes to your clubs.

Mike Wyman is co-owner of http://www.DateAGolfer.com. and you can read his EveryDayGolf blog here.