During DJ’s club fitting, we found that his shafts were close but there was something better. I have always had a Surgism for the term close. “Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and atomic warfare,” If you want to be the best at anything you do, you need to be spot on. In golf that means “spot on” with your swing and your golf clubs.

With the woods settled, we turned to checking out DJ’s irons. My concern with the irons was that they were too stiff, which is just the opposite I had suspected with his woods. I thought they were too soft or flexible. So our club fitter, Chip, had DJ start out hitting his 3 iron. After around 10 hits, he said things looked good and had him change to his 5 iron. After around the 5th shot, he stopped and had all of us come over and look at the screen and pointed to the box that listed the data results of all the shots. He said that the last 5 shots were all within around the exact same speed, and within 1 to 3 yards the same distance, and would all be inside the leather, 3 feet or closer. He said that all the other clubs were really close but these numbers were unbelievably close. He then pointed to the graph that shows the flight in different colored lines for each ball. He noted that all the lines were virtually the same, laid on top of each other exactly the same in all aspects. He added that that was some unbelievably pure and consistent ball striking and ball flight.

Since we were filming this club fitting to put on the PPGS site, I interjected a comment to back up Chip’s observations and the consistency of DJ’s ball striking. In the mid-90s I participated in a biomechanical study that was used as a master’s thesis in biomechanics titled, “The effect of a Shortening of a Full Golf Backswing on Club Head Velocity at Ball Impact,” by G. Trevor Neighbors. That study measured the club head speed at impact of golfers who swung to parallel and longer. Then, after instruction in the PPGS ¾ backswing, the golfers were re-tested to determine their club head speed with the ¾ backswing. Conventional golf instruction says that a ¾ swing will loose club head speed and thus hit the ball shorter. The study showed the exact opposite. The ¾ swing was in fact faster, and even if the parallel/longer swing and ¾ swings were the same speed at impact, the parallel/longer swing was in negative acceleration at impact and the ¾ swing was in positive acceleration as good impact requires.

The other big issue the thesis showed was that in all the golfers in the study (they had single digit handicaps to some in the twenties), the deviation in club head speed of the golfers with their long swing as compared to their brand new shorter PPGS ¾ backswings “decreased.” And it decreased by a whopping “73 percent.” This is important as the closer you swing every club to the same speed, the more consistently you hit it the same length, which is a major part of good ball striking. The swing monitor data of the ball flight distance and club head speeds that DJ just produced with the 5 iron were absolute proof of the efficiency and consistency of the PPGS.

We finished off hitting some 7 irons and then we wanted to test the wedges. We couldn’t get good readings as the balls launched too fast out of the receptive area that the monitor could capture data. With the hitting done, we all then went into the work shop area and Chip began checking the stats of length, lie, loft, shaft flex and swing weight on both DJ’s playing set and his back-up set. This took around 20 minutes. When the results were in, Chip was really impressed with the consistency and accuracy between both sets of clubs as they were close to identical in all aspects. But he was disturbed about one spec that again, being the same on both sets, he felt was not a mistake and needed to be corrected.

He showed us in his notes that the wedges thru 6 irons had four degrees of loft between them which is good. But the 5, 4 and 3 iron only had two degrees difference, which was not good as they would not produce the same distance spread as the lower clubs. As soon as Chip said that, DJ and I knew exactly why that was the case. A few years ago DJ made the decision to put a 64 degree lob wedge in his bag. Since he had already added a 5 wood, he had to make a choice and get rid of a club to be legal at 14 clubs. The 3 iron was the one to head to the sidelines and the closet. Since he now lost his 3 iron, I suggested that to help fill the distance gap between his 4 iron and 5 wood he should bump up his 4 and 5 irons 1 to 2 degrees. That is why the long irons were only 2 degrees difference between them and needed changing.

I wasn’t in favor of the 64 degree sand wedge at the loss of his 3 iron and pitched my plea to DJ that he is too good a long iron player to shelve his 3 iron. On the other side of the coin, with all the high rough in close to the greens on the PGA Tour these days, an extra lofted lob/sand wedge could be good. The answer was to try it and see if the wedge was a better club in the bag than the 3 iron. The key was to keep stats and see if it was used more and saved more shots than the 3 iron. Logic would say the wedge would be used more and thus be the more valuable club. Practicality might say differently as I said he could keep the 3 iron and not need the 64 degree lob wedge if he split the difference and bumped up his 58 degree sand wedge a few degrees to 60 or 61 degrees. This way he has a more lofted sand/lob wedge and can keep the 3 iron in the bag (a good trade off for having a more lofted sand wedge and still having his 3 iron) for those long par four holes and for driving on super tight holes as DJ can hit a good 3 iron with roll out over 250 yards.

Well, about a month ago, DJ bumped up his 58 degree sand wedge to 60 degrees and put the 3 iron back into the bag. Since the 64 degree lob wedge was out and his 58 degree sand wedge was already bumped up to 60 degrees, and the 3 iron was back in, the 3, 4 and 5 irons had to be bumped/bent back to their standard 4 loft gap, which Chip did in 5 minutes, changing both the gamer set and the back-up set.

As for the flex of the shafts in the irons, Chip was confident they were all right on the money and correct for DJ. DJ had just changed from Project X 6.5 shafts to True Temper Sensicore X – 100 shafts as he liked the softer feel. Now he and I were confident they were right for him.

So, with both sets of irons checked, changed and corrected, the fitting was over. We left with renewed confidence.

The Surge!

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