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“Members of what I call the school of gear-and-gimmick golfers, for example, won’t believe in such things as passion and discipline, because that would mean letting go of their belief that you can easily and permanently correct whatever is wrong with your golf game by discovering the right shortcut. The gear-and-gimmick player buys a lot of new golf clubs…figuring such high-tech equipment possesses some kind of intrinsic magic independent of his ability to swing it. Or he picks up a tip from a magazine or TV (or from some guy at the club who’s worse than he is), certain he’s finally found the one thing that will fix his game. But what kind of deep, true meaning could golf really possess if Mastery resided in owning the right equipment rather than inside the player himself, if any lazy dilettante could simply spend the money to purchase a respectable game the way rich men once bought salvation from the Church?”
Jeff Wallach: Beyond the Fairway
Well, here you are in the waning stages of winter again, waiting not so patiently for the snow to melt, the ground to unfreeze, and for the pins to go back in the holes. Unless you’ve been taking lessons during the winter, it is likely that more than a little rust has accumulated on a golf game already rife with problems. It’s almost impossible, lying under the covers at night, drifting in and out of sleep, to keep your thoughts from wandering to that one nagging question; “Just how am I going to get better this season?”
You’ve already seen it on TV: Tiger Woods, billionaire at twenty-one, driving the ball 350 yards at will, making holes-in one; John Cook shooting 62-63 to win the Hope; Steve Jones shooting 26 under at Phoenix; the level of play seems to be moving relentlessly upward. And there they are on the commercials; the new so-and-so ball that spins more but rolls farther; the irons that guarantee a sweet-spot strike; the biggest of ridiculously huge drivers that add twenty yards (at least) to anyone’s drives. Maybe, you think, this year you should pick up a new set of clubs. Maybe be club-fitted. (This seems like a good idea.) Try a few of those infomercial swing gizmos you see on the Golf Channel.
At this year’s PGA Merchandise Show a good friend of mine had lunch with the number-two man at one of the top 5 golf companies in the world. In a surprising admission, this vice president let the table in on a little secret. “Anyone who doesn’t think that 80% of all ‘new’ improvements in golf equipment are pure marketing is fooling himself. There are very few golfers at any level, and that includes tour pros, who haven’t been hoodwinked at one time or another by new equipment hype.” The golf business is not unlike the fashion industry; without change, there are no increases in sales. Very few new items are particularly better, just aesthetically different, and while the companies are coming up with new products to sell, it’s the advertising and marketing divisions that figure out just how to sell to the gullible golfer, using questionable player tests, fancy scientific research, and far-fetched claims.
If you ask me, there hasn’t been a significant performance improvement in irons since Ping came out with the Eye 2 over a decade ago. Extensive testing has shown that metal woods don’t go any farther than wood woods, and have only marginal advantage on heel hits. Any club maker of note will tell you that there is no advantage to having graphite shafts in irons, and while lighter shafts have proven beneficial in drivers, there is no accepted method of figuring out just which shaft is the best for any individual.
Being a busy teacher, I am often asked about clubs and club fitting. I’ll tell you exactly what I tell my students: if you can’t try it on the course before you buy it, don’t bother with it. Spending hundreds, even thousands, of dollars on new equipment based on some manufacturer’s advertising claims, the word of a friend who gushes over his incredible new purchase, or the pitch of a salesperson working on commission is the height of foolishness. Would you buy a car without driving it? It would be ridiculous to change equipment if you didn’t have a very good idea that what you were changing to was demonstrably better than what you already have. Use your head. Don’t be a “marketing victim.”
Make sure you have a good reason to change. Are you playing difficult-to-hit blade type irons? Perhaps a switch to more forgiving perimeter weighted clubs would help. Never tried a graphite shafted wood? It could be worth a try. Are you playing a driver with a lot of loft, or very little loft? A bit of testing might show you a marked improvement in your driving distance. If you have never used a 60 degree wedge, try one. Wedges in general are always worth testing out for their performance out of the sand, off different lies, and for the different distances and trajectories various swings will take the ball. Putters are always an oft-changed item, but believe me, if you have a putter you have had some success with, don’t be too quick to jettison it: a putter has a soul, and if you piss it off it will never be the same. The same is true with all the clubs in your bag. You need to develop a good relationship with your sticks, one of trust and respect. If you dump them at the first sign of trouble, for what is supposedly new and better, you could be setting yourself up for a long series of disappointments. Golf is hard enough as it is; just ask Payne Stewart if changing clubs and balls is such a great idea.
In order to give more credibility to club sales, club fitting is now all the rage. For the right people, those who haven’t bought a set of clubs in 10 or 15 years, or who are very short or very tall, club fitting is an excellent idea. The club fitter watches the player hit shots off a “lie board,” which leaves a mark on the bottom of the club, which then tells the club fitter if the club has the proper lie, or if it is too flat or upright. The player then hits a number of clubs with different combinations of loft, length, and weight to determine which combination of variables is the “right” club for him or her. Through further observance of the golfer the club fitter determines the proper shaft, with its own plethora of variables, including composition, weight, flex, torque, kick point, and frequency.
The golfer rarely knows more than a small bit about what is going on at any particular club fitting session, and herein lies the problem. He is putting his faith in the club fitter to fit him with a set of clubs that will help his game. And rightly so, since the club fitter is in most cases either the head professional or the assistant professional at the club, be it private or public. His goal is to fit you with a set of clubs which will immediately satisfy you, because when he sells them to you he becomes somewhat responsible for their performance. In this regard, the golfer doesn’t need to worry whether or not he will get a 100% honest effort from the club fitter.
But, as a teacher, my fundamental concern is this; if the player being fitted has a seriously flawed swing, which the vast majority of club fitting participants do, and the results of the various tests done on the golfer give results which reflect these flaws, aren’t the clubs then fitted intrinsically designed to perpetuate those very flaws? If the golfer’s shaft is standing straight up at impact due to a radically off-plane approach to impact, and the club fitter bends those clubs 5 or more degrees upright so that the toe of the club will not dig in at impact, what chance, or indeed incentive, does the golfer have to do the right thing for the long term benefit of his game, namely change his angle of approach to impact, get his swing on plane in the downswing, and use a club bent to standard or at most a degree either side of standard. The new fit encourages the player to keep swinging exactly the way he has been; if he now improves his swing, the clubs “fitted” to his old, less effective swing, will feel terrible.
Going back to Jeff Wallach’s quotation, the golfer with his clubs fitted to his ill-conceived swing becomes, unwittingly, a “gear-and-gimmick” golfer. Forgive me for taking the high road here, but as a teacher it is my obligation to inform the student how he or she can achieve lasting improvement. One can only gain truly permanent improvement through “passion and discipline,” the result of dedicated practice and a studied understanding and right conception of the game and the swing. Unfortunately, just as the constituency of the political candidate who rightly preaches “sacrifice” often votes that candidate out of office because his message is difficult and requires sacrifice, so the majority of golfers prefer to take the easy way out and change the club, not the clubee.
I personally know professionals who fit clubs and combine their work with teaching in an honest and conscientious manner. They will not fit a club to a player whose swing obviously needs drastic help, but will smartly defer the sale until the player has improved somewhat. However, one can’t forget that the bottom line is sales, and in order to put food on the table back home clubs must be sold. As in most cases, the consumer would be well advised to do a little homework and be very selective about whom he allows to do the fitting. Start with a PGA professional who has experience and can teach and play. Also, stay close to home. Finding the proper set of clubs is a process and will require further testing as the swing changes and hopefully improves.
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against club and ball manufacturers, sales representatives, or professionals who club fit. I begrudge no one the right to make a living. My goal is simply to educate the golfing public and help them to make the most informed decision they can. It is also my goal, one that any of the aforementioned groups would rightly call a self-serving goal, to encourage golfers to try to learn the game, to enter onto the road to golfing Mastery, and to begin the endless journey toward their best possible golf.
Endless, you say? Yes, the journey has no end. No one has ever “gotten” the game, and even the greatest are relentlessly searching for a clearer understanding of all the factors that contribute to top performance. Trust me: in the vast majority of cases the main problem is not the clubs. Golfers would be well advised to take the money they will happily spend on some new club or gizmo and invest it in lessons from their pro. Get some help with your game on a consistent basis, then let your instructor make recommendations concerning equipment. It may be the more difficult route, but there are indeed no shortcuts, and you will soon find that the views from the back roads are far more fascinating than the ones from the interstate, and as you move along you’ll find that the “destination” loses its importance, while the journey itself becomes its own reward.