A-R-GF-G-H!!!! Drivers!

This is taken out of “The Seach for the Perfect Golf Club” by Tom Wishon. I am posting this because of an acticle in Golf Digest that just came out.

    Let me digress a bit on the issue of driver length because it is a particularly sore point with me.

    As you’ve probably already gathered, 90% of the drivers sold in shops are too long for most players. If you follow the simple procedures outlined in this chapter you will know whether your current driver is longer than your best-fit length. If it is, get it cut down and reswingweighted to the shorter length, and don’t be shy about doing it. Even better, head out and get custom fitted for a new driver with both the right length AND best loft for your physical makeup, ability, and swing. Trading off accuracy for distance is simply not worth it.

    Let’s start with the issue of distance since so many golfers believe longer lengths automatically mean longer shots. You probably think you can get more distance with longer shaft, right?

    In a test conducted and documented by one of the compaanies that also specializes in fitting reseach, drivers ranging from 42″ to 46″ were put to test on a swing robot that DOES have the athletic ability to swing longer clubs and hit them on-center. Here are the data (see table). Read it for yourself.

    But wait. The plot Thickens.

    There is another reason for having a shorter club. It appears that, in the hands of real people (as opposed to a swing Robot), the shorter club might very well hit the ball not just with more accuracy, but farther as well.

    Do you remember our discussion in chapter 2? For every quarter inch by which you miss the sweet spot on your club, you lose about five yards in distance. Miss it by half inch and you lose 10 yards; three-quarters inch, 15 yards, and so forth.

    Conversely, if you can gain enough control of the head to hit the ball even a quarter inch closer to the sweet spot, you will gain back all the yardage you think you are losing by using a shorter shaft. This, by the way, is the reason most people do end up hitting shorter-length drivers farther. They’re simply hitting closer to the sweet spot more often because the shorter club is easier for them to contrl and thus improve shot consistency.

EFFECT OF DRIVER LENGTH ON DISTANCE

DR LENGTH    SWING SPEED    BALL SPEED    CARRY DISTANCE

42                         90                 133.0                  209.7

43                         90                133.2                   210.1

44                         90                133.5                   210.5

45                         90                133.6                  210.7

46                         90                133.8                  211.0

The above information shows how futile it is to play with a driver that is too long. Finding the correct length for the individual golfer will ALWAYS result in game improvement. 

    Earlier I told you a very important fitting maxim about length…..

    The proper length for all golfers is the length that the golfer can hit SOLID AND ON-CENTER the highest percentage of the time.

    If you are hitting a 45″ driver so that your on-center hit percentage with this driver length is well below 50%, your longest length to hit solid and on-center the highest percentage of the time may be as much as 2″ shorter. To other golfers with a little higher on-center hit percentage, the longest length to hit most solid might be only 1″ shorter.

    As I said earlier, wrist-to-floor dimension is only the start for coming up with the best length for your game. It has to be tempered with consideration of your swing plane, and ball-striking ability to end up finding the longest length that you can hit solid and on-center the highest percentage of the time.

    If the distance from your wrist to the floor is less than 40″ and you’re not a good ball striker, then a 45″ driver is too long. If your driver swing speed is 90 mph or less then you likely need more than an 11 degree loft. Simple as that.

    There it is, Tom Wishon on driver length. My own personal experiance has been that golfers that I have custom fitted hit shorter drivers longer and better. As a custom club fitter, I have not built a 45″ driver in years. If you are interested in get this book ” The seach for the Perfect Golf Club” you can contact me at www.heisergolf.com or get it at www.wishongolf.com and I think www.amazon.com has them also. Thank you for reading my blogs, Jerry

Why Every Golfer should Be Custom Fitted

   Here are some videos you should watch. Go to www.wishongolf.com Tech Talk, Videos. Click on that and watch all 4 videos. There is alot of information that every golfer should know in those videos.

   I was at one of the big golf stores this spring and they were going to have DEMO Days that weekend (which they don’t want me there even though I do all of there repair). I told the owner that it was to bad that they were not going to have a real custom club fitter there. He told me that he was a scratch player and that all the stuff I talked about, Shaft bend profile,  MOI matching of the clubs, and everything else, would that really help him. I told him, ” Why do you think the PROs do it” The Pros can take any club and hit it better then any amature ever thought about hitting it because they can feel and change there swing to hit it. During a tourmament they don’t want to think of how to swing there clubs, there clubs are fit to them so all they have to think about is to make the shot, not how to swing this perticular club to make the shot.  The golf swing is hard enough to make, Having the wrong fitting club in your hands make it all that much harder.

   Custom fit golf clubs are not just for the PROs, they are for every golfer. Look at it this way. The Pros and very low handicappers are skilled enough to be able to play well with any golf club. You, on the other hand are not; which means YOU need properly fitted golf clubs even more than THEY do. You need custom fit clubs to minimize your swing errors and to maximize your swing strengths.

   Now, let’s be clear- Iam not saying you can “buy” skill as a golfer. I am not saying that by spending enuogh money, you can somehow go from being a double-digit handicapper to qualifying for next year’s U.S. Open. Buying new clubs – even truly custom built ones- is NOT a substitute for learning and “grooving” the proper swing fundamentals. Never has been. Never will be.

   I AM saying, However, that equipment that doesn’t fit- that is the wrong length, or loft, or weight, or balance- can keep you from being all that you could be as a golfer( at any level), and it might even keep you from becoming a golfer at all, what with the fact that some three million golfers leave the game every year.

   The idea of custom fitting is to have clubs in which the individual design characteristics of the clubhead, shaft, and grip are matched to your swing. Further, they are assembled to allow you to maintain essentially the same swing throughout the set, yet give predictably different distance and trajectory results because of the way each club is designed and built.

   This is the essence of clubmaking and design. Unfortunately, that almost never happens because so few golfers ever do more in their search for their perfect golf clubs than to drive to the local golf store or click on their computer.

   The average golfer could lose five to six strokes by simply realizing that the golf club is not a “club.” It is not something that is used to beat things into submission. It really IS a superbly designed, surgical-quality instrument- if you take the time to discover how it can be fitted to complement your swing. The idea here is to play the game with one swing and 14 controlled results- NOT 14 swings and 144 prayers.

   Yes, it’s true, golf is inherently a difficult and often frustrating game; but that’s part of its charm, part of the fun. As with any game, however, if poor equipment rigs the game so you can’t possibly win, suddenly it becomes a whole lot less charming and not fun at all.

   If you visit my web site www.heisergolf.com you can find alot of information and books to read. Tom Wishon has written alot of books that every golfer should read. The Search for the Perfect Golf Club by Tom Wishon is one of the books I recommand every golfer should read. If you want a FREE 12 myth books, go to my web site www.heisergolf.com and click the link and I will send you one. Also, there is alot of information at www.wishongolf.com  like the videos that will help ever golfer to find a custom club fitter to build their next set of clubs.

   Thanks for reading my blogs. If you have any questions please contact me and I will anwser any question you have.

A Custom Fitting Checklist

It’s been a short summer, so I am going to start bloging again. I hope that you golfers out there are reading my blogs so that you are more informed and make good decisions on the purchuse of your golf clubs. If you got custom fitted for your clubs, here is a check list to see how good your custom fitting was. You will learn that Demo days and your local golf stores don’t do a very good job of this and most of the time you end up buying the store off the rack clubs. The stores and big OEMs will never fit you for Swing Weight /MOI and they will never bend your clubs for loft and lie. So here is your check list.

ZERO: Don’t bother to waste your time or your money

_______ None of the following statements are true.

POOR: Better then nothing, but not by much

______ I hit some shots at a driving range (or into a net) with provided clubs and that’s it.

______ I was physically measured for club length.

______ I was measured (or evaluated) for grip size.

GOOD: Probably a competent fittig.

______ I was electronically measured for swing speed.

______ Iwas electronically measured on a launch monitor.

______ I was interviewed concerning my past playing tendencies and desired improvements.

______ I was offered a selection of heads from more than one brand and from more than what was available on site.

______ I was offered a selection of shafts from more than one brand and from more than what was immediately available on site.

______ Iwas offered a selection of grips from more than one brand and from more than what was immediately available on site.

EXELLENT: You’d have to be a PGA Tour pro to do much better than this.

______ I was built a pilot club that I could test.

______ Attention was paid to the club composition of the set that was being built.

______ Attention was paid to the length, loft, and lie of the set (or club) that was being built.

______ Attention was paid to the shaft frequencies (or club MOI) and swing weight of the set (or club) that was being built.

______ Attention was being paid to grip buildups, spine aligning, dead weight, and balance point of the set (or club) that was being built.

______ The fitting process was done over multiple visits.

   There is your check list for a poor to excellent club fitting. Next time you are in the market for new clubs, take the time to find a very good custom club fittier and get custom fitted. Your clubs will feel better then you have ever known, you will have more confidence in your clubs to make the shot, and you will be more accurate with your shots then you have ever been. Custom fitting is well worth the time, effert, and experience that you go through.

   The last thing that I want to talk about is your putter. Your putter is the one club that you take more strokes with than any club in your bag. Your putter needs to be custom fitted also. The putter has loft, lie, length, and swing weight/MOI just like all the other clubs in your bag. So when you get custom fitted for a new set of clubs, don’t forget your putter. If your putter doesn’t fit you, you will never lower your scores.

   This checklist is the APPENDIX of the 12 myths book by Tom Wishon. If you go to my web site www.heisergolf.com and click the link, I will send you the 12 Myths book FREE. Also find the book THE SEARCH for the PERFECT GOLF CLUB by Tom Wishon and read it. You will learn more about the golf club, question to ask your custom club fitter (for a better fitting) and know how the golf club works so that you will be better informed and can make better decisions about your golf clubs. Thank you for reading my blog and please visit my web site www.heisergolf.com  If you need help finding any of these books , please contact me and I will get them for you.

My Club is Just Like the one Tiger Uses

The only thing that is Nike about Tiger’s clubs is the Nike label. Myth number 9, Tom Wishon tells a little bit about the fitting and making of Payne Stewart’s clubs. The Pros can hit any club that is put in there hands 10 times better then we can as amatures, but the pros want there clubs exactly the way they want them so they don’t have to think about anything but swinging the golf club. So here is myth #9 by Tom Wishon.

My club is just like the one Tiger Uses.

Not….On….your…..LIFE.

The clubs you buy in the retail stores are to the clubs the Pros use as the Chevy Monte Carlo in your drive way is to the car Jeff Gordon drives in NASCAR races. Let me use a set of Payne Stewart’s clubs as an example.

In 1999, I ( Tom Wishon) had the pleasure of designing what tragically turned out to be the last set of clubs Payne Stewart played in Competition. His set required four separate visits to my work shop over the course of six months.

Payne had just concluded a contact with Spalding that required him to play the company’s investment -cast cavity-back irons, but he was most anxious to get back to playing with a forged carbon-steel design. I kept spare “raw forgings” from lynx set that I had earlier designed for Spalding for just such projects as Payne’s.

Payne’s first visit was to find out what he liked to see in the various irons as he set up behind the ball. In other words, what kind of leading-edge shape, topline thickness and shape, toe shape, top-of-the toe transition to the topline, the offset, how the bottom of the hosel should fan out into the blade (indelicately called the “crotch”) and many other subtle areas of each ironhead. Between visits one and two I ground, filed, bent, and formed each of Payne’s preferences into each head in the set.

During the second visit, Payne stood right next to me as I regound and shaped each head to a nearly final form. Payne would insert a shaft in each head, assume an address position, look, look again, scratch his head, and, in whatever way he could, express what was good, bad, or indifferant about each one. From this, I now had a much clearer picture of what he wanted and could final grind each head after he left. Matters like center of gravity positions were my responsibility to manipulate in accordance with the ball flight trajectory wishes that Payne had expressed.

During the third and fourth visits, the still not completely finished heads were assembled with different shaft options.Payne hit shot with each club, commenting only when he felt it appropriate to charify his desires for the feel of both the clubhead and the shaft during the shots. Only when Payne gave final approval to each club was his job complete. and mine shifted into another gear.

All tour players require a minimum of two identical sets of clubs, one to travel with and one to keep in a safe place, packed and ready to ship. Should the nightmare scenario occur of their clubs being lost or even stolen, they can obtain a duplicate of their old set literally overnight. Because of that requirement, I also had to make templates for each head profile along with all sorts of measurements and photographs that would allow me to remake the backup set completely from scratch without having any of the original clubs to guide me.

All totaled, I probaly spent somewhere in the area of 300 hours from start to finish on the two identical sets. It’s something you should keep in mind the next time you see an ad implying you will be playing clubs that are ” just like the ones the pros use.” Trust me. You won’t.

To get a free copy of  The 12 Myths go to heisergolf.com and click the link and I will send it to you FREE. Every golfer just buy the book THE SEACH FOR THE PERFECT GOLF CLUB by Tom Wishon to learn about the golf club and how and why they are designed and work the way they do. Every golfer should be custom fitted by a good custom fitter or custom clubmaker to insure that they play to the best that they can be and have the most fun at this great game. Thank you for reading my blogs and visit heisergolf.com

Modren golf clubs hit farther than clubs of even a few years ago.

This is Myth number One from the book 12 Myths that can wreck your golf game by Tom Wishon.

   In reality they don’t. What you are seeing basically is a marketing gimmick.

   Let’s begin at the beginning

   Three Things primarily determine the distance you hit a golf ball: the loft of the clubhead, the length of the shaft, and the speed with which you swing. There is also a time proven adage about golf clubs- the longer the length, the lower the loft, the heavier the wieght, and the stiffer the shaft, the harder the club will be to hit. Over the past few years your body’s swing speed has probably stayed about the same, but the loft angles and the shaft length of your clubs have not.

   Each year, in order to say their clubs ” hit farther,” the club companies have been tinkering with the loft angles on the faces of your clubheads- lowering them a bit at a time each year. As a result, every club in the set has moved “up” at least one, if not two, numbers. So, when you go to a driving range for “demo Day” and you are hitting a 6-iron farther than you hit your old 5- iron, you now know why. It’s because that shiny new 6- iron in you hands was a 5- iron only a few years ago and probably a 4- iron a few years before that.

   In some ways these changes would be comical if they didn’t have such sad results. Now golfers carry clubs that are, in effect, designed from the factory to be unhittable in the hands of the average golfer and are forced to buy additional clubs that they otherwise would not have needed.

   Again, let me start with some background.

    In the world of club design there is something called the “24/38 Rule.” Basically, it says that the average golfer cannot hit an iron that has less than 24 degrees loft or more than 38 inches of length. The reason is that a club like that requires a swing precision that the average golfer rarely has the opportunity to attain.

TABLE 1 – THE DREADED VANISHING LOFT DISEASE

Evolution of Men’s Wood & Iron Lofts- Indutry Average

Club        1960-70′s     1980s     Early 1990s    1997+

                   (degrees)        (degrees)    (degrees)    (degrees)

1   iron  17                 17               16             16-17

2   iron  20               20                19             18-20

3  iron   24               23                 22             20-21

4  iron  28                26                 25             23-24

5 iron  32                 30                 28            26-27

6 iron   36                34                 32             30-31

7 iron  40               38                  36              34-35

8 iron  44               42                  40             38-40

9 iron  48              46                   44             42-44

PW     52                50                  48            46-48

SW     56                56                  56            55-56

Driver 11         11                   10             9- 10.5

3-wood 16      15                  15               13-14

5-wood  22     21                  19              17-18

7-wood 28      27                 23              20-21

Note: A quick look at the information above shows how drastically golf club companies have reduced their loft angles over the past few decades. This was done primarily so they could say their clubs hit the ball farther and thereby sell more clubs.

    A few years ago the 24/38 line fell on the other side of the 3-iron. So, when you bought a set of clubs, you bought a 3- iron through piching wedge and you could reasonably expect to hit each of those clubs. Because of the “vanishing loft disease” I just described, the 24/38 line has now moved to just the shy side of the 5- iron- making the 3-and 4 iron unhittable for most people.

   So, what are you supposed to do? It’s simple. The club companies want you to buy Three more clubs to compensate for the corner that they painted you into. You are now supposed to buy something called “hybrid” clubs, which are east-to-hit substitutes for the 3-and-4 irons that are no longer hittable by the majority of golfers. In addition, as all the irons have moved up and away from the Sand Wedge, you are now supposed to buy something called a “Gap Wedge” to fill in the “Gap” they created with their loft-shrinking marketing stunts.

   Remember if you want a free 12 Myth book go to heisergolf.com and click on the link and I will send you one. There is alot of good info on my web site heisergolf.com so check it out. I will do Myth 2 next week. Thank you for reading my blogs and golf well and have fun. Till next week. Jerry

 

CUSTOM FITTING IS a ART and a SCIENCE

   Peolpe tell me all the time as I’m regripping there clubs or repairing there clubs that they have been custom fitted.As a customfitter and builder of custom fitted golf clubs, I ask them who did the fitting. There commit is the driving range personal  or the club pro or retail golf store. I have also seen that you take a couple of measurements, ( wrist to floor, grip measurement, and a few other phisical measurements and that’s it) modify the clubs and there you go, your custom fitted. Maybe you were, and maybe youweren’t. There are many definitions of what constitutes “custom-fit golf clubs” or a ” custom-fitting session.” Let me see if I can describe it this way.

    Let’s say your car is looking pretty trashed out. At one level, you can hose your car down with water and squirt off the worst of the dirt. That’s an improvement. Not great, but better than nothing. At the next level, you can get out the bucket and soap and give the car a good scrubbing. That’s even more of an improvement. Or you can pull out all the stops and scrub it, rub it out, wax it, and detail it inside and out. Now you’re ready for show time. The point here is that each of the above can be described as “getting the car washed.”

   Getting custom fitted for golf clubs is much the same. There are several levels, and all can ( and have) been used to describe “custom-fit clubs.” Let me give you several levels of club fitting.

  LEVEL ONE: Hitting some shots with provided clubs at a driving range or retail store. This is trail-and-error “Demo Days” approach. You can be fitted with any club you want-as long as it’s one of theirs and they happen to have it in stock.

  LEVEL TWO: This is “Demo Day” on vitamins. You hit several drivers while an electronic device called a launch monitor analyzes your swing. Assuming the $9/hour sales person has a clue as to what the launch monitor is telling him, again, you can be fitted with any club you want- as long as it’s one of theirs already sitting on the rack. Another Level two fitting is grabbing a club or three from a nifty ” fitting cart” parked on the range. This is fine for measuring one or two fitting parameters, but not the 20 or so factors that a professional clubmaker can individually tailor for your swing.

LEVEL THREE: Now we’re getting into what I consider to be a true custom fitting. It usually starts with you being interviewed concerning your past playing tendencies and desired improvements. You will then be manually measured for club length and electronically measured for swing speed. Launch monitor used for luanch angle, decent angle, and all the other maesuremnts. Filmed to evauluate tempo, wrist cock release, and strength and athelic ability, plus transition. From this information, the clubmaker will present you with a variety of shafts, grips, and heads that he feels are acceptable. You make your choices from among those recommendations, Next, he will build a pilot club that you can test out, and alterations will be made from there. After this test period, needed changes will be noted and the final club built.

  LEVEL FOUR: This level would consist of everything mentioned in Level Three, plus a detailed analysis of your existing set and a careful analysis of the proposed set as it is being built. Attention is paid to matching shaft frequencies or club MOI, swing weigthts, loft and lie tweaking, grip buildups, spine aligning, dead weight, balance point and so forth. This process, exclusive of the club building, takes about eight hours or so spread over multiple visits. This is the rubbed-out, waxed, and detailed version or our car wash.

  And like the car wash, each of those four levels could be described as being a “custom fittig,” but do you see the differences? Without the right information the person is simply guessing- and he’s using your wallet to guess with. That’s why I recommend true custom fitting, done by a professional clubmaker, so strongly.

   This is MYTH 11 in the 12 Myths That Could Wreck Your Golf Game by Tom Wishon. True Custom Fitting is definily a ART and Science that the Clubmaker needs all the information possible and KNOWS how to use and analyze the data to properly custom fit YOU.

    If you want a free 12 Myths book go to heisergolf.com and click on the link. Plus if you want to spend the best money on golf you will ever spend buy thr book THE SEACH FOR THE PERFECT GOLF CLUB by Tom Wishon and really learn about the golf club. It will do wonders for your game. Again you can contact me Jerry Heiser at heisergolf.com to order that book. Thanks, Jerry

Golfers Spend your money Wisely

There is no worse way for golfers to spend money on golf clubs than to buy mass produced, standard made clubs off the rack in a pro shop, retail golf store or over the internet. Golfers who are different from each other in size, strength, athletic ability and swing characteristics cannot and will not ever play to the best of their ability when buying standard made clubs off the rack.

The ONLY way golfers can play to the best of their ability is to be custom fit so each of the important fitting specifications of the golf clubs – the lengths, lofts, lies, face angles, shaft weight, shaft flex, total weight, swingweight (MOI) and grip size matches accurately to each different golfer’s size, strength, athletic ability and swing characteristics.

To spend money on standard made clubs bought right off the rack is throwing good money after bad.

To be custom fit is the path to tangible game improvement and a perfect example of spending wisely.

That is a quote for Tom Wishon in his E-Tech report that he sends to his clubmakers. This is very true in these hard economic times that if you are in the market for new golf clubs you want to get the biggest bang for your dollar. I know what your saying, ” I’m not good enough for custom fit golf clubs” That is a myth. In the pamphlet 12 Myths That could Wreck your Golf Game, the 12 myth is Custom fit golf clubs are only for really good Golfers.

Nope! The truth is exactly the reverse of that.

    Look at it this way. The Pros and very low handicappers are skilled enough to be able to play well with almost any golf club. You, on the other hand are not; which means YOU need properly fitted golf clubs even more then THEY do. You need custom fit clubs to minimize your swing errors and to maximize your swing strengths.

   Now, let’s be clear- I am NOT saying you can “buy” skill as a golfer. I am not saying that by spending enough money, you can somehow go from being a double-digit handicapper to qualifying for next years U.S. Open.Buying new clubs-even truly custom built ones- is NOT a substitute for learning and “grooving” the proper swing fundamentals.Never has been. Never will Be.

     I am saying, however, that equipment that doesn’t fit-that is the wrong length, or loft, or weight, or balance- can keep you from being all that you could be ae a golfer (at any level), and it might even keep you from becoming a golfer at all, what with the fact that three million golfers leave the game every year.

    The idea of custom fitting is to have clubs in which the individual design characteristics of the clubhead, shaft, and grip are matched to your swing. Further, they are assembled to allow you to maintain essentially the same swing throughout the set, yet give predictably different distance and trajectory results because of the each club is designed and built.

    This is the essence of clubmaking and design. Unfortunately, that almost never happens because so few golfers ever do more in their search for their perfect golf clubs than to drive to the local golf store or click on their computer.

    The average golfer could lose five to six strokes by simply realizing that the golf club is not a “club.” It is not something that is used to beat things into submission. It really IS a superbly designed, surgical-quality instrument- if you take the time to discover how it can be fitted to complement your swing. The idea here is to play the game with one swing and 14 controlled results- NOT 14 swings and 144 prayers.

   Yes, it’s true, golf is inherently a cifficult and often frustrating game; but that’s part of it’s charm, part of the fun. As with any game, however, if poor equipment rigs the game so you can’t possibly win, suddenly it becomes a whole lot less charming and not fun at all.

    Just a short story before I go, be careful of  people saying that they will custom fitt you andyou still are at the mercy of the big OEMS. A person that I know went to one of the big OEMS factory to get custom fitted by there best. When he recieved the clubs he brought them to  me to change to shafts because he doesn’t like their steel shafts. So, I decided to do some measuring and the clubs. Turns out they were standard length and the lofts were 3-21,4-23,5-25, 6-31,7-36,8-39,9-41,PW-47. Now, this clubs all fall in the companies TORRENCE for the lofts but he is going to have some gaps in his distances. Not nice.

   If you want more information about the Myth books go to heisergolf.com and click on the link and I will send you one FREE. Also, if you want to learn more about the golf club go to heisergolf.com and check out the books and order THE SEACH for the PERFECT GOLF CLUB  by contacting me and sending me an e-mail. for $17.00 dollars that is the best $17.00 dollars you will ever spend.

  I will give you Myth 1 next week. Please comment and if you have any questions or topics you want me to cover please e-mail me Thanks, Jerry

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