Who Clones WHO?

A month or so ago Roy Nix, President of the Association of Golf Clubfitting Professionals (AGCP) published a press release that includes some interesting facts related to custom golf clubs.


Roy did this because there is often an opinion that custom clubs are "knock off" clubs and not innovative designs.


The web address for reading this press release is....


http://www.thegolfwire.com/stories/239164


This information presents a dozen instances where new golf club innovations actually came from non OEM golf companies.


Custom clubs like those from Miura Golf (played by the winner of the Player's Championship this year), Wishon Golf and Alpha Golf, and wood shafts from companies like ACCRA golf are actually often leading the development of new ideas and improvements. These and other companies provide the highest quality components for use by professional clubfitters.


The Fit Is IT!!

Tony

BMT - No Longer Just For Drivers....

For the past few years I have been using a driver shaft fitting system called BMT - Butt Mid Tip - to choose the best driver shafts for players. It was developed by Jerry Hoefling, Master AGCP Clubfitter.

The basics of this system are to measure a player's swing speed, overall swing tempo (time from start to finish of swing) and release point - where he/she releases his/her wrist cock. From these data, the system develops an estimated butt-mid-tip flex appropriate for the measured parameters. Then - using a data base of hundreds of shafts where measurements of shaft butt, mid, and tip stiffness have been made - it is possible to identify a shaft or shafts that are good fits for the way players swing their drivers.

The premise of using this fitting system is that it leads to using a shaft that best fits the player's swing characteristics, and so will significantly reduce the dispersion of driver results. Some prominent fitters have had 100% success rates using this system.

Over the past year I have been learning more of how other fitters have been applying this system to also fit fairway wood shafts. The way most have done this is to measure 3 wood swing speed, tempo, and release and use the same shaft BMT data - adding 10 grams of shaft weight to the shaft weight used for the driver - to find a good shaft for a player's 3 wood.

There are a lot of companies now that are developing fairway wood shafts that are meant to be put into 3 woods without any tipping. ACCRA shafts are a great example of this approach, and a number of PGA tour players are using ACCRA shafts with great results. The value of doing this is to promote a higher launch for 3 woods - or simply for your longest fairway wood.

I tested this on my fairway woods recently. A good BMT shaft fit for my fairway woods is an SK Fiber TT 80 A flex shaft. So I put this shaft into my Wishon 949 MC 3 wood without any tipping, and built my 5, 7, and 9 fairway woods with the same shaft but with enough tipping so the butt flex of all of the clubs would be the same. So far I have been very pleased with the performance results of these reshafted woods, and believe this is a great approach for fairway wood shaft fitting.

Tony