This week, we had an amateur golfer joining us for an in-depth fitting of his gamer clubs throughout the bag. Juno (52/M) currently plays to an 8 handicap and plays about 100 rounds a year. An avid golfer, he has had numerous club fittings over the years, including having his irons MOI-frequency matched to fit his aggressive swing style. His recent concerns included a driver that tends to push fade a bit too far right at inopportune times. As Juno explains, his tee shots with the driver are quite good initially, but towards the last few holes the timing of the impact seems off and his ball ends up on the right side rough, or worse, out-of-bounds. He'd like to swing confidently without worrying about the club head not catching up to the ball at impact. His other main concern is his iron play. Juno plays with an aggressive swing tempo and a steep swing plane, often resulting in pulling his irons left. On better hits, the ball curves left anywhere from 5-10 yards, which is annoying on approach shots less than 100 yards. He'd like to see the shots straighten out or with a slight fade to attack the pin with confidence for shorter putts. Looking inside the bag, we can see many types of clubs from different brands. He also confirmed that he likes to use clubs that feel good and works well for him, rather than choosing clubs based on aesthetics. Driver: Taylormade Qi10 Max 9˚ + Tensei Red TM-50 stiff shaft at D4 Wood: Callaway XR 16˚ + Fujikura Speeder 565 stiff shaft Hybrids: Taylormade RBZ Rescue Hybrids 3(19˚), 5(25˚) + KBS TGI iron shafts Irons: Zestaim Fi-1 (4-P) + DG S200 shafts Wedges: Zestaim IO wedges (52˚ 56˚), Vokey SM8 (62˚) + DG S200 shafts Putter: Evnroll ER1.2 After warming up with the gamer driver, we could see that his predominant miss is to the right, somewhere between a fade and a slice. His ball speed averages 66m/s (148mph), but he also added that when he steps on the gas, he feels the club head cut across the ball for a big cut. Worse, he sometimes snap hooks the ball in his attempt to avoid the face from opening. And with some of the more narrow fairways found on Korean courses, the ball often ends up in OB territory to hurt his overall score. Seeing that Juno tends to swing hard with the arms and shoulders to create speed at impact, we diagnosed that he makes use of the shaft's flex better than the torque; but at the risk of early extension. For Juno, we prescribed our Hammer Throw driver shaft at total 45.75" build length and D2 swing weight. The Hammer Throw shaft quite unique, as it is 62g (uncut 46"), but with a super high flex of 140cpm. The overly flexible shaft initially gave Juno pause. He was concerned that the head would not catch up to the ball. However, the shaft has an unexpectedly strong 3.2 torque, which helps to resist twisting at high swing speeds. Despite the whippy feel and flex, the Hammer Throw shaft allowed Juno to swing as hard as he could without worrying about the left side miss. In fact, the shaft produced a steady mid-launch baby fades with a longer roll out at a higher ball speed of 70m/s (157mph) which amazed him. The shaft loaded easily on the downswing to explode across the impact zone, but surprisingly eliminated the left miss from the shaft's strong resistance to twisting.One caveat, however, was Juno's initial uneasiness with the noodly feel of the shaft coupled with his quick and jerky takeaway. However, the shaft felt solid at impact with uniform improvements across the board, which persuaded Juno to try the Hammer Throw shaft in his bag for the time-being. I later checked with Juno a week later, and he actually improved the numbers even more, as he was able to time his swings much better. We believe that his swing tempo will be even better soon to help him use his lower body better to sync with his arm-swing style. At that point, we made a note to switch him over to our MetaFlex CBT driver shafts to better take advantage of his improved swing dynamics. We also fitted his 3-wood into our FreeFlex FF38 driver shaft tipped one-inch to increase torsional stability. The carry distance and launch angle both increased, with the ofter flex shaft offering ease of swing with left-miss taken out of the equation. Needless to say, Juno was ecstatic with the 240+ yard shots to better reach the par 5's in two. Last but not least, Juno's quick and steep downswing suited his current DG S200 steel shafts well and did not require a shaft change. The MetaFlex CBT ix90 shafts are also a good match for him in a lighter 90g package, but he didn't need the extra club distance. However, his tendency to curve the ball left with shorter irons necessitated a closer look at his swing style. With a strong forward hand press at address, the toe of the club head lifted a tad too much off the ground. In addition to increasing the lie angle slightly to help this issue, we also tweaked the hosel to help the ball come off the center of the face at impact. This helped to decrease shanks and to work better with Juno's early tension on the downswing. Immediately, the shots straightened noticeably on the launch monitor, with a higher launch angle and increased spin. We agreed to observe how the irons performed for Juno over the next couple of weeks to see if additional tweaking is required. Below is Juno's new driver and 3-wood setup after the Bespoke Shaft Fitting.Driver: Taylormade Qi10 Max 9˚ + Hammer Throw shaft at D23 wood: Callaway XR 16˚ + FreeFlex FF38 prototype at D1. Stay tuned for more bespoke shaft fitting sessions at SJ Golf Lab!
