GET
Fit
A part-time golfer—but full-time skeptical writer—gets properly fitted for clubs by a Callaway expert, and the results surprise him in a very, very good way Callaway Tour Fitting Manager John Degen
I
wasn’t expecting much. I’d had friends supposedly get fitted for clubs by a guy at a store or at our local course, and none of them had returned from the experience with anything more than a credit card bill. So when I pulled into the Ely Callaway Performance Center at Callaway Golf Company’s headquarters in Carlsbad, California, I was skeptical to say the least. Two hours later, consider me converted. By the time I left the fitting, Tour Fitting Manager John Degen had completely changed my notion of what I thought I needed in a set of clubs—and he’d added 15 yards to my drive. Fifteen yards! If you read no further, that should be all the information you need to convince you that a proper fitting from Callaway is time well spent. Skill level isn’t important. Not really, not when it comes to improvement. No matter the level of your game, it turns out that a proper fitting—that is, one done by a professional, not just a guy at a shop—will help. In fact, it might even be an important step in helping you to avoid training into the wrong equipment, developing bad habits and frustrations along the way. The fitting itself was painless: I spent a couple
110
of hours at Callaway’s beautiful Ely Callaway Performance Center in Carlsbad, drinking in the sunshine and cool breeze and hitting balls. John would watch me swing, give me a club to try, he’d chart my performance using a TrackMan computer system, then swap out my club for another. After a while, he had a shaft and club combination he liked and we’d move on to a different club type. By the end of my day with John, I was hitting farther and straighter, and I didn’t feel like I was fighting the gear I was using. In fact, he’d eliminated a “problem” club from my bag, which I’d long dreaded using as I never seemed to be able to hit it well. There are Callaway Performance Centers, Fitting Studios and authorized fitting locations all over the United States, and any of them should be able to help fit you into the new range of clubs, which are excellent. For my part, I learned three things during my fitting session. All together, they represent the reason I went into my fitting thinking I had little to learn and emerged a better and more informed (and more appropriately equipped) player. If nothing else, each of the following is a strong argument for visiting with a Callaway fitting expert.
spring 2014