Driver Fitting
Last time I practiced on May 1st, I managed to tweak my lower back. On Friday, I finally felt good enough to go to my long delayed driver fitting with Dave Murray. Dave’s shop is at Spring Creek Golf in Plano. I wanted to see which of two Tom Wishon Golf clubheads would fit me best, the 949MC or the 525GRT.
I warmed up on the range with my 7-iron, striking the ball cleanly, but with a big hook. I was puzzled as to why I was hooking the ball (my dreaded reverse pivot wasn’t evident), but Dave took one look at my swing and saw I wasn’t driving my right knee toward the ball on the down swing. On my next swing, I drove my right knee toward the ball, and it went straight. Hmmm… nice to get a little lesson along with the fitting.
First, I hit the 949MC 460cc clubhead with a 10.5° loft, which Dave had fitted with the ZT shaft in regular flex. I didn’t get enough spin with the driver, so we moved on to the 525GRT at 9.5° with a high-launch Interflexx shaft in stiff flex. I needed about 0.5° more loft to get my ideal launch angle. My best swings had a 230 yd carry with this club.
I also hit my current SasQuatch Lucky 13 driver, and it showed a launch angle of 17° and a spin of 3500 rpm, which he said causes me to lose distance because the ball will tend to fall out of the sky and not run after hitting the fairway.
We decided to go with the 11° loft 525GRT head with the mid-low Interflex shaft in regular flex, instead of the high-launch shaft, to compensate for the fact that the loft is slightly more than I need. Length was set to 44.5″, as I hit the club better when I choked down on it about 1/2″ (he had built the club at 45″). So, I ordered the club and should have it late next week. I’ll visit the range and give a report shortly thereafter…