Yesterday, I worked on a set of irons for a scratch golfer. He said he
was hitting everything "fat" with the new set he was fitted for at the
Taylor-Made fitting center in So Cal. He "knew" what the problem was.
The clubs were 1/4" too long! I explained to him that .25" was pretty
much meaningless as a cause of hitting the ball fat. But nope, he's a
scratch player and I'm just an old, worn out clubfitter.
So, I went through the routine about swing weight changes (6
points/inch), lie angle changes (about 1 deg per 3/4 inch), differences
in grip weights, fractions of a gram differences in amounts of tape and
epoxy applied, and so on. He was concerned about a change in flex, even!
None of my explanations mattered, so off we went to the workshop.
I cut the grips off but left the tape on. Original SW's were all D-1 1/2
to D-2 1/2. Not bad at all. I checked the SW's with the grips off as
well. There was about a 10 point difference from the gripped clubs, as I
expected. Now, the guy was right there, watching every move I made. I
carefully measured 1/4" and chopped the clubs. Using my gram-weight
scale, I measured out roughly 4 grams of lead powder, poured it into the
shaft, tamped it down, put a slit grip on the butt and checked the SW. I
did this for each club. Some took 4 grams (2 grams per SW point), some
took a little more or less. I added epoxy to corks and rammed them home,
to the top of the powder and re-weighed. Perfect - D-2 with a split grip
and a little guessing as to the weight of the epoxy. The guy wanted to
install the grips himself, so I weighed a dozen or so grips to get 9,
all the same weight.
We got back to the discussion of the "fat" shots. I asked what the
divots looked like; were they toe or heel weighted, or were they
centered and even? Did they point away from the target line? According
to the guy, none of that stuff mattered. It was the 1/4" that was the
problem. I put the 7 iron on my L&L machine; 62 deg lie ("standard"),
loft 2 degrees weak. Other clubs I had worked on for this guy had 1 deg
flat lie angles. I suggested we change the lie angles to his previous
measurements. Nope . . .1/4" shorter will do the trick.
Based on previous experience with this guy, I know he'll be back in a
few days, asking for a loft and lie check. That's o.k. with me. Another
$36.00 on top of the $50.00 for the 1/4" work and I'll be able to at
long last buy that Rolls I've wanted.
Ahhh . . . I love golfers who know what the problem is.
TFlan
