1. Individually fitted golf clubs – an illusion becomes reality.

An amateur golfer with individual fitting golf clubs is an international rarity, as it has – up to now - been impossible to directly produce golf clubs of this type. However, two current discoveries should make it possible: direct production of individual fitting golf clubs without laborious post-production adaptation to the golfer, by bending the hosel or by extending/shortening the shafts.

Alongside several obvious characteristics to be determined in advance, a golf club that genuinely individually fits one golfer (Fig.2+5+8) must also particularly meet the following requirements: the sole of the hitting area contacts the ground exactly in the middle at the moment of impact (Fig. 2), so that otherwise inevitable push (Fig. 1) or draw (Fig. 3) is prevented from ever occurring

Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

The importance of central sole contact in tournaments is shown by frequent, sometimes daily tests and if necessary later adjustment of clubs by club fitters or specialist supervisors. For amateur golfers, however, the speed of the hitting area is generally no way near as high as playing pro's, although even here, an especially hard impact perhaps against a stone would sometimes shift the lie angle so the club no longer fits.

The root of all problems for producers of individual fitting golf clubs lies in the particular behaviour of the hitting area at the moment of impact. ‘Toe down type bending’, the typical down and forward warping of the sole point when the shaft also arches forward, increases the lie angle on short irons – sometimes by over 10° (Fig. 10+11) - and it differs for every golfer, which means it can therefore not be determined or calculated in advance for the purposes of producing individual fitting golf clubs.

However, it is only possible to establish whether a golf club really fits individually or not – i.e. whether the condition of the sole striking the ground centrally on impact, as described above, is met – by using a dynamic lie test (Fig. 11). This procedure uses the latest technology to determine the impact lines of soles on a test board, specifically by a competent club fitter. Therefore, it is easy to imagine that many golfers have their clubs checked by this procedure either rarely or never, and thus: most amateur golfers play with their clubs not fitting individually. (Fig. 4+6+7+9).

Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6

Even the metal used to make golf club heads is subject to impossible demands. On the one hand it must to be flexible so it can be fitted at all, and on the other hand, the club head must not be shifted by a hard impact – i.e. it must not warp. There is also a further problem: a golf club which has become an individual fitting golf club due to extreme bending of the hosel will reset itself automatically to a certain extent and thus no longer contact the ground centrally on impact and therefore no longer fit.

The first discovery affects the contact zones / contact lines arising on the sole of the club head in a dynamic lie test. According to latest technology, these contact lines should be equidistant when the so-called WIM of the wrist-to-floor impact (Fig. 11) is changed, i.e. equal values on impact. It is assumed that the contact lines will move by 0.25 inch when the WIM changes by 0.5 inch on increasing the WIM toward the heel and reducing the WIM toward the toe.

However, the equidistance issue cannot be maintained as such. The distances are actually determined by the ‘sole-radii’. At equal distances from the contact lines, these sole radii must meet on one level at a common central point – which is in fact rarely the case. Nevertheless, the distances are easy to measure using the appropriate tool. Although the author has measured the contact lines of countless club heads from various manufacturers, with changes to the WIM values, he never once came anything even approaching equidistant contact lines as required by the latest technology.

Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9

The aforementioned contact line measuring values are summarised in a table and transferred to a template. This template allows reading of the appropriate golf club (namely the length) with which the tested golf club contacts the ground exactly in the centre, after a dynamic lie test is laid on the sole. A patent procedure for producing a genuinely individual fitting golf club without the need to bend or fit individually afterwards.

A golfer usually plays with 8 to 10 irons – clubs that are made of a bendable metal. A fair amount of work would be required to apply the new template procedure described in the previous paragraph, for every one of these clubs – although this procedure would in fact be far less work e.g. than the state of the art internationally applied dynamic lie test procedure with wrongly assumed equal distances on the sole, in order to produce individual fitting golf clubs. It would also be easier and more certain, as bending is by read values and not just with a specification of the bend direction required.

Fig. 10 Fig. 11

According to the latest technology, when the WIM values are changed, the same changes to the distances must also be made for the lie values - namely 1° lie when the distance of the contact lines on the sole is changed by 0.25 inch, when the WIM is changed by 0.5 inch. This assumption is also impossible to maintain and is simply wrong – which could be proved by simple geometry. The lie angle difference between PW and iron 9 can be approx. 1.8°, whereas the difference between iron 4 and iron 3 is only approx. 0.7° 

Fig. 12

So, even here, we find some very uneven distances, which will decrease as club lengths increase (Fig. 12).

Based on the insights of the two discoveries regarding the uneven distance both on the sole radii and for the lie values, and using the table of club sizes produced according to the relative length fitting principle, in accordance with dynamic lie tests on only two test clubs and with appropriate measurement of the soles using corresponding templates, it is possible (by interpolation of the differences in lengths of the two test clubs) to calculate the golf club lengths and lie angles of a set of irons, which can then be definitively and without doubt said to be individually suited to the golfer. Specifically, this interpolation should be carried out on a screen, from which the result can be printed.

The results of two dynamic lie tests would also be sufficient for the golf club industry – and particularly the club makers – to produce and supply their preferred and proven golf club ranges individually fitted to any interested golfer, for an additional fee.

Furthermore, it is entirely conceivable that individually fitted golf clubs for kids could be produced using just one test club and the corresponding template – with which acceptable concessions would have to and could be made for the long irons.

Templates for fitting golf clubs with two dynamic lie tests

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