It was great fun to again get to attend the PGA Equipment Show in Orlando, FL last week. This was the first time I had the experience of attending the outdoor Demo Day on Wednesday – a mile of walking to see all of the vendors of different types of equipment! And two days indoors at the actual Equipment Show – got lots of exercise walking to see all of the sites.
Perhaps it is because I have a focus on custom clubfitting but – compared to my first show visit 2 years ago – there was definitely an expansion of the focus on club fitting at this year's show. Yes, there were lots of companies saying that their clubs could (again) provide 10 to 15 more yards, but some of these vendors now had Launch Monitors measuring results from golfers hitting their clubs. And there were at least a dozen different types of equipment to measure golf club results.
Here are a couple of tidbits that I picked up during the show…..
1. As I was walking around the Demo Day, I heard an attendee say "All of these clubs perform about the same, it is really hard to see differences between what various clubs can do" (not an exact quote but pretty close). It is becoming harder and harder, in my view, to find new club head designs that really bring about substantial improvements in distances for golfers. And when drivers are still being built to 46 inch lengths that are hard to hit, the difference for average golfers becomes what is attached to that high-performance golf club head.
2. Eric Hogge, Director of the PGA Learning Center in Florida, talked about Measureable Results from connecting Custom Clubfitting and Instruction. His bottom line went up substantially last year from making this connection – and he showed the numbers! He also talked about the 3rd part of this performance improvement triangle – Personal Fitness.
3. A number of the vendors showed clubs designed for different playing groups – clubs for tour players and clubs for the general golfing public. Hum……wonder why?
4. I am not sure why I got an invite to the Mitchell Golf sponsored presentation on Putting Performance, but it was a big highlight for me. Stan Utley, well know putting instructor, talked for about 30 minutes. He said (again pretty darn close to quote) "Players self fit to clubs made by someone who has never met them." And he noted that even Tour Players will alter their putting stroke / setup to make the club "look good" to them – instead of having the club fit to set up correctly for them.
5. David Nels from Flightscope noted that many players leave a lot of yards in their golf bags because they produce shots with poor launch conditions. For me, this means in driver fitting to: a) help a player hit the ball in the center of the clubface, b) adjust the club weighting (shaft and head) so that they get the club path and club face at impact are close to each other, and c) optimize launch conditions.
The Fit Is STILL IT!!
Tony