We did a Flightscope Demo Day at the Centennial Golf Academy this past weekend. Considering we were competing with St. Patrick's day and the rain, we had a very good turnout.
Each and every one of the golfers who did testing with the Flightscope were, we believe, surprised by the level of detail of results provided by the Flightscope. Everyone found some information from the testing that could help them improve their golfing results. Some of the highlights of the testing are noted below….
1. One of the players we tested we already knew could really "crush" the golf ball. But the Flightscope showed us a large reason why he gets great distance. Not only does he have a high swing speed, but his ball spin numbers were excellent – almost always below 2,000 rpm. So most shots carried well and then rolled out Really Well. It was fun to see.
2. Just about everyone (to a lesser extent the player discussed above) could see in the Flightscope data ways to improve their driving distance. The Flightscope has a tool called the Driver Optimizer that shows how one can get optimum driving carry or total distance by improvements in hitting the center of the clubface (Smash Factor), Launch Angle, and Ball Spin. Sometimes these potential improvements were greater than 20 to 30 yards.
3. As valuable as the Flightscope data is (and any Launch Monitor data is) we found, and showed some of the golfers, that this data in a vacuum is not enough. Other great friends for golfers looking for improvement are MarkIt Spray – to learn about where the player is hitting on the clubface – and Lead Tape – to modify the Swingweight/MOI of the clubhead to help change the club face angle at impact. There were a few testers who found out that they did not often hit the center of the clubface and that this lead to lower potential distances for drivers and irons. And for two players, we found that adding lead tape to the driver head kept them from closing the clubface at impact and kept them from that pull-hook that most of us do not like to hit. We had one of the players add 8 grams of lead tape to the bottom of his driver head, and when we were done he had a lot more confidence in keeping his drives in play.
So – the first Centennial Golf Academy Flightscope Demo Day was a big success. But we also showed that it is a focus on all elements of Custom Club Fitting that gets a golfer truly significant improvements.
The Fit Is IT!!
Tony