SWINGFIT’S CLUB FITTING PUTS SCIENCE OVER ASSUMPTIONS STORY BY TIM WOOD | PHOTO BY MADISON ELROD
There is an emerging revolution in golf, building momentum in our own backyard. Chris Wycoff knows golfers love new toys. The latest tech, the newest gadgets, the sleekest golf balls — anything to give them a leg up in a game that is too often mental torture. It’s why he launched Golf Etc. on Palmetto Bay Boulevard nine years ago. As much as the avid golfer and former General Electric data and analytics consultant loved all aspects of the game, he found club fitting to be his passion. “It was selling stock clubs and products versus crafting something personal through data that could truly help people enjoy golf even more,” Wycoff said. “Sign me up for Door No. 2. That’s my sweet spot.” It’s a sweet spot that has catapulted Wycoff’s SwingFit brand into being one of Golf Digest’s 100 best club fitters and one of Golf Magazine’s top 50 club fitters in 2020. Wycoff initially set up his club fitting operation at Palmetto Dunes, finding moderate success but mounting personal frustration with the fundamentals of club fitting. “We see all this new tech in the game, but the truth is, the science behind your swing is very outdated,” he said. “The assumptions of the world’s top club fitters are based on scientific models from the 1950s.” So Wycoff began a two-year journey to evolve that thinking through data gatherPHOTO COURTESY OF ERIC RAYBURN ing and science. He teamed with physicists, MIT scientists and engineers to evolve the art of club fitting. “For 75 years, swing speed has been the one variable, the key measurement. We identified a set of variables to measure the swing and found that, actually, swing speed was the 52nd most important measurement,” he said. “But humans can’t calculate 50-plus variables in a second. Computers can.”
A P R I L 2 0 2 1 // 49
