WIN
A PLACE IN THE EMIRATES AUSTRALIAN OPEN PRO-AM
OCTOBER 2014 ISSUE #308
EXCLUSIVE INSTRUCTION
HIT HOT HYBRIDS BY
ERNIE ELS
BASICS MASTERCLASS
THE ULTIMATE SWING FUNDAMENTALS CHECKLIST
PERTH INTERNATIONAL OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS FOR EMERGING STARS
WESTERN FORCE THE BEST COURSES YOU CAN PLAY IN W.A
HAVE YOU GOT SOLE?
2014 SHOE BUYER’S GUIDE
THIS MAN CAN SAVE YOU
5 SHOTS OVERNIGHT OGY TECHNOL GOLF AST IN MOVES F O KEEP UP IS WAY T AND ONE UR NEXT SET OF YO , TO HAVE M-FITTED O T S U C S T TO CLUB ROVEMEN P IM E H T D AS ES COUL R O C S R YOU ATIC. BE DRAM
Pure Performance Golf’s director of club-fitting Paul Jenner stands among dozens of shafts he can fit to a wide range of clubheads.
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S: WORD AMES J N A BREND
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n 34 years of playing golf I’ve owned four sets of clubs. Two sets were gifts as a teenager, another was won as a raffle prize and the current mix was bought off the rack over a period of time dating back nearly a decade. I haven’t changed the current set because I was comfortable with each club in the bag from day one. I guess, when it comes to my golf clubs, I’ve lived by the mantra: if it ain’t broke why fix it? The fact that during the past ten years my handicap has drifted from five to ten is something I have just attributed to my ever-decreasing time on the practice tee. For someone in the golf industry who knows the huge benefits players can derive from having the latest technologically advanced clubs custom-fitted to your game, I should know better. Technology advancement moves incredibly fast in golf and playing with equipment that should have been retired a long time ago is an additional handicap to the ten strokes to par I currently tolerate. If technology moves fast in the production of equipment, it has moved at light speed in recent years in the area of club custom-fitting. Today, it is possible to be personally fitted, just like a Tour pro, to every club in your bag so you can perform at your best every time you play. Most club manufacturers custom-fit their equipment and several, like Titleist, Callaway and TaylorMade, have expansive fitting systems designed to get you into the best possible equipment to meet your needs. Then there is the Pure Performance Golf Lab (PPGL), where most major brands are available for fitting. So instead of being locked in to a brand, you are fitted to the club or putter that works best for you. There are 18 different club and putter brands and more than a dozen shafts at the disposal of club-fitters so they can build equipment that is guaranteed to perform better. Pure Performance Golf Labs have been fitting PGA Tour players, top amateurs and club golfers in the United States since 2007 and its first Australian lab opened in Sydney earlier this year. A second lab is opening in Melbourne next month. Utilising the latest in technology, such as Trackman, advanced fitting software and highspeed cameras, PPGL’s fitters can accurately measure the performance of your current equipment and then find the best combination from their 30,000 fitting options to improve your performance. This is a PGA Tour-level fitting experience. I’ve never been through such a detailed custom-fitting process before. In fact, the only time I was ‘fitted’ was 30 years ago when I stood in the pro shop at my local club and the pro got me to swing a club. He suggested I swung it hard golf australia
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THIS MAN CAN SAVE YOU
5 SHOTS OVERNIGHT
enough to be using stiff shafts. He looked at the size of my hands and advised two papers under the grip. My ‘fitting’ session was done. Club-fitting has certainly come out of those dark ages, as I was to find out in a fitting session with Pure Performance director of club fitting Paul Jenner. Jenner, a PGA professional, is one of this country’s leading club fitters and builders and he starts our session by measuring and analysing my current equipment. He checks the lie, loft and shaft torque of every club in the bag before letting me loose in the hitting bay to hit some balls using my 6-iron. After some warm-up swings, he sets up TrackMan to capture my swing data. TrackMan is technology based on a Doppler radar. It’s basically microwaves reflecting from the movement of a golf clubhead and the resulting ball flight. The change in frequency of these receiving waves is what makes it possible to track what happens at the very moment of impact between club and ball. TrackMan helps map key data parameters – golf swing and ball speed, attack angle, clubface and path. I make three reasonable swings with my 6-iron, all of which carry just beyond the 140-metre mark and just right of the target. TrackMan says my average carry is 143.3 metres with total distance of 151.6 metres, with an average dispersion from the target line of 3.8 metres to the right. Jenner then goes into fitting mode as he ducks away and reemerges with three different 6-iron clubheads and a shaft, which he can screw into each head. “We need to increase your club and ball speed,” he says, analysing the TrackMan data. “I think this is the shaft you need and we’ll try a few different heads with it.” I hit a Mizuno, TaylorMade and Cobra clubhead with each showing better numbers than with my own 6-iron. “Let me try just one more … I think this clubhead with this shaft is Seiko_PRO_GADPS_Oct 2014-08-31T16:09:35+10:00
going to be the best combo for you,” Jenner says. A few minutes later, I’m striping 6-irons into the back of the hitting bay with a thud. The numbers are great. Using a Callaway XHot 2 Pro clubhead fitted with a regular steel KBS Tour shaft, which is half an inch longer than the standard in my own 6-iron, I seemingly cannot miss. Best of all, there is not one shank, a horrible shot that has recently found its way into my game. The words on Jenner’s hitting bay computer screen ring true … the numbers don’t lie. TrackMan says my average carry has increased to 157.2 metres with total distance of 165.8 metres, with an average dispersion from the target line of 0.7 metres to the right. Wow! Longer and straighter in about 20 minutes! Over the next few hours we work through the rest of the bag – with greater distance and accuracy gains across the board for the driver, 3-wood and hybrid. Analysis of my wedges also show improved accuracy with a different shaft/head combination. “The reality is the majority of golfers, like you, are playing with incorrect shafts or clubs with inappropriate specs for their game,” Jenner says. “They are still playing with standard, off-the-rack equipment. Golfers, no matter whether they are a low-, mid- or high-handicapper, come in all different shapes and sizes with different strengths and weaknesses and swing characteristics. “Having equipment fitted to best suit your game leads to improvements like yours,” he says nodding at me. “It could save most golfers at least five shots a round.”
The numbers don’t lie. TrackMan says my average carry has increased ... Longer and straighter in about 20 minutes!
clockwise from top left opposite: Smashing
one of dozens of driver options into the hitting bay; A better player than our correspondent gets tracked; Jenner checks the shaft torque of a driver; Checking the loft of a short iron as part of the fitting process; Where the magic happens ... dozens of shafts hang from the walls, ready to be tried during a custom fit; Trackman provides all the data to assist fitters; You’d be surprised how many shaft and clubhead combinations the Pure Performance team has at its disposal.
THIS MAN CAN SAVE YOU
5 SHOTS OVERNIGHT left: The
results are in. Three shots with my 6-iron land well short of the 6-iron I was fitted to. The accuracy of the Callaway XHot 2 Pro iron was also superior. right: The trajectory of the fitted iron was much better and average distance from the target was less than a metre. bottom: The numbers don’t lie.
“It’s quite obvious you’ve never seen me putt,” I jokingly reply. “Well let’s see what we can do about that,” Jenner fires back. He leads me to a room away from the main hitting area where there are putters lined up against the wall and a putting mat with a hole cut into it about 15 feet away. He attaches a small mirror to the face of my putter and places a laser pointer over the hole. “Set-up as you would normally to hole this putt,” Jenner says as he places a ball in front of the putterhead. I set up to putt. He takes the ball away and turns the laser on. My mirrored putterface reflects the green laser light back to a board beyond the hole and the reason why I miss more than my fair share of putts becomes immediately evident. The laser guide shows I not only set-up aiming about a foot right of the hole, I also set-up with the putterface slightly lofted. Within ten minutes and having worked through a few different putterheads, as well as a slight change in my alignment, I’m binning putts one after another. Having used a heel-toe weighted blade for several years, Jenner has me stroking a mallet and the results speak for themselves. For me the putter-fitting was a simple exercise. For others it can be more extensive with a fitter checking your aim, set-up, stroke and roll using a Quintic putter monitor as well as high-speed video cameras.
Using a laser pointer is part of the putter-fitting process and it works a treat. right: Some of the putterheads that can be fitted to suit your stroke.
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From the video feedback, the fitter can then determine the style of head you need as well as showing you what your set-up and putting stroke looks like. From that point, PPGL can custom-fit and built to exact specifications a putter at the correct length, lie, loft, weight, grip, grip size, head style and even hosel style you need to make more putts. Over the course of two hours at PPGL, Jenner had transformed the outlook on my golf game. There is now light at the end of the tunnel that one day I might again have a single-figure handicap.
WHERE TO GO
Pure Performance Golf Labs is located on O’Riordan St, Alexandria, in Sydney and, as of November 3, they will be opening at Sandringham Driving Range in Melbourne. For more information about PPGL services and costs, visit the website www.pureperformancegolflabs.com.au
SPECIAL OFFER
To mark the opening of the Sandringham PPGL, Golf Australia readers can get 50 percent off the cost of any club-fitting at the new Melbourne lab simply by following this link http://www.pureperformancegolflabs.com. au/melbourne_ga_offer and pre-booking a fitting session.