Club Champion Iron Fitting Review (Columbus, Ohio) - PGAPappas 12 Days of Christmas Guest Review

The first guest review of the year is a good one.  A really, really good one actually.  Rich (@golfafter60 on twitter) won the Club Champion iron fitting in my PGAPappas 12 Days of Christmas Golf Giveaway and had an amazing day at his fitting.

I've been fit multiple times for clubs at Club Champion, including most recently for irons.  And every single time it's been educational, eye-opening, and ultimately one of the best fitting experiences I could have possibly have.  Rich was fit at Club Champion - Columbus, and in his own words, "the whole experience couldn’t have been better, and I’m extremely happy with the clubs I ended up with."

In his own words, here's what Rich (@golfafter60 on twitter) thought about his Club Champion fitting experience, and ultimately what irons wound up being best:

It’s 2014 and my home course is a nice public track in central Ohio. I’ve just about worn out my second set of PING Eye2 irons, the ones I bought with the insurance money I got when my first set of PINGs were stolen from the back of my Blazer (that was a great truck – did they really need to smash the back window just to grab an old set of PINGs?).

So I’m thinking about new clubs, and one of the teaching pros at the public course has offered to fit me for a set. Sounds like a good idea – both sets of PINGs were off-the-shelf.

My “fitting” was on the range and was pretty casual – no switching out clubheads and shafts, no Trackman, no data. Just “here, try this one” until one felt right. I ended up with Callaway APEX irons – a new model in 2014 – and I liked them a lot better than my old PINGs.

Fast-forward 9 years and I’ve been playing club golf now for the last 5. My wife has taken up the game again (she took a 25-year hiatus to raise our two boys) and she’s hooked – I mean really, really hooked. We have more free time now and are playing together 4 or 5 times a week.

I’m having a blast, but at 64 years old I don’t swing it quite like I did back then, although I’ve finally got my index just barely into the single-digits. Those 2014 APEX clubs have taken a beating – at least 300 rounds in the last three years, probably 900 or so since I bought them.  And they’ve been everywhere – Palm Springs, Colorado, Scottsdale, Pinehurst, Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head…

So once again, I’m thinking about new irons. This time, though, there’s so much more to choose from, and with “Golf Twitter”, no shortage of opinions about what’s best. My club pro is partial to Mizuno, and he’s not alone. But the Titleist and TaylorMade irons have great reviews, too, as do the brand-new Callaway Paradym clubs. Even PING’s latest sticks have raving fans.

How to choose? My club has a fitting system, but it’s only for Mizuno. Golf Galaxy and PGA Superstore have fitting bays but I’ve heard mixed reviews about them.  A client of mine got fitted at Club Champion – sounds great, but also sounds a little spendy for me.

I’m stuck. Paralysis by analysis.

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It’s getting close to Christmas, and with the short days and the decidedly un-golfable weather, I’ve got more time to read up on clubs. Twitter’s been a good place to find reviews and demonstrations, including from a popular golf writer named Pete Pappas.

Pete’s Twitter account is a fun read and I’ve been following him for about a year. He’s entertaining and interesting, and somehow always has a handle on the latest and greatest golf stuff out there – clubs, bags, shoes, rain gear – he covers it all.

I’ve had a few Twitter conversations with Pete, and I like the guy. He’s a Clevelander, like my wife, and he was kind enough to recommend a course we played last summer when we were in town for a wedding.

But as I said, it’s close to Christmas, and Pete’s about to roll out the famous “PGAPappas 12 Days of Christmas” – gifts galore from Pete and just about every golf-related manufacturer you can think of, and some you’ve never heard of. All the prizes are phenomenal, but like everyone else, I have my eye on the golden ring – a full set of irons of my choice, custom-fitted at Club Champion.

I figure I have no chance for any of the swag (Pete has gazillions of followers). But come New Year’s Eve the golf gods smiled on me for once, and I win the top prize.  It was a very good way to end the year.

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Wednesday, January 25th is the date I’ve set for my iron fitting at Club Champion. Fortunately, the have a shop just 15 minutes from my house, and I’m psyched to go.

What I’d hope to write next was something like, “the day dawned bright and clear” but instead, we got 5 inches of wet, heavy snow overnight. Schools are closed. Roads are a mess. Not sure Club Champion will be open. This can’t be happening.

But again, a reprieve from above. Temperatures rise throughout the day, and by the time of my 2pm fitting, the snow’s turned to slush and the roads are passable.

I’m on my way.

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The Club Champion shop in Columbus, Ohio is in a storefront near a busy intersection on the north side of town. Just inside the front door is a putter-fitting area which is pretty cool, but what caught my eye was CC’s famous massive wall of shafts and clubheads – every club I’ve ever heard of or read about (and then some). 65,000 combinations, they say, and I believe it.

My fitter, Tad Artrip, jumped out of his chair near the back of the store and came up to greet us. Did I mention Karen, my golfing addict wife, came along with me? More about that later.

Tad introduced himself and led us back to the two hitting bays, each equipped with the latest Trackman units – something like $30k each (and the main reason I don’t have one). We chatted a bit and Tad mentioned he’d fitted a player who was in town for the Memorial for a replacement 3 wood last year.  I can’t say who, but I hear if you need a tee, he’ll be happy to toss one to you.

Could have talked with Tad all day about golf stuff, but we had work to do.  First step was getting some baseline numbers with my current clubs.

Tad had me get out my 6 iron, then explained that the fitting was done with only the 6 – sort of an “in the middle” iron. We’d get the clubhead and shaft based on that, then CC builds the rest of the set around it.

After a little warm up, Tad started tracking my shots with the Trackman. I’ve hit plenty of shots in a simulator with the Foresight launch monitor, but this was the first time with a Trackman and I was blown away by the volume of data it produces. No wonder it costs as much as a small car!

I told Tad that distance wasn’t a big concern. Happy to have more, but consistency and tighter dispersion were my bigger goals. Some of my numbers were already decent but some needed work. In particular, my spin rate was too low, and my landing angle too shallow – that made sense, I do get too much run out on my approach shots (when I hit the green).

So we set out to find a combination of clubhead and shaft that would improve those numbers. Tad and I also discussed the aesthetic aspect of clubheads – I wanted to get the best-performing clubs I could, but I also wanted to like the looks. I prefer a more traditional club, not a fan of obvious screws and bolts and inserts and such. That’s just me.

Tad started me with a Mizuno Pro 225 head and a steel shaft. I remember all the heads we tried, but I lost track of the shafts – we probably tried four or five different ones, steel and graphite. Different flex points, different swing weights.

Right off the bat, the Mizuno felt good (and looked good). Spin rate and landing angle were instantly improved, and there was a significant bump up in distance. A great start, but Tad didn’t like the launch angle, and changed to a different shaft – I think this one was graphite.

The second shaft was better, but we were just getting started. We’d only tried one head. Tad did a great job selecting club heads for me to try, always keeping in mind my preference for a more traditional look.

Next up was the Titleist T200.  I liked the feel of that and so we tried it with a few different shafts. Number were good – not quite as good as the Mizuno, but very good.

Callaway still makes the APEX irons (what I play now) so we gave the new model a test. Then the Srixon ZX5; the Taylormade P790s; and finally, PING i230. The PING wasn’t bad, but it made an odd impact sound that Tad, Karen, and I didn’t like at all.

Karen was in for all of this. She got into the numbers, calling out the differences between clubs before I even had a chance to look at the screen. It was a huge help having her with me, and if you’re going in for a fitting I’d recommend you take along a golf addict, too.

The last bit of tweaking Tad helped with was the lie angle. It was pretty obvious I was hitting toe-down on my shots, and we proved that with a bit of tape on the sole of the clubhead. Tad put the Mizuno head in the bending machine and moved it to 2 degrees upright – that helped.

Eventually, we got down to one shaft and two clubheads: the Fujikura Pro 95 regular graphite shaft, and the Mizuno Pro 225 and TaylorMade P790. The two clubheads produced very similar numbers, and had very similar feels, but I went with the club that looked the best to me – the Mizuno. Paired with the Fujikura graphite shaft, my shots spun more and landed more steeply. And went about 10 yards further.

I’m calling that a win.

The last bit of kit to check out is the grips. Karen and I were looking to regrip her clubs recently, and were disappointed with the selection at the big box golf stores. Club Champion has – I counted – 120 different grips to choose from. Karen found exactly the one she wanted, and so did I. This time, I’m going with mid-size grips.

Tad used the data, and my choice of clubhead, shaft, and grip, to spec out the whole set – 3 iron through gap wedge – and sent it off to Chicago for the build. Should be back in about 2 weeks. Karen and I agree - and can’t state strongly enough -  that if you’re buying clubs without getting them fit at Club Champion, you’re making a big mistake.

Finally, In case I want to geek out over the Trackman data, Tad emailed me a link to a website where it’s all stored. It’s a lot of info, and it’s going to take a while to sift through it all. But totally cool to have access to it.

The whole experience couldn’t have been better, and I’m extremely happy with the clubs I ended up with. Everyone involved has been great, and the best way I can think of to thank Pete Pappas is this:

Golf is a game that transcends

The comradery and fun never ends

And Pete’s made it better

He’s a golfing go-getter

And a guy on my short list of friends

Thanks for a great review Rich (and that poem is pretty good too!)  Really does sound like an absolutely perfect day, and no doubt you wound up with perfect irons for your game.  I have a feeling you'll be playing the best golf of your life in 2023!

All of you know I believe Club Champion does fittings right.  Every fitting I've had with them has been thorough, enjoyable, and ultimately left me extremely happy and satisfied with the results and clubs I was fit for.

As I read Rich's review I was just nodding my head, smiling, knowing what he was experiencing without even being there.  He was getting the best of the best from the best in the fitting business.  And a lot of you often tell me on social media the same thing about Club Champion.  All they do is impress and continue to impress.

No matter who you are, what your game is like, or what you want to accomplish, Club Champion will help you play better golf and in the process make the game more fun.  And it doesn't get any better than that.