I have a confession to make. Whenever I'm driving to a Club Champion fitting I'm blasting music from a Sam Spence NFL Films soundtrack on the ride there. It pumps me up like crazy. And I do this because while I don't know what the end result of my fitting will be. I do know Club Champion is going to make the entire experience absolutely awesome.
I was fit for a new set of irons at Club Champion a few months back and it was in fact absolutely awesome. The reason I mentioned above I knew it would be coming in is because past fittings I've had with them showed me the Club Champion expertise, attention to detail, and thoroughness of fitting is exceptional in every way. And as it would turn out, this particular iron fitting wound up being even better than I could have imagined.
I told you a little about my fitting on social but want to dive a little deeper here. Hit on some things that shows why a Club Champion fitting so unique and extraordinary. And give you a roadmap of what to expect really.
First, your fitting options are endless. You'll probably come in with an idea of what clubs or shafts you want to try. Your fitter will certainly also recommend others as your fitting progresses. But all told you have more than 65,000 hittable club combinations at Club Champion. Sixty-five freaking thousand! Don't be overwhelmed though, your fitter will sort through all the technology, analyze all the data, and ultimately discover the best possible combination for your swing and tendencies.
So when you roll into a Club Champion they'll have you hit a handful of balls with your current irons (or just irons you think you like if you don't bring your own) to get some baseline Trackman numbers. Numbers like club and ball speed, backspin and sidespin, attack and face angle. You're going down the rabbit hole and when you come back up it's something special.
Right off the bat Club Champion tries to see (by contact and consistency) what category of iron head you should be in. This helps them guide you into the kind of head that's best for you. But for Club Champion it really all starts with the shaft. At a typical CC fitting you'll start testing by five or six different shafts. And you'll probably be surprised by how different your numbers are just by changing out the shafts. Sometimes you can find the ideal shaft immediately, other times it can take multiple pulls.
To find that ideal shaft your fitter (in my case, Mike at the Warrensville Heights Ohio CC Studio) looks at things like launch angles, smash factor, height, spin rate, and landing angles (one of the bigger ones). But as importantly and probably more importantly, your fitter is watching you swing and how you're loading the shaft. The numbers tell one story but the Club Champion fitter expertise and eye is also watching what the shaft does as you're swinging the club. Mike's fit thousands of golfers and seen thousands of swings. As we went through different shafts Mike was getting a pretty good idea of what heads to try.
Once you find the best shaft (or maybe two), then you move on to testing different iron heads. A typical Club Champion iron fitting will test five or six different iron heads. But say you want to hit say eight different iron heads? Club Champion will have you hit eight different iron heads. That's one of the recurring themes in all Club Champion fittings I've had. They want you to be completely satisfied. And I was. I hit six different shafts and seven different heads.
You can always pick whatever head you want to try. And Mike asked me if there was anything out there I wanted to hit or that I was interested in during our fitting. This is quintessential Club Champion. They want us to be happy. Then it's all about the numbers and feel to see what's not so great, what's great, and what's that match made in heaven for you.
Mike explained to me that the categories of Players Iron or Game-Improvement iron are somewhat misleading because actual player swing characteristics can put a high handicap player into a Players iron and/or a low handicap player into a Game-Improvement iron. Part of ideal head type is dependent on the sole of the club, are you steep or are you shallow, do you take big divots or pick the ball, things like that and more your Club Champion fitter is analyzing.
I hit certain irons better than others, certain shafts better than others, certain combinations better than others. And I can tell you in a nutshell what to expect from a Club Champion fitting: whatever you want. What you'll get from a Club Champion fitting? Everything that surpasses even your highest expectations. And ultimately what you wind up with is an ideal iron set uniquely best for you and your swing. And in general a real feeling when you walk out the door that's something like, "Wow, I'm absolutely positive I just got the best iron fitting I could have possibly gotten.”
One of the interesting things about a Club Champion fitting (as mentioned above) is they start your iron fitting by figuring out the best shaft for your swing (or best delivers the iron head), rather than first trying to find the right iron head. Club Champion believes once you find the right shaft, you can take that shaft (or maybe two) and then go through different heads with the shaft as a constant. And this allows them to then better determine how different iron heads perform.
Your Club Champion fitter will ask how certain shafts and combinations feel right away. And this isn't just to get your preference on good or bad. It helps them figure out the direction to continue going with your fitting. Again, getting to the shaft first methodology, Club Champion (and my fitter Mike on this day) is trying to ideally fit your (my) swing in terms of shaft weight, stiffness, steel or graphite.
As my fitter Mike explained to me, "Different weight shafts can almost control how we swing the club. So too heavy or too light will lead to inconsistent delivery of the club head (regardless of the club head), and also an inconsistent smash factor. Smash factor is something that tells us how solid your contact is, and that's controlled by the shaft." We had a lot of dialogue during the fitting about how shafts felt, how the weights felt, and how my swing felt better or worse with different shafts as well as clubhead awareness through my swing with different shafts.
So you're going through shafts that are heavier or lighter, softer or firmer, shafts that load easier or harder, etc. And all the while your fitter (Mike) is watching and dissecting clubhead speed, spin, dispersion, and other factors in this journey towards your ideal combination of iron head and shaft. What Club Champion wants is a shaft that gives you and I the highest smash factor, and by extension the most consistent ball flight.
In my fitting for example one shaft gave me significantly longer outright carry than the next best shaft and also had the best overall dispersion. Clubhead speed, ball speed, smash factor were all consistently the highest for me with longest average carry and longest average total. It was crystal clear. And that's when we moved on to a variety of different iron heads from different manufacturers to dial in that ultimate final iron set performance. It's a fascinating and ultimately extremely rewarding process.
And after Mike locked me in to a particular iron and shaft combo I was legit striping shots all within 3-4 yards of each other. Swing after swing after swing contact was center on a dot. Smash factor was high, height and flight ideal, launch was great with my highest ball speeds. I loved hearing Mike say "that's everything you can ask for." You guys know my game. Tell you all the time my motto is "every four shots I can be dangerous." I might have to lower my number after this fitting. With this iron head and shaft I was hitting pretty much perfect shots.
Mike then circled back to another head and I didn't know why. Until he told me afterward. He wanted to put me in a head that didn't look and feel good to me earlier just to sort of throw a bump (or interruption) in the fitting and my groove. He did this so we could come back the ideal head and shaft and confirm what we saw earlier. And we did. It wasn't a fluke. Another handful of consecutive shots, center dime contact, absolutely perfect. Even my misses were better. Not a lot of movement and all pretty much the same miss, same shot shape. Improving your miss is every bit as important as increasing the frequency of good shots hit. A Club Champion iron fitting is massively thorough and comprehensive.
A fresh Club Champion fitting unboxing to heat up a cold winter day baby! 💯🔥👍 pic.twitter.com/KjeLG1PALI
— Pete Pappas (@PGAPappas) December 4, 2024
Everything about this new iron head and shaft combo felt like some kind of golf iron nirvana, not only at impact but even during my entire swing. Just crazy honestly. As we progressed through my fitting and tested different iron and shaft combos I went from good impact with some outliers, to very good with no outliers, to stack on stack on stack feathered impact glory. You might even say Mike brought me an early season #JingleBAM baby! It was a clear and consistent winner. Just like Club Champion every single time. Thanks Mike and Club Champion.
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