One of the coolest aspects of being on Callaway’s Professional Staff is the opportunity to attend the company’s annual product launches up in Scottsdale or Phoenix. Callaway’s new club line in 2020 is called MAVRIK, and I promise you’ll see and hear more and more about it as we get closer to the new year.
This month, I was given a choice to attend either the MAVRIK product launch party or an all-day, live Certified Fitter Training at Wildfire Golf Club. Having traveled up north for the previous three product launches (Epic, Rogue, and Epic Flash, I chose to sign-up for the training class in order to learn more about the history of Callaway’s fitting process and to help me become a better fitter back at La Paloma Country Club.
Full disclosure: when we first arrived, Callaway got us all to agree that we wouldn’t post any of their proprietary fitting protocols online or on social media, and I want to honor that agreement. It was essentially a how and why Callaway Club Specialists fit the way they do, a program the company developed a few years ago based on 15-20 years of fitting experience at its corporate headquarters in Carlsbad.
Okay. So I won’t break the rules here, but what I can and will say is that there was a noticeable disagreement between lead presenter and Callaway Club Specialist Chris Montion and many of the 18 attendees, several of whom were golf instructors. There’s a reason why. Callaway’s fitters aren’t teachers. Montion told us, “At Callaway, we don’t teach. We fit what’s in front of us. We mold the clubs to fit the customer.”
Bill Boltz, who is Henry-Griffitts National Director of Education and Training has helped shape my club fitting philosophy as it relates to teaching dating back to when I first met him at the Golf Academy of America in Phoenix back in March of 2016. I am of the opinion that an improper club fitting can “doom” a person to a certain golf swing. As human beings, we are really good at developing compensations and will find a way to hit the golf ball with whichever clubs we are fit. That led me to develop my own Club Fitting Truths:
1. Neutralize the Lie Angle – I start by having players hit balls off a lie board. My goal is always to neutralize the lie angle of the club head by fitting for effective lie angle, which is fitting length and lie angle at the same time. Effective lie angle is the actual lie angle of the club plus or minus the length of the club. It’s the dynamic measurement of the lie angle of the club at impact.
For example, if the actual lie angle of a club is one degree upright and you add one inch to the length of the club (1/2″ = 1 degree upright; 1″ = 2 degrees upright), the effective lie angle will be three degrees upright. If the actual lie of a club is six degrees upright and you take two inches from the length of the club (2 inches = 4 degrees flat), the effective lie angle is just two degrees upright. The lie angle influences the starting direction of the ball flight. Lie angle determines face angle.
2. Fix the Swing – This is where teaching has to come into play in every fitting my opinion. If the player I’m fitting has a more over-the-top swing, as a general rule, he will tend to make marks more towards the toe of the sole of the club. If the player has a swing that’s too inside-out, as a general rule, he will tend to make marks more towards the heel of the sole of the club.
3. Club Head Design – Once I neutralize the player’s lie angle through a combination of lie angle and club length, I examine the player’s centeredness of contact. If the player is hitting the ball off the toe on the face, as a general rule, he might be telling me that he wants more offset, which brings the contact more towards the center of the face. If the player is hitting the ball more off the heel on the face, again as a general rule, he might be telling me that he wants less offset, which also brings the contact more towards the center of the face.
It was a good discussion and one that certainly had fitters falling on both sides of the aisle. Interestingly enough, one of those fitters who agreed with Callaway’s fitting process (and disagreed with neutralizing the lie angle) was Gary Blaisdell.
Who’s Gary Blaisdell you ask? Well depending on who you talk to, he’s the guy who invented the 9″ x 17.5″ piece of fiberglass that makes up the modern-day lie board used in iron fittings. Blaisdell says he filed the initial patent back in 1990 while working for Henry-Griffitts and before he went on to become Vice President of Slazenger. Others claim Randy Henry, co-founder of Henry-Griffitts, developed the board and patented it before Blaisdell worked for him.
After the morning session concluded and we grabbed a little lunch, we headed out to the driving range to watch Montion go through a live fitting with one of Callaway’s sales reps, Eric Strader. It wasn’t long before the wind picked up, the temperature dropped 10-15 degrees, and within 15 minutes, we were greeted by a hail storm, effectively ending our time outdoors.
Honestly, I didn’t mind. It was a little disappointing that the afternoon session, which had been flipped because of a rainstorm that was expected to arrive that morning got rained-out, but I was ready to get back on the road to Tucson.
After taking a 20-question Certified Fitter Exam, we all walked away with a Certified Club Fitter Certificate and a Callaway polo emblazoned with a Certified Fitter patch. I also left with more tools in my tool box than I had in my possession when I arrived. It was a good day.