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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
Rob Sauerhaft

Tale of the long ball: How a driver fitting session helped one intrepid golfer gain 24 yards

With the golf season in full swing, it’s time to update you on our year-long, custom-club-fitting research project. Previously, we outlined the parameters of the study. We require each participant to play multiple rounds with their current driver and the brand-new one that was custom-fit at Club Champion. The hook is that we’re following them each step of the way. More to the point, the Arccos Caddie shot-tracking system, which includes sensors on the clubs, is being used to gather valuable data on every on-course shot.

We’ll continue to collect data throughout the season, but early returns are positive. One player, Alex Caron (Age: 37/Handicap index: 10.0), has tallied 5.5 rounds with his old gamer and 9.5 rounds with the new, custom-fit one. Caron, a lawyer who specializes in class action litigation, antitrust cases, etc., bought his current driver after a 10-minute fitting on the range with a club company rep.

During the initial fitting for the new driver at Club Champion, Caron learned that his gamer was in the “optimal” zone for several baseline readings. “I thought we’d have our work cut out to beat it,” said Jimmy Leuck, a Master Club Fitter and Builder at Club Champion. Beat it, they did, with the newest model from the same club brand that Caron had been playing. During the fitting, Leuck used the TrackMan launch monitor to compile comparative numbers for several head-and-shaft combinations. For further verification, he powered up the monitor on the day Caron picked up his new custom-fit driver (below).

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