In early December, when I arrived in Carlsbad, California—home to (most of) the best golf club manufacturers in the world—it felt a little like those early days of college.
My future was clear—a week roaming around Southern California, from company to company, going “Totally Fit” for new golf clubs in any country. And I was as cool as the 7-handicapper—anxious to be there, the same way my 18-year-old self was anxious to go to the University of Wisconsin. I knew my game upon arrival, but I also knew that this experience would be very good for me. I knew I would learn a lot, have a bunch of people who would care about me, and maybe make some friends along the way. These collegiate vibes made sense, I would soon learn, because like many things in golf, a gear trip can feel a lot like college. There are entry-level classes, required courses for a major, and 700-level stuff like Spin Loft waiting to trip you up.
You can be lazy about it and not care, opting for the bliss of ignorance. Someone else can i pay for your equipment, as much as many parents pay for their children’s education. You can declare your intentions to a major company just as you can declare your commitment to a manufacturer. Maybe your friend declared the same way, and you want to be like them. This can be a costly decision when you suddenly change things years later.
Of course, another option is … tilting until the end in a device education, taking the opportunity and coming out the other side feeling like a graduate. (Knowing, of course, that there’s always a deeper version of grad school golf if you want to stick around.) These things are expensive, too! Like the top ed. You want to get it right. That’s why I was there. I wanted to get it right.
To continue this analogy, let’s say I abandoned my hardware education years ago. Cobra gave me a great opportunity in 2016, asking me to look for whatever set of sticks I wanted. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, so I looked for a set of forged blades—the ones Rickie Fowler used to win the 2015 Players Championship—and said to myself, You will learn how to hit them.
;)
Does the look of clubs really matter? This 7-handicap thinks so | Fully eligible 2026
Sean Zak
This sent me down a bad path, partly because I He did learn My ball striking improved just from simple practice, and along with it my handicap improved. But was I ever meant to play those blades? I ditched the Cobras for a set of unforgiving Mizunos a few years later, obsessed with their looks, and then sported a set of the title blades.
Maybe it was never meant to be. Between my action, my commitment to the game and my age, it’s become clear that playing a butter knife set of irons – in addition to boosting my ego – led to extreme gap and mismatch issues towards the bottom of the bag. And what my trip to California proved, day after day, was that there is a promised land somewhere outside of Bladesville.
TDay 1 was in the Kingdom of TaylorMade, where the difference between P770, PTW, P790 and P7CB it finally registered for me – much more than the letters and numbers in those names ever did before. My TaylorMade fitter tried to fit me into Project X 6.5 (extra stiff) and 6.0 (stiff) shafts to match my average Tour swing speed.
“Why are you shaking a telephone pole?” he asked. My eyes wide open, my mind racing, I hoped he was joking. “That’s what Rory McIlroy uses,” he continued, laughing. “You don’t swing like Rory McIlroy.”
And he was right. But as the build went on, I warmed up and got comfortable with those 6.5 stiffness shafts because, well, I’d made a swing to match them over the years, and that swing wasn’t producing terrible the results. So we actually stuck with them.
;)
Adam Christensen/GOLF
A day later, at Titleist, we learned even more. The players I arrived with were the Titleist T100s, designed for the very consistent ball striker who has no problem hitting the highs of the trajectory consistently. I can get a nice, high flight with everything from a 7-iron to a pitching wedge, which made those clubs a good fit. But it was the 4i, 5i and 6i that were always a bit unstable. Any of my heel or toe kicks always failed to fly the distance I needed them to, and often rolled much further. But as we worked through the various iron heads, we found something:
The T150 and their extra forgiveness outside the sweet spot – right inside OWN Typical impact area – had a much narrower spread and distance. Simply put, they were predictable. And when it came to getting those long irons off the ground, a higher-launching T250 5-iron would hit that 80-foot maximum height much more often.
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By the third day, at Cobra, the knowledge of three montages in a row was washing over me like the second semester of a foreign language. Was I completely fluent? Not enough. But I could understand what the others in the class were saying. I knew what it meant when my fitters kept adjusting my irons two degrees straight and I could really start to communicate what I was feeling. After a while, it wasn’t so scary to speak up in class. It helped that my colleagues—many of whom could qualify as teaching assistants—stepped in and interrupted my devices, prodding the teachers for more information specific to me. (This may not help you, the home amateur, who is likely to go through the equipment alone. But it’s a reminder to study some club terminology before diving into a hitting bay.)
