Custom Fit Golf Clubs Vs Off-the-Shelf: What’s the Difference

We take time and care when buying certain items to ensure we get what’s right for us.

When you buy a car, you don’t walk into the showroom, have a quick look around, then choose the one you like the colour of the most.

You take your time; consider what you need, how you will use the car, how much practicality you require, and if the budget allows, how many extras you can add to enhance the car to your liking.

Likewise, when it comes to clothing, you don’t walk into a shop and just pick up and buy the first thing you see. What purpose does the item of clothing you’re looking to buy serve? Does it have a practical purpose, or is it for a special occasion?

We then have to make sure we are buying the item of clothing in the right size for us.

When it comes to golf clubs, many of us adopt a very different approach and opt for something we like the look and feel of straight from the shelf.

However, we are doing ourselves an injustice, hampering our chances of improving as golfers.

This article focuses on uncovering the differences between off-the-shelf golf clubs and the alternative, custom-fitted golf clubs.

To do the topic justice, we’ll help you understand:

• What Are Off-the-Shelf Clubs?
• How Are Custom-Fitted Golf Clubs Different?
• Which Option Should You Choose?

What Are Off-the-Shelf Clubs?

When you walk into any golf retailer and are confronted with rows of gleaming new clubs from driver to wedges, you are looking at off-the-shelf golf clubs.

These clubs are mass-produced and designed to sell in high volumes to golfers hungry for the latest and greatest.

Off-the-shelf clubs will still feature each manufacturer’s latest technology. Fundamentally, TaylorMade’s Qi10 Max driver, which you can purchase at your local retailer, still has the same carbon fibre technology in the crown, sole, and face as the fully customised equivalent.

A set of PXG’s Sugar Daddy 3 wedges will still feel as buttery-soft as the designers intended, whether you opt for the retail or customised version.

Off-the-shelf clubs can be marginally cheaper than a custom-fitted set of clubs, and you do get some variety in your purchasing options.

For example, if you are interested in buying one of the new Titleist GT drivers, you’re likely to see different loft options available and a range of shafts for each head, so it’s easy to argue that you don’t need custom-fitted golf clubs when manufacturers are already providing options for golfers to choose.

The retailer also might have facilities where you can hit a test club before you make any decisions. If you purchase online, you obviously don’t get this option. Still, the online retailer might offer some form of return policy or sweeten the deal further with additional offers for golf balls or gloves, depending on how much you’ve spent.

This all sounds convincing so far.

However, here’s the kicker:

• We don’t all play golf the same way.
• We don’t all have the same athletic capabilities.
• We don’t all come in the same shapes and sizes.

This is the fundamental flaw of off-the-shelf clubs: what you see and can buy are designed to appeal to the broadest spectrum of players.

If you are serious about playing the best golf possible, there is really only one option for your golf clubs: custom fitting.

How Are Custom-Fitted Golf Clubs Different?

For some golfers, custom fitting is only suitable for professional golfers and the best amateurs.

Certainly, what we know of the modern concept of custom fitting originated with manufacturers working more closely with professionals to create golf clubs that would suit the professionals’ demands.

However, custom-fitting is available for every level of golfer.

Custom fitting is effective for every type of golfer because it follows the basic principle that we are all different and, therefore, have different needs for our equipment.

Let’s give you an example. For many years, it seemed like the most common setup for golfers was a driver with 9.5 degrees loft and some form of stiff shaft, and iron sets invariably included a three or four-iron.

Delving deeper into this standard setup, the 9.5 degree stiff shafted driver might work if you generate sufficient clubhead speed. But what happens if you don’t?

The problems you could face with the 9.5 degree stiff shafted driver if you didn’t have sufficient clubhead speed would be an inability to create the correct launch and spin conditions to get the ball airborne, so you were harming your chances of generating reasonable carry distances.

The stiffness of the shaft might make squaring the clubface difficult, leading to inaccurate drives.

Consistently seeing drives that don’t have sufficient carry and potentially being wildly inaccurate leads to a loss of confidence that affects how you play the game.

Something similar happens with a golf iron set, especially with the three and four golf irons.

These long irons are notoriously difficult to hit, with all but the best ball strikers getting some benefit from using them. However, for many golfers, the problems with long irons were similar to those with the golf driver. A lack of clubhead speed would make it difficult to get the ball airborne sufficiently, and the longer shafts would make these irons difficult to control.

An added issue with long irons was their intimidating features at address, which made many golfers lose confidence in their ability to hit a good shot before they took the club back.

Two critical factors have helped to ensure that custom fitting can help every type of golfer:

• Advances in Golf Club Design
• The Growth of Launch Monitors

Advances in Golf Club Design

Golf clubs are more user-friendly than ever before. Key technologies, such as advancements in the use of materials such as titanium and carbon fibre, now mean we have drivers that look much more friendly behind the ball.

Carbon fibre is exceptionally lightweight and strong, meaning engineers can reposition the saved weight in ways that can make drivers much more stable.

Manufacturers can also create definitive driver lineups, such as low spin models for players with fast swing speeds, standard drivers for the majority of golfers, and high MOI drivers that help golfers achieve more accuracy and distance.

Clever design philosophies mean that faces are more forgiving on off-centre hits in drivers, fairway woods, hybrids, and irons. If we experience heel or toe strikes, ball speed and accuracy will not be adversely affected.

Long irons are a thing of the past since the proliferation of higher lofted fairway woods and hybrids, which are much easier to hit and help get the ball airborne more effectively.

Shaft technology and design have also vastly improved over the years. Golf Shaft Manufacturers can now create specific shaft profiles that can help add or reduce spin, be highly stable to help improve ball striking and shot accuracy, along with helping to add more clubhead speed for improved distance.

The Growth of Launch Monitors

Sophisticated launch monitors such as GC Quad capture the moment of impact in minute detail and provide information such as:

• Launch angles
• Spin rates
• Carry distances
• Side spin
• Shot dispersion

Launch monitors also give us highly accurate data on clubhead speed, angle of the clubhead and clubface path into impact.

This now means we have the most detailed picture of the most important moment in the golf swing and can use the data to seek improvement.

Club fitting is the process of analysing the data captured for every type of golfer, starting with their existing clubs, to establish a benchmark.

An experienced fitter can then pinpoint the areas where improvements can be made and share these with the golfer.

The fitter can then build clubs by selecting head and shaft combinations and measuring improvements based on the data captured on the launch monitor.

Let’s put all this into a real-life scenario.

A sixteen-handicap golfer comes for a driver fitting. Their existing driver has a 9.5 degree loft and a stiff shaft fitted as standard.

On seeing a selection of shots, it is determined that the golfer isn’t generating enough clubhead speed, which means the ball is launching with too little spin and a “nose-diving” ball flight where the ball doesn’t carry far.

The fitter decides that the golfer would be better suited with more loft, which helps generate more spin and better launch angles.

The fitter also notices that shot dispersion is not good with the golfer’s existing driver and opts to put the golfer into a lighter, softer shaft.

The combination of more loft and a shaft more suited to the golfer's swing means the golfer is now hitting drives that carry longer and fly straighter.

What the golfer experiences out on the golf course when they pull their new driver out is more confidence in the improved performance they have gained due to going for a fitting.

During a fitting, a lot of time is spent finding the correct head and shaft combination, which can improve distance and accuracy.

However, there is more to custom fitting.

Playing golf clubs that are the correct length and lie is incredibly important.

We are not all the same height, making it even more incredulous to think you could play effectively with off-the-shelf clubs, which are all cut to a standard length.

If a golf club is too long or too short, we have to compensate, starting with our setup. Compromising our setup for an ill-fitting club leads to compensations in our swing, drastically altering the effectiveness of our shots.

Custom-fitted golf clubs are cut to the exact length for your height, meaning no more compromises to our setup and swing.

The same goes for the lie angle of golf clubs. Too upright lie angles mean we have to hold the club much higher at address than is comfortable to ensure the sole of the club lies flat on the ground.

The opposite is true of clubs that are too flat. We have to lower our hands at address to achieve the same result of the sole of the club lying flat on the ground.

Manipulating the club in this fashion leads to inconsistencies in ball striking as the toe or heel of the club is more likely to dig into the ground at impact, which also affects direction.

A fitter will also take time to ensure that they capture the correct lie angle needed in your custom clubs, which they will incorporate into their build.

The obvious advantage of custom-fitted golf clubs is improvement in distance and accuracy. However, the confidence that custom-fitted golf clubs can give you out on the course is equally important. Improved distance and accuracy can help you take on shots you weren’t previously able to do, but knowing how your clubs can perform if you slightly mishit them is also important to saving shots out on the course.

A further advantage of custom fitting is the ability to build consistent distance gapping between your clubs from the driver down to the lob wedge.

Knowing how far each club goes and having consistent gapping eliminates the unknown result of trying to force a shorter club to cover a distance or taking the longer club and making a less committed swing, as you instinctively know you have too much club in your hand for the required shot.

Either option results in a compromised shot, which can cost you a good score when you are playing.

Which Option Should You Choose?

Custom fitting ensures every golf club in your bag is fitted specifically for your needs. The custom-fitting experience gives you access to an experienced fitter who can help you understand more about how your game works and why the clubs you currently use might do you a disservice.

You can see the improvement and provide feedback during the fitting of what you like and don’t like.

The fitter can build contingency into the recommendation even if you are working on your game. You also have the option to go back to the fitter at any time and have your clubs altered if you see a drastic improvement in your game.

Think of a club fitter almost like a good reliable garage and mechanic that you find to look after your car. Your data is stored from your custom-fitting session and acts as a handy point of reference to measure the improvements in your game in the same way a mechanic gets to know your car over time.

Custom fitting is more expensive than buying clubs off the shelf. However, would you want to take a gamble spending upwards of £500 ($650) on a new driver to find that you don’t gain any more distance or accuracy - there is a cottage industry of businesses selling second-hand golf clubs that were once seen as the answer to an improved golf game.

If you are on a really tight budget or you currently find yourself dabbling with the idea of playing golf and playing infrequently, it might be too early to consider looking at getting custom-fitted golf clubs.

There is nothing wrong with stopping off at your local retailer to look at all the latest golf equipment to get a feel for what you like but bear in mind that what looks good doesn’t always perform well.

It’s healthy that there is a debate between the merits of custom-fitted golf clubs and off-the-shelf alternatives.

As golfers, we have been programmed for many years that going to our favourite golf retailer, looking at the latest releases, carrying out the “waggle test”, and maybe getting to hit a few shots with the face taped up can give us all the information we need to make a purchase.

However, there is a wide range of specialised independent club fitters, such as Nine By Nine Golf, who work with all levels of players and are completely independent in the range of components we carry.

Our objective is to ensure that any golfer who comes to us gets the most out of spending time with one of our experienced fitters and walks away fully understanding that the decision they have made on the golf clubs they are based on the quality of information they have gained during the fitting session.

You can book a golf club fitting session via the Nine By Nine Golf website, where you can also view our full range of customisable golf clubs, golf shafts, and golf grips.

If you know exactly what you’re after, you can build your club or clubs to your exact specifications and place your order on our website. Our team will build your golf clubs in-house.

We’d also be happy to help if you have any questions about the custom-fitting process and whether it could benefit your golf game.