A full bag fitting with TaylorMade is the stuff of dreams, and that dream came true for me when I was invited down to the brand’s Performance Lab at The Belfry. As an experienced golfer with an 8 handicap index, I’ve always had a rough idea about my game and, as a result, the equipment I should use. But with an open mind and in the capable hands of TaylorMade’s Experiential Manager, Dan Morris, I was ready to find out exactly what clubs (and ball) I should be using and how much a full fitting could truly improve my performance.
(Image credit: Tom Miles)
Working from driver down to putter, there was plenty to cover, and throughout the bag there were some really big surprises. Here are the six things that surprised me the most during my full bag fitting with TaylorMade.
WATCH: See what happens during a full bag fitting for TaylorMade clubs
1. More loft can mean more distance
I’ve always associated strong lofts with greater distance, but how wrong I was. After hitting only a few shots under the microscope, it quickly became apparent that I do not deliver the club with much loft at all. This applied to my woods and irons, and as a result I was losing out on serious distance with the driver and also the ability to hold greens with the irons.
As a relatively young and athletic golfer, I had always been under the impression that I needed a driver with 9-10 degrees of loft. However, while this was more of an ego assumption than one based on data, I was only fooling myself. With Dan’s help I moved into a TaylorMade Qi35 driver with 12 degrees of loft. Typically, I would have thought this would result in a ball that spun to the moon. However, after only a few shots, my spin rate not only went down, but my ball flight was higher, and as a result, my carry and total distances were dramatically improved.
TaylorMade’s Qi35 fitting driver head allows golfers to get better results from their fitting more easily
(Image credit: TaylorMade)
The Qi35 driver combined with a Fujikura Ventus Red 6S shaft provided the ideal blend of distance, spin, and trajectory, far exceeding what I was able to achieve with my current gamer. I will discuss fairway woods in more detail later, but it was much the same story, and in my irons, I saw a huge improvement in performance.
I was fitted into TaylorMade’s P770 irons from 7-PW. The P770s came out at three degrees weaker than my current gamers. Hearing this, my heart sank slightly as I believed I was going to be missing out on plenty of…
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