So yesterday my buddy went to Titleist headquarters in Acushnet, MA to get fit. They told him he could bring someone with him if he wanted, so I tagged along for the 4 hour experience.
Driving into Manchester Lane is pretty wild. It's just a side street like any other line with your typical blue collar houses before the road ends and you end up at a security shack. Once you drive through, to your right there is a 270 yard par 4 and a 10,000 square foot green that they use to test out their golf balls. Beyond the green there is another long fairway. In the back of the property there is a 120 yd long fairway that leads to a green with a few different kinds of bunkers. This is the vokey wedge testing area.
We went in and had a tour of the facility. The offices, players lounge, incubators for golf balls, robots that hit the balls, etc... Obviously everything is second to none in quality. They gave us both Team Titleist hats and joked that we couldn't wear our nike ones out on the range.
The club fitting was not unlike any other I've seen done, except this one used Trackman and obviously had every combination of club head and shaft in the Titleist universe.
My buddy, Christian, is a good player. A 4 handicap who gets worse as the club gets shorter in his hands. His fitter was Chris O'Rourke. He was a club pro at a few different clubs before settling in at a club in Dallas for a few years before Titleist offered him his dream job.
The driving range tee is 13,000 sq ft and there are a few different targets to line up to. On the range there are mini golf bags of Pro V1s and Pro V1x. Christian plays the Pro V1.
My buddy is a high ball hitter who can draw and fade it, so Chris had him warm up with his current set to use as a baseline number. To end the warm up, Christian hit a bunch of 7 irons and a few drivers.
Christian's current set up with irons are Ping i200's that are a half inch over stock and standard loft with a modus stiff shaft in them (the exact shaft name escapes me). He was fitted into them a few years ago. So right away Chris says that we have to lower the spin rate coming off of his 7 iron. His 7 iron spin RPM was around 8400. He was carrying it around 160 which was a little short for him yesterday (though it was chilly out). Chris told us that a quick and dirty way of measuring spin rate with irons should be for every iron multiply by 1000 for ideal spin rate. So for Christian's 7 iron his spin rate should be around 7000 RPM. The first thing he wanted to try was getting Christian into standard length irons, as he felt he didn't need the extra half inch and thought it was causing him to dig a little too much and spin the ball. Christian tried 4 or 5 different shafts before Chris put him back in the 1/2" over because, frankly, he was hitting the irons like shit.
Christian tried a bunch of shaft/iron combos and the 2 combinations that worked the best were the KBS S-Tapered 6.5 flex shaft with the T100 and T200 heads. The T100 head Christian was carrying about 165 but still had the 8400 RPM spin. The T200 he was carrying about 170 with 7400 RPM spin, but he didn't like the look of the head. Because he was hitting both straight, Chris said he could go with either, and for every degree of loft that is on a club, you add 500 RPM of spin. So Christian settled with the T100 with the KBS Shafts with 2 degrees of loft taking off. So 7 iron was going 175 carry or so with around 7400 RPM of spin when all said and done.
Next he moved on to the driver. Christian currently has the 917 D2 at 10.5 degree. I forget the shaft he has in it. I said it at the beginning of this post, but his best club is his driver. He hits it long and straight. Carries it about 270 or so. IF there is a criticism about the way he hits it, its that sometimes he hits it too high and I feel it lands too soft.
I forget all of the shafts and combos that he hit, but I do remember that the baseline of his ball speed was about 154 and his carry distance yesterday was about 265. The driver head and shaft combo that he hit the best was the TS3 8.5 degree with the Hazardous Smoke 6.5 shaft. Ball speed got up to 160 and he was carrying it 280. The ball flight was a lot lower and definitely more penetrating in the air.
He was actually fitted into the same shaft in the ts3 3-wood (13.5 degree) and hybrid (18 degree) and carried them 260 and 235 yards.
For wedges, I forget the grind but he was given a 50, 54, and 58 degree to help with gapping the distances. The grinds were put to the test at the short game area hitting a bunch of different shots and scenarios.
At the end we were both given Team Titleist T shirts. Christian also got a gift bag with a dozen Pro V1's, a ball marker, and a divot repair tool.
The cost is steep. It's $600. If you figured the swag that they give you is about $100, you're paying $500 for the fitting with no discounts on clubs. After seeing it done I would definitely do it once as a bucket list item, but then again I am a titleist fan boy. I'm not sure if its worth it for others.