We stress it all the time. “Don’t just buy something off the rack, go and take the time to get custom fit for your golf equipment.”

Who better to pose this scenario to than some of the leaders in the industry.  At the 2017 PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, we did just that with company executives such as David Abeles (TaylorMade), Chip Brewer (Callaway), John K. Solheim (Ping), Mike Powell (Srixon/Cleveland/XXIO) and Steve Pelisek (Titleist).

Take a few minutes and listen to what they had to say on this topic.  Then take a few minutes and head to your local Worldwide Golf Shops retail location and heed their advice.

Tom Brassell: With all the technology now David, in the clubs, talk about the importance of being custom fit for clubs.

David Abeles (TaylorMade):Yes I think it’s critically important and I’m not so sure anyone does it better than your team at Worldwide Golf. While we believe that our advanced technology in static form, meaning if you weren’t fit, is certainly going to help somebody perform better. When you optimize performance in a product you’re going to get that much more distance and when you think about really the population of golfers and how many golfers have not gone through an appropriate fitting, that creates challenges in terms of advancing their performance. We believe in it implicitly. In fact, we believe in it so much that we bring it into our golf equipment. M1 is a perfect example, where there’s more personalization in that product than ever before. More so now in 2017. You can adjust the face angle, which adjusts the loft of the product. You can adjust the right/left trajectories of the product by moving the sliding track and now with an extended track in the back, better than the original M1, you can adjust spin by another 300 rpm. When you get optimized personally or custom fit into that driver, we will find you 15 to 20 yards.

Steve Pelisek (Titleist): The one thing I would add is please, it’s a $500 driver, get fit for it. Just take a minute. Go see somebody you trust, who knows what they’re doing. We go to great lengths to make sure that we have a network of fitters around the country who have good knowledge, they have good tools, use them. Because there’s a huge difference between off the rack and customized for what you need. That’s why all that adjustability is there. Take advantage of it. The difference between 917 being a really good driver and being a great driver for you, is you working with a good fitter who can tweak it and really extract every ounce of its potential out of it for you.

John K. Solheim (Ping): All the technology I’ve just talked about, you know, in our drivers, in our irons. If you don’t take the time to get fit, you’re really not taking advantage. I would say our clubs work really good right out of the box or whatever, but if you go in and get the loft right, the shaft right on your driver, that’s when you see 20 yards gained. If you get the line angle right on your irons, get the shaft right, that’s when you see more greens and scores going down. A fitting to me is still the best technology out there in golf.

Mike Powell (Srixon/Cleveland/XXIO): Yes I think, at the end of the day you wouldn’t go to buy a pair of shoes without trying them on and getting fitted. I mean you’ve got to get a product that fits you and that suits your game. Everybody has a different build, a different height, a different ability, a different type of swing action so I think it’s super important to get … to make sure that you’ve got clubs that suit you and give you the best chance of playing.

Jim Grundberg (SeeMore):  The importance of being fit, I mean, the cool thing is, is that golfers for quite some time now have known that they can go into one of your stores and get fit for a driver. They can get fit for a set of irons. They wouldn’t think of anything other than that. Putting is sort of the last frontier. You know, up until this point, a lot of golfers still think that you just go and grab a putter and putt around with it. Of course that’s one way to buy a putter, but it sure is great if you can go in and find somebody that’s been trained in the art of fitting. The science and the art combined and that’s what we do at Seemore. We go out and if you go into a shop, you can rest assured that we have already been training that group of people so that if somebody wants to go over to the putting area and say, “Hey, do you have a Seemore putter I can try and get fit for?” Ask for a fitter. We’ve got them certified in your store.

Chip Brewer (Callaway): The technology today is really optimized and it’s made to be custom fit. You know, from shaft, to line angle, to grip, to loft. You really need to visit a fitter to unlock the potential. You know, we’ve done so many great things in golf clubs over the last several years and we’re investing 33 million dollars a year to make them better and better. You can’t take advantage of that without visiting your local fitter and getting properly custom fit for the golf club.