Who did we create our online shaft fitting service for? The short answer: anyone! The longer, more nuanced answer: all golfers who do not have easy access to a reputable fitting center that they can go to for an in-person fitting experience.
Garage Golf MN was founded by a couple of golf enthusiasts turned Master Club Fitters & Builders. Our roots can be found in humble, rural, outstate communities spread across Minnesota. Although our formative years were spent with ample access to golf, the nearest custom club fitting & building resources were hundreds of miles away. It’s rural golfers such as these that we believe stand to benefit the most from an online shaft fitting. Golfer’s whose access to equipment is otherwise limited by whatever they can find off the rack at local big box and/or pro shops or what they can procure online without any sort of professional guidance.
We’ll be the first to say it, we’d much prefer to service every single one of our clients via an in-person fitting experience. We believe this is where our bespoke, high-touch, personalized fitting experience truly shines. But we also recognize that isn’t possible or economical for a large number of golfers. In these instances, we believe the combination of our shaft matching algorithm powered by our database of prior fittings coupled with one-on-one access to, and direct communication with one of our Master Fitters and their hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in the fitting bay is a valuable substitute. Golf is expensive! We want all our clients to be able to buy with confidence having gone through a fitting with us (whether in-person or via our online shaft fitting).
Furthermore, we believe retrofitting a golf club with a new shaft presents a number of potential benefits. Firstly, it’s an opportunity to optimize the performance of a club (i.e., straighter, longer, more consistent, etc.). Secondly, it’s also potentially one of the most economically valuable equipment fittings a golfer can undergo (right alongside ball fittings & loft/lie/gapping sessions).
Bold statement. But here’s why.
The good folks over at MyGolfSpy release virtually the same article every year: “SHOULD I REPLACE MY DRIVER WITH A NEW DRIVER THIS YEAR?” Their answer is always: “it depends.” Followed by, how long has it been since your last upgrade & has your swing changed in a meaningful way since then? According to their research, average golfers change out their driver every four to five years, with avid golfers upgrading slightly more regularly. Based on their yearly driving tests they’ve concluded that because of the restrictions placed on club manufacturers by golf’s governing bodies (e.g., max head size, max CT, etc.), true technology driven performance gains tend to be incremental (and often small) year to year. A three to five year repurchase cycle tends to roughly align with how often an average golfer may actually be able to notice a cumulative, measurable, technology-driven performance bump.
So before someone goes out and drops another upwards of $600 on a new driver with yet another stock shaft that may or may not fit them and their swing, you should seriously consider working with a fitter to retro-fit your existing club(s). Ultra premium shafts such as Fujikura’s Ventus Velocore line, Mitsubishi’s Diamana line, Graphite Design’s entire Tour-AD catalog, and Accra’s TZ lines are all relative bargains at $300-$400 compared to a new off the rack driver. Plus, when combined with optimizing your club’s adjustable weight configuration and/or hosel adapter settings, the aggregate opportunity for performance improvement will typically surpass (oftentimes dramatically) that of another ill-fit new club purchase.
The last piece of the puzzle with respect to the all-in economic value a club retrofitting is attributed to a given shaft’s reusability and/or its value retention. What do we mean? Well, thanks to those same adjustable hosel adapters, investing into a well-fit shaft can be future proof. For example, John Rahm has been playing the same Aldila Tour Green shaft the entirety of his professional career. Tiger Woods, Brooks Koepka, Collin Morikowa, and others have each played the same Mitsubishi Diamana D+ shaft for years. So long as you stick with one OEM, the adjustable hosel adapter rarely changes year-to-year making a shaft backward and forward compatible. Swapping one OEM’s adapter for another’s is also a simple task for any quality club builder. Even if you undertake a substantive swing change that causes a given shaft to no longer be a good fit, that same backward & forward compatibility helps a shaft hold onto its aftermarket resale value, thereby offsetting the cost of a future equipment purchase.
In closing, if you’re someone who’s never been through a custom club fitting, we highly encourage you to do so. If you haven’t you don’t know what your golf game has been missing out on in terms of performance upside. Your equipment should be working for you and your swing, not against you.
If you’re local to the Twin Cities and want to schedule an in-person fitting, shoot us an email at Fitting@GarageGolfMN.com. We have a few open fitting times left this year. If you’re not local and don’t have access to a reputable custom club fitter & builder our Master Fitters would love to work with you remotely via our online shaft fitting service.