True Spec Golf fitting report

Chef23 · October 3, 2019

I saw on Facebook recently that True Spec Golf was doing free fittings. There is a studio about 25 minutes from my house so I called and scheduled an appointment. I just came back from my fitting at True Spec. It was a great experience and just because it was free I didn’t feel that they shorted the time spent with me or tried to push any equipment on me. It was a good news bad news fitting, the good news was that most of my clubs fit me very well. The bad news was that I didn’t find any magic distance which I was hoping we might be able to squeeze out of the driver in particular. With my swingspeed that wasn’t shocking.

We started by getting a baseline on two different sets of irons I own my Ping i200 with Steelfiber I-95 stiff and Srixon 545 with Recoil 95 F3. The fitter (Neil) checked flex, lie angle and loft on my 6i which we used for the fitting. The first shocker was that my Pings are marked with white dots (I bought them used at Joe & Leigh’s) and it turns out rather than being 3* upright they are 2* flat. Neil checked 3 or 4 irons to make sure it was consistent. That would explain why I tended to pull the Srixons and hit the Pings straight.

My swing speed with both clubs is right around 82.5 mph with a standard of deviation of 1.5mph. I don’t think I saw anything over 84 mph and I didn’t see anything under 82 mph. I am not fast but I am consistent.

The first step was to find a shaft that worked. I hit 6-8 different shafts all in the Srixon 585 head which the fitter selected because I liked the look of it and if we found a shaft that was a big improvement we could reshaft my 545s. The shafts were all between 70 and 97 grams and a mixture of graphite and steel. The fitter believed that if in 2 or 3 swings I wasn’t hitting good shots we would move on. This proved very accurate for me. Some shafts I just hit well and squared them up on the clubface some shafts just didn’t work. The best fitting shaft turned out to be the Nippon 850 GH a steel shaft which was probably the least expensive thing I hit.

The next step was to try some different club heads. I tried the Mizuno HMB, TM P790, Callaway Apex, Titleist T100 and Ping i210 in addition to the Srixon. The only things I didn’t think about that I would have liked to try were the new Callaway Epic iron head and the Ping i500. The net of everything though was that I didn’t hit anything enough better than my i200s to justify a change. The Apex and the 790 were interesting and I hit went back and hit those a few times but they weren’t consistently longer enough to justify the spend. Which was exactly what the fitter said. I couldn’t justify spending more for a couple of more yards.

Next step was driver. I had two drivers with me the 13.5* Rogue with a Fuji shaft and a 10.5* Rogue with a PX Evenflow Blue. First he checked the frequency on both shafts (which are regular flex) and the Fuji was much softer than the PX. After baselining the drivers we decided the 10.5* was a better fit and we used that as a baseline. My carry with the 10.5 was 214 yards with total distance of around 230. The launch angle was fine but the spin was too high. The objective was to maintain or slightly increase the launch angle and bring the spin down.

First we tried a Ventus shaft in my driver. This resulted in about the same results. This would be a common theme throughout the driver fitting. The best fitting shaft seemed to be an Oban Hashimoto shaft surprisingly in stiff flex. I would have thought regular in everything. The Accra TZ5 was a pretty good fit also but nothing got me over 220 yards in carry consistently which the fitter and I agreed would be what it would take to consider the spend. The fitter was thinking 225 would be worth the spend. I tried Taylor Made M5 and M6, a couple of different Ping heads, Epic and Epic Flash. None of them provided the boost that would drive a spend. The 9* M6 and 9* Ping 410 LST had the best results. I also tried Epic Flash SubZero and Titleist TS2.

The one thing we did do for my driver is change the settings from 10.5 standard to 9.5* draw setting. Doing that brought the spin down and the launch angle was still in the right window. We did this toward the end of the fitting and the fitter thought that if I was a bit fresher I would be getting close to 220 yards of carry out of that setup based on the spin and launch numbers. Ball speed was done a bit from when I started due to being 100 swings deep.

Next up 3 wood. This was the one area that I saw an immediate improvement. The first 3 wood he put in my hands was a TM M6 15* with an Oban Isawa Red 75 in the 4 flex. This was an immediate winner in my hands. It was 13 yards longer in carry (195 yards) than I was getting in my Epic and much easier to hit. Every swing seemed to be good with that club and at this point I was struggling a little with my 3 wood.

We looked at my Heavenwood and Srixon U85 4 next and decided the gaps were good and weren’t necessarily worth upgrading. I may be looking for a M6 19* though as I loved the 3 wood.

Final step was to check my wedges and distances. I have a 45* PW in the set, 50* Glide, 54* Cally PM and 58* Cally PM. I was basically 112, 100, 88, 78. About what I expected.

The fitter did take a look at my putter setup. He was a little leery to do that and asked if I liked the way it rolled the ball and how I felt over a 10 foot putt. He said he had messed up some people that started tweaking putters because while the setup was wrong their strokes compensated for it. Basically we confirmed the lie was good and I could get aimed accurately with it.

It was a lot of fun and if you have never done it before I would recommend it. The fitter said that True Spec does not have the fitters on commission and there was absolutely no pressure on me to buy anything. The fitter was actually trying to optimize what I had and wasn’t pushing me into anything new. I am definitely more focused on accuracy. I would love to find more distance but I am sure I am going to have to earn that in the gym. Unfortunately there was no free distance for me in the fitting.

My fitter was a Class A PGA pro. I am not sure if that is the case everywhere. He was very knowledgeable on the swing, asked me what I hoped to do from the fitting and was realistic about what the upsides were.

My basic swingspeeds were 82.5 for the 6 iron and 93 mph for the driver. This is about 10 full mph below where I was 5 years ago due to a lengthy illness that cost me muscle tone and flexibility. Hopefully I can find a way to get half of that back over the winter. I took over 120 swings and I was getting a little tired at the end.

I would recommend going to True Spec. I have never been to Cool Clubs or any of the other high end fitters. Once a year or every other year I would invest $375 in it. I did order the 3 wood. It wasn’t cheap but given that the fitting was free I didn’t feel bad about it. They will reshaft if you have stuff already.

Unfortunately the 3 wood won’t be here next week because I have 4 rounds of next week for work (I know tough duty) and would love to have it for the trip.

If someone has a way to load documents online and link to them I have tons of data that people can see if interested.