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Q&A WITH MATT FLENNIKEN
What's all this we keep hearing about
"club-fitting"? What's a lie angle, and what's it have to do with my
slice? To find out, we sat down Matt Flenniken Director of
Instruction and Club-fitting at Los Lagos GC in San Jose,
California. A Class A PGA professional and the first PGA of America
member to incorporate dynamic club-fitting into golf instruction
programs nationwide, Matt has been voted by the PGA as Club Fitter
of the Year three times in three decades. Flenniken is also the #1
ranked Henry-Griffitts fitter worldwide and has the distinction of
also having given 45,000 lessons. He was around 21 years ago when HG
(www.Henry-Griffitts.com) invented the concept of fitting clubs to
individual golfers, then custom manufacturing those clubs. While
major equipment manufacturers like Titleist, Ping, Nike and
Taylor-Made offer limited fitting options on certain clubs,
Henry-Griffitts won't even sell you its irons, woods or putters
until you've been put through the paces by an HG-Certified Teacher,
like Flenniken.
Q: How do you define club-fitting? MF: I define club-fitting as the art and science of matching the specifications of equipment to individuals. Q: Art and science? What do you mean by that? MF: Simply put, the "science" is the mathematical and physical determination of the best set of circumstances with regard to a club's lie angle, shaft type, club-head center of gravity, and so forth. It's the testing of these different components to see which specific lie angle, which specific off-set best suits the individual player. It's the matching of these club components - and there are 14 of them we monitor at Henry-Griffitts - to the individual motion, which only HG Certified Teachers are capable of because only the HG system offers this sort of component interchangability. A fitting session determines the optimum specifications for each club in your bag, which Henry-Griffitts then custom-builds for the player according to these various specifications. Q: How long does all that take? MF: A fitting session can take one-two hours; it's equal parts lesson and fitting. Once you've been fit, your clubs are usually delivered in 2 weeks. Q: Okay. What about the "art"? MF: By "art" I mean the analysis of the motion. Building these clubs from the ground up is somewhat intuitive and deals with things like "feel" and fine-tuning the loft on a driver or wedge, for example. Things like a player's injuries or physical limitations, their tendencies or desires, also make fitting an art. The science part of club-fitting can be very complex when you consider the issues of frequency matching, shaft puring, moments of inertia, lie angle progression, etc. A club-fitter needs to be reasonably well educated in these scientific measurements to do a good job, yet the art aspect of fitting comes from years of seasoning and practicing the craft with care. Q: What is the 'lie angle' of a golf club? MF: The lie angle is the angle between the club shaft and the bottom of the club-head. Having the lie set properly allows the face plane to work for you, not against you. Having proper lie angles on a set of clubs is essential in order to maximize that golfer's consistency and confidence. Because of the relationship between loft and lie, if you have a lie problem you essentially have nine lie angle problems - and the golfer would have to compensate for each club a bit differently. Q: Who benefits from fitted clubs? Beginners and intermediate players, or only fine amateurs and professionals? MF: I'm not sure that's the right question. A better one might be, "Who benefits from fitted shoes or prescription glasses?" The answer is virtually everyone. More talented players could probably play a somewhat ill-fitted set and "make it work" through manipulation and compensation and reiteration. But the average player, the average athlete, doesn't do that so well. To play an ill-fit set of clubs that requires differing compensations and inhibits talent, makes the game harder than it already is. Q: Compensations? MF: Compensations and manipulations are what the body in motion must do to hit a ball straight to the target - if a golfer's clubs are somehow ill-fitting. Q: You're saying a player's motion is affected by the club? MF: Yes, absolutely. In golf, the idea that equipment affects motion, for good and ill, remains a radical concept - despite the fact that other sports accept it as common wisdom. It's a given, for example, that one will swing a 40-ounce, 40-inch baseball bat differently than a 32-ounce, 36-inch bat. The trick is finding the specifications that best complement one's swing, which is obviously affected by your height, weight and strength among other things. Tennis? We take it for granted that string tension and head size combine with player strength to affect the way one swings a racquet. Just as ill-fitting equipment makes it harder for golfers to make a strong, balanced swing motion, custom-fitted equipment makes that motion easier to achieve. The best golf teachers are professionals who check a student's equipment and also do fitting because they understand how equipment affects motion. As a teacher, I can instruct a player how to compensate or even to contort the body to make his or her clubs work, but this is a fairly ineffective method, fraught with inconsistency. I'd rather have a player learn with clubs that reward a strong, balanced motion at the target. Learning effectively rarely involves teaching someone with clubs that don't reward an effective motion. Proper club-fitting is a marriage of fitting and teaching. You can't work one without the other, in my opinion. If the premise is "equipment affects motion" (and I believe it does), then it follows that only a teacher knows best what motion you want to obtain - and what equipment will help make that motion happen. Q: Rewarding an effective motion. MF: Just as the poor specs of a club make a person resort to ineffective and inconsistent mechanics, properly fitted equipment promotes a good motion, good mechanics. Take ball flight, which is one of the unique things about Henry-Griffitts fitting. We only fit at the range where you can actually see full ball flight. If you hit a ball into a net 8 feet away, what's there to say? "Sure, that club fits you fine." But seriously, full ball flight is important for me and the student, because we can both see how the equipment affects the end result. When I put different clubs in a guy's hands, he can see the difference. If he normally hits it low, I can put a club in his hands which helps him hit it higher. I ask him if he likes that and he usually says, "Yeah!" Q: Is this 'compensation' thing the reason we see so many bizarre motions out there? MF: If you mean "Does the equipment make the motion look a certain way?" or "Why is a certain player hitting off the back foot with lots of hand motion and the next is dead handed and has no turn?" - Yes. Again, the equipment, in my view, contributes to a player's "style." The development of this style is often apparent when we look at the clubs junior golfers use. For example, flat swings often develop in juniors when they use adult clubs - longer, heavier, not fit for them. This is where we really start getting into the discussion of manipulations and what is necessary for the body and brain to do in order to hit a ball to a target. But I've always tried to deal with causations rather than symptoms whenever possible. If you fix the cause you can permanently "fix" - rather than dealing with symptoms where you build-in temporary Band-Aids. Q: Suppose I pull my short irons and slice my long irons. Could this be a club rather than motion issue? MF: It could, but let me describe why this is a possibility. Let's presume that the lie angle on your clubs at impact is too upright (or toe up) and this changes the face plane so the ball dispersion is going to go left of the intended target, for a right-handed golfer. Let's also have this background knowledge: that there is a relationship between loft and lie, in that with each different lofted club there is a somewhat different amount of effect on the distance the ball will be pulled off-line left - the more the loft, the more the potential pull left. Are you with me so far? Q: Yes. MF: Taking all this into account, you have to build into your motion a pretty nasty block move - to the right for a right-handed golfer - to hit that wedge straight. That same block move with a 3-iron will produce a slice. You actually do not have a lie-angle problem; you have 9 lie-angle problems in your bag. In other words, each club must be compensated for slightly differently and this also leads to inconsistency. Some days you may compensate better than others but the problem will not abate until the cause is repaired, which is the lie angle of the club, not your swing motion. After the lie is corrected the block move can go away, because all of the clubs should lie dynamically correct at impact. I bet your distance isn't what it could be, too. Just think about it: a block motion - underneath and dead hands - is a weak move and this also makes the ball travel somewhat high. Q: So the upright lie angles can make me compensate in several different ways? MF: Yes, an upright lie can and will produce compensating moves. But the golf swing has many component parts, and it's important that whoever is fitting you with clubs be able to separate those issues and examine them individually. Imagine if you tried to figure out why a car isn't starting. You change the spark plugs, replace the timing belt and install a new battery. If the car starts, which of these variables was at fault? You don't know, do you? Because you changed three of them at one time. If, however, you change one variable, let's say the spark plugs, and then test the car, you will know if the spark plugs were the cause. In a similar way, you can see the effect a single change in club specification can have on ball flight and swing motion - if you change one variable at a time, which is what the Henry-Griffitts Fitting Cart allows me to do. Q: What's so special about the Henry-Griffitts Fitting Cart? MF: Well, it's by far the most expansive in the industry. Imagine a cart with 50 different shafts, each with different characteristics, and 50 different club heads, each of which screw onto those varied shafts. The cart allows me to mix and match all these characteristics: lie angle, length of shaft, shaft flex, shaft deflection/bend point, club-head design, amount of club-head offset, loft of driver, steel vs. graphite shaft and club-head weight. There's over 4,500 possible combinations. By working with a student methodically, I can build the exact set he or she needs, right there on the practice tee. No other system comes close to doing that. Most club-fitting systems do not have the ability to test for all of these club characteristics one at a time. Many of the systems have 20-30 demo clubs of various lies, shafts, lengths and flexes. Each of these demo clubs, however, has a certain combination of specifications that cannot be altered. Don't get me wrong: Fitting with demo clubs is better than buying off the rack. I think, however, that most golfers are interested in what is best for their golf games, the best fit possible. HG's system is by far the most comprehensive. Even our competitors will tell you that. Q: If fitting is so important, why don't the large companies like Titleist and Callaway emphasize it to the extent HG does? MF: That's a great question. Why don't they? They do it for their touring professional customers, but frankly they can't afford to devote that much time and attention to average golfers and their games. I'm not trying to be nasty about this, honestly. The larger companies simply can't afford to spend all that time fitting individual golfers. They're all about volume. Henry-Griffitts is about something else: getting the fit exactly right, which is why HG is still the most complete system out there. Q: Let's get specific. What are some of the most common compensations you see with students? MF: Well, with a lie angle too upright for a player, I often see weak grip positions, alignment right of the target, hands do little work, high finishes, out-to-in paths, high shots, divots that are heel deep and trough-like, face angles open at address. These are just some of the moves we can see, and this proves the point again: It takes an experienced teacher to recognize these things and do a good job of fitting clubs to help correct them. Q: So lie of the club is nice and flat at address. MF: No! The lie angle at IMPACT, not address, should be such that the face plane is nice and square with the ground. You want to know what the lie angle is when the club is hitting the ball, not when you set up. Henry-Griffitts Certified Teachers measure this by using a lie board where we attach tape to the sole of the club, hit off a fiberglass board and read the scuff marks. This allows us to see and/or measure the lie. The dynamic reading at impact is what's important, not the static "at address" reading. There are some 27 mark variations on the bottom of a club's sole that can be read and analyzed. Q: So if we check the club's lie, and it's determined to be too flat at impact, what compensations would you see in a player's motion and what would you do with the student? MF: The compensations I could see are: strong or clockwise grip positions, poor alignment left of target, steep angles of attack, casting, outside-to-in path and over-active hands, just to name a few. Q: And what would you do about it? MF: What I would do is take differently measured clubs, with lie angles that were more upright or toe up, and have the student swing them until the scuff marks prove that the lie is perfect at impact. Then I would create a plan to illuminate the compensations caused from the player's old clubs and teach-in a normative manner - rather than merely teaching more compensations. A player who chooses to learn with an ill-fit set is dealing with an interference which robs talent and gives improper feedback to the brain. As an instructor, I don't want my golfers to deal with that interference. Q: About what percentage of people come to you with clubs that suit them perfectly? MF: "Perfectly"? No more than 15. Q: Really? MF: Yep. I would estimate that 85 percent of players are using equipment that inhibits an athletic motion, to a greater or lesser degree. It could be the woods and irons don't match, or the lies are off, or the driver doesn't have enough loft, or the clubs may just be too short causing poor posture, or the shaft design is incorrect, or the weight and/or material needs changing. There are many potential problems or combinations of problems. It takes an experienced teacher with Henry-Griffitts' fitting expertise to find them and sort them out. Sometimes the player only has a single fit problem, but many times the pupil has a number of club-fit issues in combination. People can go for lifetimes without understanding the root of their problems. Q: Can a set of clubs really improve a player substantially? MF: This does happen quite often. Sometimes a good athlete is in hiding behind a set of clubs that is improperly fit. HG data show that 80 percent of properly fitted players get better, about 2 percent get worse; 10 percent play about the same and 8 percent become extremely improved. This is a good place to mention that players seeking out a teacher should ask if the teacher is also an equipment expert, because a teacher without this background most likely will have to teach compensations rather than correct the cause of many problems. Q: Can you speak to the improvement numbers a bit? MF: Most people can improve with a little direction, a reward system, and a club that offers rewards for that system. Golf is a target-oriented game. A properly fitted club makes the ball go more at the target. That's the reward system, when the ball goes where they want it to go. Q: Has new technology influenced these numbers? MF: In my view, the technology end of the clubs is greatly overshadowed by our ability to fit and therefore teach properly. Going from a ill-fit blade to an ill-fit perimeter-weighted club means little compared to going from an ill-fitted set to a fitted set. Add to that the experience of an HG teacher and you have the best combination for improvement. Yes, the technology offers the average player some benefits, mainly in terms of distance, but our fitting abilities offer distinctive, broad advantages and improvement possibilities. The best bet is combining a great fit with effective teaching and technological offerings, which is what Henry-Griffitts is all about. Q: Fitted clubs are generally more expensive. In your opinion does fitted equipment offer a better value than off-the-rack sets? MF: Value is probably the best word we can use here. Value means you get what you pay for - or more than what you paid for. So yes, the value of fitted equipment is substantial: you get a better golf game, you enjoy the game more, the feedback to your brain is accurate so you can learn better, the equipment performs to a higher standard. All of this is necessary to play such a complex game to the best of your abilities. Even if fitted irons cost you $200 more per set, you have to ask yourself "Is my golf game, for the rest of my life, worth $200?" After all, if you pay $500 for a set off-the-rack, and they don't fit you properly, you may as well have thrown that $500 out the window. |