The Ledger
No product reviews, no release coverage, no opinions about tour players' equipment. Just the explanations we keep having to give at the bench, written down properly so we can point at them instead.
Subjects CoveredThree, deliberately
All Notes
Each one started as something explained out loud to a golfer standing at a bench, which is why they read the way they do.
A golfer generating 108 mph of clubhead speed should be producing a ball speed in the mid 150s. Most are not, and the shortfall has three identifiable sources that a bench can address.
Read the note →Half an inch toward the toe does not cost the same as half an inch low, and neither costs the same on a driver as on a 7-iron. Reading the curve properly changes what you fit for.
Read the note →Face progression is measured in hundredths of an inch and changes hand position by considerably more than that. What the eye reports at address is a specification, not a preference.
Read the note →Offset does not close the face. It changes what you see, which changes how you deliver, which changes the start line. Untangling those three is most of an iron fitting.
Read the note →Bounce gets all the attention and camber does most of the work. Here is what the front-to-back curve of a sole actually decides, and how to test it without a launch monitor.
Read the note →A May fairway in Dane County behaves nothing like an August one. Fitting a bag that survives both is a question of window width rather than of picking a side.
Read the note →Why Only Three Subjects
A fitting studio that writes about everything ends up writing about product launches, because that is what fills a publishing calendar. We would rather have six pieces that are actually used during sessions than sixty that are not.
All three subjects share a property: they are geometric, measurable at a bench, and almost never explained properly anywhere a golfer is likely to look. Between them they account for most of what separates a bag that works from a bag that nearly works.
All of this gets covered during a session anyway, with your own clubs on the instruments instead of a general example.