Today I took the trek up to FuZion Golf (www.fuziongolf.com) at their TPC Sawgrass location. It's about a 2-hour drive for me from Orlando. I have a buddy who was born and raised in Florida and I always found it funny how many road trips he took and how big he was into taking them. But Florida is a great state for road trips with all of these cities within close proximity of each other and it's all flat and easy to travel on.
Ponte Vedra Beach is very nice. Reminds me of like an upscale beach town in Jersey. However, the entire city revolves around TPC Sawgrass.
Sawgrass is pretty much as great as I expected it to be. Tremendous clubhouse and outrageous facilities. It definitely has a resort type feel to it, but just looking at the course itself it doesn't look that resort-ish.
FuZion Golf has 2 indoor bays where you hit outside. The fitting is done by Avery Reed, who spent five years doing fittings on the PGA Tour for Taylor Made. Currently, they are running a special where if you purchase the equipment you don't pay for the fitting.
IRONS
We first started off with hitting irons. I told Avery that I am pretty much a 'blades' man, but didn't have any preference. Just looking for what performed the best.
The big issue we had is that my swing wasn't exactly crisp. For the most part, my face angle and path numbers were pretty good and consistent. But the attack angle was more on the steep side, causing the ball flight to be lower than optimal.
Since that was the case, we did try some cavity back irons. But, in all I got to try the following:
Mizuno MP-68
Mizuno MP-63
Mizuno MP-53
Taylor Made CB
Miura CB-202
Miura CB-501
Miura Tourament Blade
PING S56
We then tried these various shafts:
Project X
KBS Tour
True Temper Dynamic Gold
True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue
Accra Shaft
Tour Concept
We tried the cavity back because we were looking for a little more height on the ball with the longer irons. In the end, there were a lot of good clubs, but I was stunned at how well the Taylor Made CB irons feel. I actually hit the MB irons back on demo day of the 2011 PGA Merchandise show and remember being extremely impressed with them.
In the end, I'm probably going to go with the MB irons down the road because the problems with the trajectory were really swing related.
Shafts wise I hit the Project X better than expected. Hit the True Temper Dynamic Golds pretty well. Hit the Accra shafts okay. Probably hit the TT DG Tour Issues the second best. And then I hit the KBS Tours the best.
When we measured my own clubs (Srixon Pro 100s) the True Temper DG S300's measured between Stiff and X-Stiff, probably about an S400. The shaft length were 'standard.'
We worked on this for awhile and Avery was considering going with a +1" steel shaft and then putting it on a Mizuno head because the Mizuno's have 3 different head weights to choose from. Thus, you can order the lightest weight, add an inch to the shaft and not have a d-9 swingweight.
RECOMMENDED 5-IRON: Taylor Made MB, KBS Tour (Stiff), +1/2", 60.0* Lie Angle, 28.0* Loft, D-3 swingweight
DRIVER
Here's where the big issues with my swing showed up. I was actually hitting the drives pretty well, but the #'s were problematic and since I'm working on my swing, there was no real need to get into a fitting too much.
The main problem here was the attack angle, which was at -4* or so. George and I have worked on this on our last lesson. But it does show the power behind Trackman because sometimes it's just hard to determine that as my trajectory wasn't bad, but the launch angle was low (9-10*) and the spin rate was too much (2,900 - 3,100 rpms). My clubhead speed was about 108 mph.
I figured that with the attack angle being so steep and having to work more on my swing, it really doesn't make sense to go much further with the driver fitting. I was actually pleased to see the clubhead speed up there and considering my current swing issues I think I could add another 2-5 mph to the swing and that along with the loading of the shaft changing could affect the flex of shaft as well.
Furthermore, my current driver (Adams 9015D, Harrison 60X shaft) measured out well. It actually measures at stiff flex, which is fine and fits me pretty well to begin with. I felt good at the job I did at installing that shaft myself. I sorta lucked out in the X-Stiff shaft measuring out as stiff and stiff fitting me for now.
I did get to hit the new Titleist drivers and came away impressed. I also found it interesting that Avery told me he has yet to fit somebody for a driver longer than 45 inches long. Something to think about.
3-WOOD
Like I've mentioned in other posts, I find the 3-wood to be an underrated club because of the correlation between par-5 scoring average and 'go for its' along with being able to use it off the tee.
I had mentioned that to Avery and how I was looking for something good off the tee as well. The Titleist 910F-d just out-performed the rest and it wasn't even close. We tried a bunch of different shafts, but I liked the Aldila RIP Beta Green Eyes fairway wood shaft.
My 3-wood, a Cleveland Hi-Bore XLS with a Fujikura Stiff flex shaft actually measured in at a ladies flex.
RECOMMENDED CLUB: Titleist 910F-d, 15* loft, Alpha RIP Beta Green Eyes shaft (X-Stiff), 43" long.
HYBRID
Here we tested the Titleist 910H and the Taylor Made R11 hybrids. The Titleist 910H went further, but the Taylor Made R11 with the Oban Devotion was pretty straight.
RECOMMENDED CLUB: Titleist 910H, 18* loft, Oban Devotion Shaft 8-04 (stiff), 40.5" long.
The charge for everything would've been $2,500, which was more in my price range than what a reader told me they were quoted at for their clubs ($3,500). But, given the things I'm working on the swing and the attack angle being so steep, I'll probably come up with some cheap alternatives for the Florida Mid-Am qualifier. I'm going to either install some 1/2" shaft extensions or re-shaft my Srixon's with +1/2" longer shafts. I think that is causing some of my swing issues...or at least not helping matters any.
It was a tremendous experience and once my swing improves and the attack angle flattens out, I'll head up there again for the woods fitting.
3JACK
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