# New Fitted Club Experiment



## 373 (Jun 9, 2006)

One of the problems I've encountered in taking lessons recently is irritation in my back. The point is, hitting an occasional wedge shot is one thing, but being bent over doing drills with a wedge for 30 minutes at a time is hurting.

Part of this has to do with me being out of shape. The other part of this has to do with being ill fitted to my irons. For any newer members reading this who don't know, I'm 6'7" tall, but I bend over quite a bit to use regular length clubs.

Some of you might remember how a year or so ago I got fitted for some Ping irons and it was a disaster. While they might have fit me, they were too heavy to swing effectively for my advanced age. All I kept hearing was, I need to go to graphite shafts in my irons to be able to build a tolerable swingweight that would come with overly long irons I need.

So, I've had my eyes half open watching for a decent set of used graphite shafted irons I could get cheap and experiment with to see whether the project could work. I found a set of Mizuno MX-1000 irons, 6-Gap Wedge. They should arrive today. 

The plan is to weigh each club to see where the swingweight starts. If I lengthen them an inch, they will gain appoximately 6 points. 

I would like to keep the differences in club length compacted slightly. In other words, when I get to the low irons, I'd like to reduce the usual 1/2" or 3/4" difference in the length of the clubs to virtually nothing. I'd like the gap wedge, sand wedge and lob wedge be the same length. What it means is that the shortest club would be no less than 36"-36.5" long if the weight doesn't make it counterproductive in terms of distance and control.

If this project works, I'll eventually invest in a better set of irons with graphite shafts, or maybe just reshaft my Callaway RAZR Tour irons. I really like those irons, so with graphite shafts, slightly longer, they might be even better.

I'll post pictures as things go along.


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## 373 (Jun 9, 2006)

Here's a picture of the Mizuno irons...








I played 9 holes with them today as is. They currently have standard size grips on them, so they felt a bit odd. I probably hit the good shots at least a club longer, whether just a fluke or something due to the graphite shafts.

Currently, the grips have been stripped off and the tape remnants cleaned off. Unfortunately, the extension plugs I have don't fit. I need to order some from a local company who, if they have them in stock, will get them to me Friday.

So far, more or less so good.

The plan is to start by building them 1" extra long. The swingweight should go from C7 to D3 and I'll see if I can work with that for a while.


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## 373 (Jun 9, 2006)

The first measured attempt is done and I'll try to hit a few balls tomorrow.

The epoxy I was sent totally cures in 20 minutes, so it was nice to be able to glue in the extensions, eat dinner and have them be completely cured after I washed dishes.

I went up 1" on everything except the gap wedge. I went about 1-1/4" on that to make it the same size as the pitching wedge. The sand wedge arrives mOnday and I'll make it the same length too.

If this works out for a few months, I'll invest in a set with newer technology. These Mizuno irons are in like new condition, but they are apparently 5 years old. A lot has changed since then.


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## 373 (Jun 9, 2006)

The extensions only glue in, no compression plug, so I couldn't use the tungsten plugs to counterbalance.









Epoxied together, ready to mark for cutting.









Cut with a wheel on my Dremel tool. It only took about 30 seconds per club, a really nice difference from using a hacksaw.









Finished, it almost looks like a golf club again. 

I hope to go hit some shots late this afternoon. Just holding the clubs, I can tell they feel slightly heavier, but NOTHING like the Ping irons that were built for me last year. These might be workable.


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## Big Hobbit (Nov 2, 2010)

A couple of questions Dennis... do the extentions affect the kickpoint, and hence the launch angle? Would having two clubs the same length narrow the distance between shots, e.g. PW - 110yds & SW - 105yds instead of 110yds & 100yds?


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## 373 (Jun 9, 2006)

The answer about the kick point is, in theory, yes. In actual practice though, not enough to affect my game.

With a 1" extension, something like the 6 iron, which is the lowest iron in this set, will still kick at the same point on the shaft, but it is lower in the whole scheme of things because the axis point is 1" farther away. 

If I was going more than an inch longer, I would effectively change the shaft from regular to senior flex and the kickpoint change in relation to the axis might be very different. The specific shaft these irons have is known to be just slightly stiffer than the norm to still be called regular flex, so softening them the little immeasurable amount I have shouldn't bother me.

As for hitting shots the same distance with 2 wedges the same length, only time will tell. I can always reverse engineer the process, but I'm going to use my launch meter and see if science tells me there's a difference.

I hope to play after work tomorrow and my plan is to hit irons all around the course, thus not keep score. I just want to feel whether these might suit me, whether the wedge idea makes me comfortable and whether I need to change my tempo all that much for what I have now.


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## Big Hobbit (Nov 2, 2010)

If your plan doesn't work, you could always get new shafts but maybe soft step them to make them a soft regular...


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## 373 (Jun 9, 2006)

If I believe what all the computerized meters tell me, I need a shaft between stiff and regular. With stiff, I lose a tiny bit of distance, but gain some accuracy. With regular, the reverse is true. The thing is, my game has been so infrequent and inconsistent lately I'm not sure I'd recognize the difference.

Over the past week, I had some interesting discussions with people from the Golfworks up in Ohio. Even without seeing me, they understand better the compromise I'm looking for between my size and age requiring long clubs, but only to a limit of what I could swing. 

I have my own swingweight scale and they suggested I weigh every single club I have in any set, then consider how I felt about it. When I did that, I realized I have a really wide variance in swingweights between clubs from 2 sets of irons and 3 sets of woods and hybrids.

The variance falls between clubs around C6 all the way up to some at D7. I do know swingweight is a strange thing, sometimes deceptive in that a very heavy club like my weighted exercise club can actually have a light swingweight.

What I also discovered is some of my woods and hybrids were varied lengths, standard or longer. Considering the longer clubs were heavier, I cut them down to standard length.

The Mizuno irons were 1: longer after my first experiment. They were swinging D5. They weren't too bad to swing, but when I picked up a driver, 3 wood or hybrid that was so different, I was really feeling it and an iron shot after a drive made that comparison stand out more than I was comfortable with.

Yes, this is probably a bit of paralysis by analysis, but in putting together any set, the Golfworks said I should put together a set where I wouldn't notice such a difference. The fact that a D1 club of 7 iron length will feel differently than a D1 of driver length is an expected norm. Exascerbating this with a difference like a C7 driver to a D5 iron would just screw up my timing worse and worse. I can imagine during the summer, in high heat and humidity as I got more and more tired towards the end of a round, it would be an insane demand on me.

The irons are now cut down to 1/2" longer. At D1 they are comfortable, not that I won't consider cutting them back to standard down the road.

Contrary to much of what we hear about fitting, the Golfworks people said fitting is important, but compromises like my age often make it more comfortable to bend over instead of dealing with ridiculous swingweights. 

I'm not sure exactly what I learned other than some people sympathize with my conundrum, not to mention they didn't even try to sell me anything. This whole exercise has been fun, I guess because I did the work myself and did it on the cheap instead of having an investment in something like the Ping set I tried before.

We'll see what happens, but I'm working now with the Mizuno irons at D1 as is and a set of Taylormade woods and hybrids I cut back to standard to make them C9. Golfworks suggested that was a more reasonable spread, so once I get to play later in the week, we'll see how I feel shot to shot.

I have a lesson today and the pro is going to check things over and meter me again with what I now have in my bag. In the meantime, my Callaway RAZR Tour irons remain untouched in my closet.


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## 373 (Jun 9, 2006)

Doesn't it always seem like when you are most anxious to play, something keeps you from it? Work, errands and rain have conspired against me. Today looks awful and rain is supposed to move through this morning, but the afternoon looks better.

I did manage to get my new practice net set up yesterday. Sean Kicker gave me one he had left over from a practice facility he once had, but closed many years ago. I have it under my mango tree and the idea crossed my mind that instead of worrying with the plastic frame, I would actually tie the net to the overhanging limb of the mango tree, then stake down the corners of the net.

I put some pictures on Facebook yesterday and called it the "Under the Mango Tree Golf Training Center." I'm sitting by the phone waiting for Donald Trump to call with his buy out order. He ain't got NOTHING like this.


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## 373 (Jun 9, 2006)

Brian - In answeer to your question about the length of the wedges, I haven't noticed a difference in the way I hit them. The distances are slightly longer than with my steel shafted clubs, but the differences in distance club to club seem fine.

I'm disappointed I wasn't able to get more length on these clubs and still use them effectively. I guess I'll stop chasing this idea of someone my size getting fitted clubs unless I take the very expensive alternative and go the route of the hollow heads with individual weights. There's another company who makes clubs with spots they drill out to balance the clubs. If I was on the tour, they might be interesting, but not to this old weekly player.

Time to go open the pro shop. Happy Monday everyone!


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