The Fitting | The New Sticks

I made the decision over the winter that I was going to make an equipment upgrade this year.  I'm more than happy with my irons, but my hybrids were old and outdated, and in the past year I've found that I haven't hit them with the same consistency I used to.  Moreover, my driver had a lot of swings in it, and it seemed like it was time to take advantage of some of the new face and shaft technology available.

With that in mind, last weekend I went to Joe & Leigh's Golf Performance Center in Easton, MA for a fitting.  Joe & Leigh's has been famous a few times; it was the site of Golf Digest's cover article a few years back touting the benefits of club fitting for all players, and also was where Jim Furyk famously bought a used putter that he had in the bag when he won the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup in 2011.

My current driver is a Titleist 907 (so 8 years old).  After doing my homework (primarily on mygolfspy.com's Most Wanted Driver list and data set), I settled on testing the new Titleist 915 D2 and D3; the Callaway Big Bertha Alpha DBD; and the Cobra Fly-Z+.  I also wanted to get in a good number of shots with my old driver on the launch monitor just to see if making a change was really worthwhile.

You can see the map of all the shots I hit below (excluding severe outliers).  You can see right away that my old driver (the 907) is still a pretty good club, with the best drive hit at over 300 yards and just right of center.  But all the shots are right of center, which highlights the problem I have with it -- keeping it straight.

With even just a cursory scan of the shots, the Cobra quickly stands out for having the 4 longest drives of the day, all of which are relatively on-line.

It doesn't take a long look at the detailed view to determine that the Cobra Fly-Z+ is the easy winner.  Both the D2 and D3 Titleist models are maybe a little bit more consistent in terms of accuracy -- but not by much -- and the Cobra is easily the longest.  Not only that, but set up on neutral and with the Grafalloy Blue 75 shaft my fitter set me up with, I was hitting a slight draw (manifest by mild negative side spin) instead of the old power fade (see the high positive side spin on the 907) that hasn't been as consistent as I would like.

After deciding on the driver, it was relatively easy to pick the matching Fly-Z+ and FlyZ fairway wood and hybrid -- both are adjustable within a 4-degree range, and both were carrying 10-15 yards longer than my current 1-hybrid and 2-hybrid.

I ordered everything custom from the Cobra website that night.  Just 3 days later the wife sent me this via text:

Can't wait to really put them in action.

The Update

Just a quick post to point out a new feature to the blog: at the bottom of each page you can find all my rounds going back to 2007, with graphics that show score to par, adjusted shot efficiency, and short game statistics, including median and upper and lower quartile ranges.  It's fun to scroll through (for me, anyway).