Swing adjustments and their effect on fitted clubs

[gents15]

I love hitting balls at the range. There’s no place I’d rather be. Lately, I’ve been tweaking my swing here and there, trying to get things just right with my move.
 

Which leads me to my question: 
 

Let’s say I get fitted for irons tomorrow. And next week I make a tweak to my swing and I’m de-lofting my irons a tiny bit more than I had been. Then the next week, I make another minor change and my angle of attack is 1 degree steeper than before. The next week I’m slowing down my transition a tad. Etc. 1 month from now my swing speed has gone up 2-3 mph. How much of an effect do these tweaks have on the irons I was fitted for? Do the irons I get fit for tomorrow fit me 2 or 3 swing tweaks and 2 mph later? Do these types of things affect the clubhead or the shaft more? TYIA 

[Stuart_G]

6 hours ago, gents15 said:

Do the irons I get fit for tomorrow fit me 2 or 3 swing tweaks and 2 mph later? Do these types of things affect the clubhead or the shaft more? TYIA 

 

Good question - but in general the answer is usually that such swing tweaks have very little of an effect on the fit of the club.

 

FWIW, I've been working on my swing continuously for many years, and the only thing I've had to change about my clubs is due to getting older, not any of the improvements I've been working on.

 

6 hours ago, gents15 said:

Do these types of things affect the clubhead or the shaft more? TYIA 

 

Lie angle of the head is most common thing that might need to be changed.

 

Most of the specs you're being fitted for are tied to things that are not going to change as your mechanics change.  They are tied to things like your body size, your natural sense of rhythm and tempo, your personal preference for feedback from the club as you swing, personal preference to what you want to see at address, etc..    Those are things that allow you to make your most natural swing without the club getting in the way (either physically or mentally).  And those are the things that are least likely to change as you work on your swing.

 

A couple mph of club head speed isn't going to do much if anything to change the fit of the club nor is small changes in the AoA.    Now if you do some serious speed or strength training and end up gaining a lot more - say closer to 10 mph - that might effect the fit of the shaft stiffness or shaft weight (or it might not).   But that's pretty rare.  And even then, it might not even be very critical if the progression is slow enough for you to adjust to changing feel of the shaft loading and unloading as the speed improves.   There is no ideal or optimal amount of loading in the shaft - so improvements in loading don't necessarily become a problem.

 

If you make changes to say improve posture, then you might need to get the lie angles tweaked later on - but that's easy to test yourself and have some local builder do the bending if it's actually needed.    That's probably, by far, the most common thing that might be effected by swing changes with respect to the fit of the club.

 

But in full disclosure there are always exceptions that might warrant refitting - usually in the case of some serious changes to the mechanics or body strength.   Things that are not common with Am's when just making a series of small changes  e.g. getting rid of some massive re-routing or other significant improvements to the efficiency of the swing.  Larger changes to strength or swing speed.

 

But IMO, the most important question you have to ask to decide whether to get a fitting now or later is:   How good or bad a fit is your current set of clubs?

 

If your current set is a poor fit for things like length or shaft weight or even lie angle or grip size - that can actually make it harder to work on and improve your swing.    If they are a good fit, but maybe not ideal, it may not make that much of a difference to go through a fitting now.   

 

But the problem there is you might not know the answers to that question until you actually go through the fitting.    So you likely have to go through the fitting just to figure out how important it was to get fit.

 

Edited May 16 by Stuart_G

[Lefty Mondegreen]

I was really aggressive and got fit into DG S 300s and a "moderately forgiving" club, MP 54s.  I don't think that was necessarily a good fit, but more to your point, I smoothed it out instead of mastering an athletic, flat one piece baseball swing I started with.  I gravitated to Rifle shafts, with a looser tip, to match timing and find a release.  It helped with launch initially, and then, of course, I needed to learn to close the head and keep it down.  

 

As I mastered a wide takeaway, fingers on top of club, bowed wrist and late release, a funny thing happened, I was able to swing a wide variety of shafts comfortably.  The shaft mattered less and less.  I had my range ... above 120 grams was usually exhausting and some profiles felt dead or boardy.  Light shafts were too flippy, or I would hold off release, but I could focus and get it to work with concentration (mostly thinking of trying my daughter's clubs). 

 

Recently, I stumbled on a 115 gram graphite shafted wedge ... which I never thought I'd like (had been working around 118g Rifle 5.5 descending weight, so wedges went North from there).  I also discovered that I love Tom Wishon's whippy 75 gram .335" hybrid shafts.  So, at 57, I'm finally going to try a graphite set built around those two.  Can't find a 115 gram iron set at my modest price range, so I'll try as low as 95, which will test my limit on preferred weight ... and I'm comparing hybrid weights to irons and haven't done my math.  But it'll all work out.  Comparing different types of shafts is discussed here, in case you are interested.  

 

Anecdotal ... but I hope it helps.     

 

[Stuart_G]

5 hours ago, Lefty Mondegreen said:

Can't find a 115 gram iron set at my modest price range,

 

Is the Steelfiber FC 115 out of your price range?    At $63 per It's certainly not what I'd call inexpensive (so wouldn't be surpised if it was out of your range) but it's the least expensive 115 gm graphite shaft that I'm aware of (other than buying used of course).  And it does have the softer (whippier) tip section compared to other graphite shafts of that weight.

 

But, unless you have some medical problem, if you want to try a whippy 115 gm shaft - that's one case where you'll likely be better off with steel.

Edited May 16 by Stuart_G

[Lefty Mondegreen]

I found Proforce 95 shafts old stock.  Looks like they are 4 iron shafts with 4.5" PTS, so that should keep me busy for a while.  I played steelfiber fw when I was aggressive and was impressed, but I couldn't repeat that swing.  I'm not sure how past injuries affect me ... minimal cushion in the trail hip and lead shoulder is a mess.  So, looking down the road.  

 

I appreciate the advice, I'll keep my options open.