Fit the window you can hold, then chase the yards

Framing the session

Loft and launch are one dial, not two

Golfers talk about loft as though it were a separate setting from launch angle. In practice the two are welded together by your angle of attack. Somebody delivering the head four degrees downward with a 10.5-degree driver is producing a launch condition that looks nothing like the same head in the hands of somebody swinging three degrees upward.

So we measure attack angle early and treat static loft as one input to a launch window rather than a number to be chosen on its own. Frequently the fix for a low, spinny tee shot is more loft rather than less, which is the opposite of what most golfers expect and the opposite of what they have been told at a demo day.

Head first, shaft second

Modern driver heads differ enormously in where the mass sits. Forward-weighted heads cut spin and punish off-centre strikes. Back-weighted heads add forgiveness and launch at a spin cost. Adjustable weight tracks let us move between the two, but only within a range the head's basic architecture allows.

Getting this right before touching a shaft matters, because a shaft can only modify what the head is already doing. Sessions run the other way around produce a beautifully matched shaft inside a head that was never suited to the golfer.

Length: shorter than the rack, almost always

Off-the-shelf drivers commonly measure 45.5 inches or longer. That length was chosen to produce good numbers on a robot, not on a Tuesday afternoon at a public course. We build most drivers here between 44.5 and 45.25 inches, and the overwhelming pattern is tighter dispersion, better centre contact, and total distance that stays flat or improves.

The half inch you give up costs about a mile an hour of theoretical clubhead speed. The centre strikes you gain are worth several times that. It is the least glamorous change we make and one of the most effective.

Spin, and the trap of chasing a tour number

Low spin is only an advantage if you have the speed and the launch to support it. Take spin away from a golfer at 88 mph and the ball falls out of the sky twenty yards early. We fit spin to hold your carry, not to match a figure from a broadcast graphic.

What the board says about a tee shot

Even the driver session touches the turf board, because we tee the ball at your normal height and watch what the sole does on the low strikes. A golfer who occasionally catches the ground before the ball is telling us something about tee height, ball position and attack angle that the radar alone will not report.