Finding the Right Fit At Club Champion
The “golf is dead” narrative has been prevalent for years. Participation, viewership, and sales of equipment — there’s a perceived decline in every category. But recent trends tell a different story for one golf industry player.
Club Champion, a nationally acclaimed golf club fitter, builder and retailer, is not only surviving — they’re thriving. In 2015, the company had just eight locations. Today, there are more than 80 fitting studios across the country with more additions coming this spring. In a world where brick and mortar retail models are crumbling, how are they scaling so successfully?
A Unique Approach
The reasons are plentiful but let’s start with brand agnosticism. Everywhere you look, golf brands are advertising more: more distance, more accuracy, more success. While these promises can be true for a given golfer, Club Champion’s approach strips away the marketing and uses data to back their promises. They focus on the individual golfer’s goals while delivering an informative experience that yields verifiable results on the course.
In fact, a Golf Digest study found that eight out of nine Club Champion custom-fit golfers found an extra 21 yards off the tee and an additional 13 yards with their irons. Those same golfers lowered their scores by an average of six strokes per round.
Club Champion founder Nick Sherburne understands proof resides with results. He points to the brand’s incredible success with customer referrals: “Our referral revenue is more than triple any other income stream and I firmly believe that’s because our customers see the results for themselves and want to tell others.”
People Make A Difference
Club fitting is an art and a science that takes expert guidance. That’s why Club Champion master fitters go through over 150 hours of training and must pass rigorous testing before they can be certified. Their fitters are specifically trained to help golfers at every level reach their full potential, and the nearly 100% customer satisfaction rate backs up the process.
“My job is to help my students reach their full potential, which becomes more difficult if we’re fighting their equipment,” said David Leadbetter, internationally renowned instructor. “Club Champion master fitters know how to remove that unnecessary variable by tailoring equipment to the golf swing. It should never be the other way around.”
The impact of personnel extends beyond the fitting bay — every master builder in their Chicagoland shop is an expert craftsman. Clubs are assembled in-house to exacting, unrivaled tolerances, with digital loft, lie and swingweight machines that are precisely calibrated with those in every fitting studio. That attention to detail elevates a Club Champion build beyond anything else in the industry.
Cutting-Edge Technology
Technology plays a more significant role in golf success than ever before. TrackMan, the gold standard of launch monitors, is in every Club Champion fitting bay. It measures elements like club path, face angle and even swing direction while showing ball flight from launch to landing. Everything is measured in real-time using this radar-based technology.
On the green, SAM (Science and Motion) PuttLab is an ultrasound-based system that analyzes 28 important parameters of a putting stroke. The system delivers feedback and graphic reports on every detail of a putting stroke — face aim, rotation, impact spot, and more. Since putting accounts for roughly 40% of your strokes, there isn’t room for guesswork.
Unrivaled Selection
Data aside, there’s still an appeal to the shopping experience. Club Champion has over 50,000 hittable combinations in every store for testing. The company uses a unique coupling system that brings together any clubhead and any shaft, regardless of brand. Other fitting centers are limited to stock options or manufacturer carts — true customization is limited or non-existent. Club Champion takes strides to offer something for everyone, including brands unavailable elsewhere.
The Whole Package
Club Champion has all the ingredients for success, but it comes down to giving golfers what they want. The brands they want, the data they want, a Tour-level experience they absolutely love. Club Champion delivers improvement in a quantifiable way. It’s clear that with the success of innovative brands like them, the game of golf is alive and well.
To learn more about the fitting process, visit clubchampiongolf.com/azfit.