Will New Clubs Unlock Lower Scores?
In part 2 of Project Joe, our beginner golfer gets fitted for new clubs to try and speed up his improvement
nthusiastic newcomer Joe Brewin has set himself the goal of breaking 100 for the first time this year and has got on to the right track with lessons from PGA Pro James Whittemore. But his current equipment is holding him back, so a full-bag custom fitting with Cobra Golf’s Billy Whiteman was in order.
He was tasked with fitting Joe into the correct make-up of clubs from the impressive Radspeed range. As you’ll discover, the gains Joe made were significant, which should help accelerate his progress and help him achieve his goal before the season finishes. Fingers crossed...
Joe’s assessment
“You know you’ve got off to a rough start in golf when the clubs you bring along to a fitting are literally laughed out of the bag.
I’d got absolutely no idea what to expect from a fitting, having never done one before, but the prospect of upgrading to some tools I wasn’t immediately ashamed of was a rather exciting one. Certainly, the Cobra fitter Billy Whiteman’s pity for my antique driver suggested the only way was up.
One thing I did have in mind going in was the possibility of moving to one-length clubs. For a beginner like me, I thought they might help – the idea of removing some of the uncertainty when clubs get shorter (a big issue for me up to this point) and trying to achieve some consistency was appealing.
By the end, Billy agreed: after we’d switched between shafts on a 7-iron, we settled on some Radspeed One Length irons, which were still immediately lighter than my old lumps. Given that my arms are more teenager than Tiger, being able to achieve a faster swing speed with a club far less clunky will surely help in the long run.
“Cobra’s One Length irons helped me be more consistent”
When it came to the driver, we took off some length in a bid to strike the ball better. Despite the shorter shaft, my distance increased considerably, along with my confidence.
As it turns out, you don’t really know what a nice shot feels like until you’ve used some nice
new clubs. Immediately, I got more distance with the Cobra clubs – the ball flew off the clubface in a completely different way to my tired old ones, making for a massively more satisfying experience.
I knew I’d struck balls at Hemingford Abbots like a bloke with his eyes sewn shut, but I couldn’t wait to see what a difference new clubs would make. A few weeks later, like a kid who’s just been told they’re off to Disneyland, I was able to find out for the first time when my custom set was delivered.
Playing nine holes, the driver was an immediate success. A couple of weeks earlier, I’d played one last (if only second ever) round with my old clubs – a miserable disaster in wind and rain – and abandoned the driver on the back nine. I couldn’t have hit the ball straight that day if it was being sent down a drainpipe.
Fast-forward a couple of weeks, though, and the game had changed – the Radspeed XD driver felt different from the start. The first tee shot went beautifully straight and I didn’t duff it off the tee with that club from there on.
I’m still getting to grips with the wedges – the nature of One Length clubs means a bit of a mentality shift for the ‘shorter’ ones in that respect – but a bit more practice will do a world of good there. Otherwise, though, I’m very confident that my new Cobra clubs will be literal game-changers once I start getting down the range more and trying to nail a consistent swing.
There are still teething issues that only magic fairy dust could fix (or failing that, my new coach James), but the road ahead certainly looks much brighter and I’m hopeful I can shoot a decent score.”
Fitter analysis
“Joe’s clubs were very outdated and not fitted for him, which has its limitations. Starting with the Radspeed irons, we immediately looked at One Length given how new Joe was to the game and that more consistency would make such a big difference. They produced ten yards of extra carry distance, helped by the Recoil graphite shafts, and the more upright lie angle helped bring his start lines in tighter.
With the driver, we quickly settled on the Radspeed XD head to stop shots missing out to the right, and also opted for a lower-spinning shaft which helped with consistency and distance – he was hitting the ball over 30 yards longer on average! Going slightly shorter in the shaft brought his strike pattern closer to the sweetspot, too.
We then looked at the gapping by analysing the carry distance of his 5-iron and the driver. It turned out the gap wasn’t huge, so we only needed to fill it with one club. We tried some hybrids, but in the end the best option was a draw-biased Radspeed XD 5-wood.
I would say to any golfer who thinks they aren’t good enough for a custom fitting that it just simply isn’t the case – as Joe’s results would testify. You’ll be much more consistent with fitted clubs – your dispersion will be tighter and you’ll almost certainly hit the ball further.”