" Will customising-your-golf-clubs improve your game"

Should you or Shouldn't you?

That is the $64,000 dollar question!

customising-your-golf-clubs is a bit like buying clothes some of us are a fairly standard size, ( the lucky ones )and can buy "off the peg", whilst others, ( should we be known as the less fortunate ),because of our different physical attributes, too tall or too short or too round, are not so lucky.

Some times though we find something that almost fits and can have it altered.... but... it never feels quite right

So what do we do?

In the past customising golf clubs was also expensive, but we come back to the same thing is it worth it?

Being one of the less fortunate! a tall person (6'4") I used to play with standard clubs and during a lesson one day, the pro said I should consider having my golfclubs made as I was tending to crouch over the ball. I took his advice and got a set of customised irons.........and.......knocked 5 shots of my handicap..........won a medal......my name is now emblazoned in gold on one of our club house boards.....forever..... was it worth it........you bet it was, well for me anyway,oh and by the way it was expensive then.

Is it still expensive?

Here is an excerpt from an article by Trevor Austin a club maker from Hinckley in Leicestershire, England.

Well, almost all golf club heads, with very few exceptions - if any - are made in the far east, mainly China. We believe that all heads are made there but several of the big manufacturers just will not give a straight answer, try them!

Shafts, the most important part of the club, are made by a very few companies, but normally China, Bangladesh, Japan, etc. None of the big names make their own shafts, the majority fitting True Temper shafts, sometimes branded with their own name but never manufactured by them.

Now when you pick up the magazines or discount shop offers are you looking for what suits you best or, more likely, the same clubs you thought Tiger or Vijay or Ernie or Annika were winning with last weekend?

This is a good time to dispel a widely held belief, the only similarity between the clubs you can buy and the clubs winning major pro tournaments is the branding. These pro golfers are paid anything up to seven figure sums of money to use these brands, they and their coaches specify every head, shaft and grip that makes up that set and somebody has to pay for that. So when you buy your set of Z43 Super Pingaway irons you are paying for the components, the plush headquarters and the massive advertising and endorsements that made you notice them in the first place.

A good custom club builder will use components made from at least as good raw materials as the big boys, often from the same factories to produce the heads, they offer the same shafts and grips AND take the same sort of time to analyse your game and physique as those top pros get, but because they don't pay for the names on their components, that set of clubs, designed just for you, is an affordable possibility.

Again a good clubmaker, and there are bad ones as in any walk of life, will be more concerned about the results of your fitting than you spending money.

There are many ways of fitting but during the fitting ask your clubmaker what they think of your game, does it match with your and your friends impressions of your shot shape and distance or are they just telling you things to make you spend money. If it doesn't meet expectations can they justify their statements without resorting to technobabble?

The best part about about custom building should be when you go back to your clubmaker and tell them "I've just shot my lowest ever score" or "I've just won my first ever competition" or "I've just hit my best ever shot" or, and my favourite, "That's the most I've enjoyed a game of golf for years".

So according to Trevor its not quite so expensive nowadays.

He can be contacted at trevor@1offgolf.co.uk

For our US and Canadian visitors

The Golf Warehouse offers a custom fitting service where you can take the first steps to finding out how to TGWcom" onClick="window.location.href='/cgi-bin/counter.pl?url=%3Ca%20href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fstorefront.linksynergy.com%2Ffs-bin%2Fstore%3Feid%3DFVOO%2FEeKxkw%26offerid%3D42808%26stid%3D764%26subid%3D%22%20%3ETGWcom%3C%2Fa%3E&referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.just-for-golf.com%2Fcustomising-your-golf-clubs.html'; return false;">customise-your-golf-clubs should you wish to.

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