Iron fitting

Lie angle first, because it bends the ball

An iron whose sole sits toe-up at impact pulls the ball left; toe-down pushes it right. Four degrees of error is enough to move a seven iron a dozen yards offline with a perfectly good swing, and it is entirely invisible to the golfer making it. People spend years working on an aim problem that was a hardware problem.

We read it off a sole board with tape, across enough swings that one fat shot does not decide the answer. Lie adjustment is included in the session fee here rather than added afterward at nine dollars a club, which is the practice at most shops.

What a set flowing properly means

A set that flows has length, swing weight, and shaft frequency stepping evenly from the long irons to the short ones. When that progression is broken — usually because a set was assembled from two different eras, or because one club got bent and never checked — there will be one or two clubs in the bag you quietly distrust. Almost every golfer has a club like that. It is rarely the golfer's fault.

Shaft weight in irons

The range runs from roughly 50 grams to 130. Most amateurs are somewhere in the middle and most amateurs over sixty are heavier than they should be, because the set was bought when they swung faster and nothing has been reconsidered since.

Dropping twenty grams of iron shaft weight is a bigger felt change than most golfers expect. Done carelessly it costs control; done as part of a proper fitting, with swing weight and flex adjusted to suit, it usually buys back both speed and consistency.

Graphite irons are not a downgrade

They have not been for well over a decade. Graphite iron shafts now cover the full weight and stiffness spectrum, and for anyone with elbow trouble, arthritic hands, or a wrist that has been operated on, the reduction in impact vibration is worth real strokes.

We fit a lot of graphite irons here, mostly to golfers over sixty-five who assumed the option was a concession. It is not; it is just a material choice with different properties.

Grip size, the silent fault

Too small a grip encourages the hands to be overactive through impact, which usually shows up as a hook or a wild left miss. Too large deadens the release and leaves shots out to the right. Neither feels like a grip problem to the golfer holding the club.

We keep undersize through two wraps oversize in several compounds, and in Charleston the compound matters — a grip that felt perfect in a dry room in February gets slick in August. That is a fitting decision, not an accident.