Length Matters!
by Rene Cleaver, PCS 2005 International Clubmaker of the Year
What is the length of your driver? And is it the optimum length for you to get the best results from your tee shots?
From years of experience as a professional clubfitter, I can confidently tell you that one of the most critical fitting specs for helping golfers maximise their on-centre, solid hit capability with all clubs is LENGTH.
The adage that says “the longer the club, the harder it is to hit solid and on-centre” is an important one that I keep in mind when I’m doing a fitting. It should also be an important fact for golfers to keep in mind when they are standing on the tee looking down a narrow tree-lined fairway!
Club length is a decidedly un-sexy specification. Let’s face it, there’s not much technology in a ruler! Flex, torque, coefficient of restitution all sound more wiz-bang. But look how important length is:
Length is a MAJOR factor affecting distance
Length is a MAJOR factor affecting Accuracy
Length is a MAJOR factor affecting Feel
No other golf club specification has three major effects on performance.
Getting the correct length nailed down for you by a professional clubfitter will almost certainly result in custom built clubs that perform better for you than clubs bought off the rack. The reason for this is that almost all standard off the rack clubs are built to lengths that are too long for the vast majority of golfers to swing consistently, particularly drivers and fairway woods.
Most off the rack men’s drivers are assembled to a playing length of 45” or 451/2”, with matching fairway woods being an assortment of lengths depending on the increments the company chooses to set. For each company, ladies’ lengths are normally set 1” shorter.
However, male and female golfers who can reliably hit on-centre with drivers of 45” and 44”, respectively, are in a very small minority. Not surprisingly, my own fitting sessions usually result in optimum lengths that are shorter.
So how does a professional clubfitter determine the best length for each golfer? There are three factors to consider:
1. A measure of the golfer’s wrist to floor dimension. This measurement takes into account the relationship between the golfer’s height and arm length. This should not be the final length determination, but it is an excellent place to start. And I can tell you right now, the ruler usually recommends a driver length of less than 45” for men, and less than 44” for ladies.
From this initial length determination, I will come up with a final length recommendation from observations made in the dynamic fitting part of the session. The factors I consider are as follows:
2. The golfer’s swing path, swing plane and swing tempo. The reason that so many golfers do not fit to a driver of 45” and longer is that many golfers swing with an outside-to-in swing path. The more the club is swung on the down-swing from out-side-to-in, the steeper will be the descent of the club and the more difficult it will be to deliver a longer length square at impact.
The same is true for swing plane. The more upright the golfer’s swing plane, the steeper the club will be delivered to the ball, and the more difficult it will be to bring the club back to square at impact.
Lastly, the faster the golfer’s tempo, the more difficult it will be to rotate the clubface back to square on the downswing with a longer length.
If my client has any of the three swing factors of: outside-to-in swing path, upright swing plane or faster than normal swing tempo, I will consider reducing the club length recommendation by an appropriate amount compared to that recommended by the wrist to ground measurement.
3. The golfer’s ball striking skills. The better the athletic ability and hand/eye coordination of the golfer, the longer the club can be. Try telling Ian Woosnam he needs shorter than standard clubs! But no club golfer has the ball striking skills of Ian Woosnam. The belief that so many golfers hold, that the longer the club, the greater the distance of the shot, is only true if the golfer is able to hit a longer club on-centre as high a percentage of the time as they do with a shorter club and achieve a higher clubhead speed with a longer club.
Drivers that are longer than a golfer’s optimum, result in reduced accuracy and/or reduced distance. If you can hit your 3-wood as far as your driver, that’s a real tell-tale sign that your driver is too long.
During a fitting I often use impact labels to determine where on the clubface the ball is hit, together with a machine that measures the golfer’s clubhead speed at impact, ball speed off the face, carry distance and the efficiency of each shot. I determine the optimum driver length for maximum ball speed off the face, carry distance and shot efficiency. Or to put it another way, my method for length fitting will result in a length of golf club that the golfer can hit on-centre the highest percentage of the time.
Is your driver the optimum length for you to get the best results from your tee shots? You won’t know unless you have been properly fitted for driver length.
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Rene Cleaver is a Professional Clubmakers’ Society CLASS “A” Clubmaker, CLASS “A” Clubfitter and Golf Clubmakers’ Association Advanced Clubmaker. Rene offers custom fitting services and custom made golf clubs at Club Masters, Bamfurlong Lane, Cheltenham. If you have any questions about golf equipment, contact Rene at rene@clubmasters.co.uk or tel. 01452-715007.