My coach and I are really happy with how the swing is coming along. But for the last month we’ve discussed having my clubs lengthened/getting fit for new clubs. My current irons are 1/4″ long and my driver is 1″ long. Specifically, I’m looking for someone who has experience fitting someone with similarly unique physical dimensions (tall with short arms):
- height: 6’5.5″
- wrist to floor: 39″
- wingspan: 6’3″
It turns out that most fitters and pros do not like to recommend long clubs. They say that longer clubs are harder to control and it’s harder to get the weight and shaft flex right. That makes sense, but it ignores the obvious fact that someone who is very tall would need longer clubs to reach the ground with a normal swing.
My recent fitting
I went to True Spec Golf in Jupiter to get fitted a few weeks ago. I told them that my current clubs are 1/4″ long and that Wayne and I think I need longer clubs. They didn’t measure my heigh or arms, and I only hit irons that were 1 in long. But is that enough? Is it too much? I don’t know because we didn’t test different lengths. I believe they said 1″ long was the longest they had for me to try, so I couldn’t have tried longer than that.
They also told me that their drivers and woods only came in standard length. I asked about length many times and I they told me that they believe that for most players, they can get a better fit with the different shafts and club heads than with longer shafts. You know what happened? My current driver, which is 4 years old and 1″ long, performed better than all the combinations of new heads and shafts. So they recommended I stay with my current driver.
Last week I had 3 of my irons (6, U, and 58 degree) extended to 2″ long so I could test out how the swing plane felt and looked. When I was hitting on the range, it felt like I was able to strike the ball without being so contorted at impact. However, Wayne pointed out that lengthening the clubs has made the weight much higher than normal.
Looking for a great fitter
So right now I’m still looking for someone who has experience fitting tall people with short arms, and is willing to see if very long clubs will work better than slightly longer than normal.
If you have any recommendations please reach out to me at rosenbergmaxa@gmail.com!
