equipment: clubfitting
Spring Training
Get ready for a new season of clubfitting by working with your sales reps to learn about new products and
update your demo stock
By Don Jozwiak, Senior Editor
Spring training is baseball’s annual rite of
readiness. Just as the boys of summer are
getting ready in Florida and Arizona for a
162-game season, you should be following a few
simple steps in preparing for a new season of
clubfitting.
The first, and potentially easiest, step
involves updating your fitting carts and demo
stock to make sure you have the latest and greatest
products from the brands you sell at your facility.
Consumers are more in-tune with new products
than ever before, thanks to the plethora of golf
equipment-related Web sites and in-depth coverage in consumer
publications. If they’re looking for the hot new driver and
you’re still sporting last year’s model, the customer will move
on in a hurry.
Fortunately, manufacturers make it relatively simple to
update and upgrade your fitting carts and demo stock. If you
have a fitting cart from a company, that sales rep will handle
swapping out new clubs and any upgrades to the cart itself. As
for demo clubs, more companies are providing them for free –
but asking for them back after six to eight months. This means
you often don’t have to invest money in new demo stock, but
you do need to make sure none of your demo clubs come up
missing or you could be on the hook for the full wholesale price
of the club.
The next step after updating your stock is making sure your
staff is up to date on the new products you’ve
just received. If you do business with multiple
manufacturers, you’re going to need to commit
a fair amount of time to learning what’s new for
the season. The best way to do so is to get the in-
formation straight from the source.
“The companies we do business with in clubfitting all have their sales reps come into my shop
and train me and my four assistant professionals
on all the new clubs,” says Rob McNamara (
pictured), PGA head professional at Farmington
Country Club in Charlottesvile, Va. “We have five
different clubfitting carts, so it’s tricky to keep up.
But the companies have all gotten very wise on
how they handle their fitting carts, and the systems from Callaway, Ping and TaylorMade with
interchangeable shafts and heads make things
even easier.”
McNamara, the 2007 Ping National Clubfitter of the Year, has
a goal of getting all his clubfitting carts and demo stock – and his
staff educated on new products – by the beginning of April.
That’s when he holds his annual demo day to kick off the new
season, and the event serves to get his members excited about
new equipment. This year’s event is April 3, and McNamara will
use the day to start fitting Farmington members for this year’s
new products.
“If you’re just getting started in clubfitting, start slow,” adds
McNamara, the 2001 Middle Atlantic PGA Section Merchandiser
of the Year for private facilities. “Choose one company that you
really like and master their fitting system. See what the results
are, and don’t try to oversell it. Once you’re getting good results,
you can think about adding more companies.”
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Ping Updates
nFlight System
Ping Golf has added new features to its nFlight
system, which it demonstrated with LPGA Tour star
Lorena Ochoa at the recent PGA Merchandise
Show. One highly anticipated addition is predictive
gapping. This enables PGA Professionals to get
measurements from two or three clubs on the
nFlight monitor, then extrapolate the distances
other clubs will go for that golfer. This can help
clubfitters settle upon the ideal set makeup for a
golfer, including which hybrids or wedges they
should have in their bag to maintain consistent
distance gaps between clubs. Other new features of
the nFlight system include a “Leaderboard” function
that allows golfers to see a variety of statistics
immediately after hitting a shot, and new support for
computer systems with multiple monitors. ●
