Demo Day Goal: Just Hitting or Actually Fitting?

by Dave Wolfe

What Are Your Demo Day Expectations?

When you go to a demo day to hit stuff, what are your expectations? Do you just go to test out the new stuff for the sake of testing it, or do you really expect to find something that will make your bag? I tend to just bang balls with the new stuff, with my whole assessment of worth being limited to something along the lines of oh, that’s nice.

I may not know much about club fitting, but I know enough to know that the demo day environment isn’t particularly conducive to custom fitting. There are hoards of golfers swinging the inventory, and booth reps are often scrambling just to keep pace with the checkouts and returns.

If you ask, they can sometimes put your preferred shaft in a club, but odds are they can’t really make valuable fitting suggestions in that environment. At least that’s what I had always assumed.

Can you actually get fit at a demo day?

I had no intention of answering this question when I attended that Golftoberfest demo day back in October. We had just finished a round of golf and noticed the tents on the range. Since I’m always interested in new stuff, and they had free root beer, we decided to head over and blast balls with some new product.

I have been in the market for new irons for a while now. My game off the tee has never been better, but my GIRs are few and far between. Prior to this demo day, I had hit the new TaylorMade stuff. I was curious about the M1, but really more interested in the PSi irons. They felt good, but I walked away from that demo unsure if they were the right irons for me. I wasn’t about to roll the dice on a $1200 uncertainty.

Knowing that Mizuno had new irons, I hit their tent first. After chatting with the rep, he had me take a few swings with Mizuno’s Swing Optimizer.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the Swing Optimizer is Mizuno’s iron fitting tool. It measures your swing’s speed, tempo, toe position, kick, and release. Once your data has been collect and inputted, Mizuno’s fitting app suggests three shafts that should fit your swing profile, or Swing DNA as Mizuno calls it.

After three very consistent swings (the rep said so…who am I to argue with the rep), the Optimizer suggested the following shafts:

• True Temper Dynamic Gold XP115, S300, Soft-Stepped
• KBS Tour, Stiff, Soft-Stepped
• Nippon NS Pro 1150, stiff

Initially, I was a bit bummed by these results, not because I expected to be swinging more stout lumber, but more so because I assumed that the soft-step options wouldn’t be available to try. Not so. Mizuno had both hard and soft stepped version of the shafts in the fitting cart. I guess that if your Optimizer is going to recommend a shaft, you should probably have it for customers to try.

The rep then built me a club to try. We started with the JPX-850 Forged head the Optimizer recommended based on my handicap. The XP115 was kicked out of the mix pretty quickly. It didn’t seem to go as far, and didn’t have the same smooth feel of the other two.

The KBS and the Nippon shafts were pretty close, so the rep put some impact tape on the face to see which gave more consistent results. Again, it was close, but I felt that the Nippon was the better of the two.

In what amounted to about fifteen minutes, I had an iron setup that was producing measurably better shots than what I had just used on the course. It seemed too easy, and probably too good to be true.

Must just be honeymoon swings…

Was that Demo A Valid Fitting?

This is the question that plagued me after my demo day fitting. Did I actually have an iron set-up that would fit my swing and game? Feeling a bit uneasy about it, I scheduled a fitting at the shop. Would the results be different when I was one-on-one with a fitter and the Trackman?

Could that quick and easy Mizuno demo day fitting actually be accurate?

The fitter started our session with a bit of discussion about my game. After I had warmed up, I again hit with the Swing Optimizer, and again the suggested shafts were the same. I suppose that means my swing is consistent, not good perhaps, but consistent.

The only difference from the first fitting to the second was that the Optimizer recommended a hard-stepped regular KBS Tour, rather than the soft-stepped stiff. That’s within the ballpark of the same in my opinion.

Next, I hit some shots with the various shafts, again in the JPX-850 Forged head. Prior to this fitting, I had gone on Mizuno’s website and worked through their online iron advisor fitting tool. Their head recommendation was the JPX-850 Forged, with the new MP-25 and JPX EZ-Forged being other options if I wanted a more workable or a more forgiving head.

This time, I really felt that the Nippon shaft was the way to go, and the Trackman numbers backed it up. The fitter also had me hit the KBS C-Taper Lite as wildcard option. The feel with that shaft was similar, but shots were shorter.

We also put the Nippon shaft into the new EZ-Forged head, and again distance suffered. The Nippon/JPX-850 Forged set-up was the way to go.

Demo Day Fitting = Private Session Fitting

I was surprised/not surprised by the close correlation between the two fittings. Obviously the Mizuno Swing Optimizer is the common element, and I believe, the key element. No other company has a tool like the Optimizer that can quickly recommend shafts for a golfer. At a demo day, the golfer looking to demo the Mizuno irons has a couple of fitted shafts to try in a matter of minutes, rather then just going trial and error through the cart as you would need to do without the Optimizer’s help.

I don’t know that I would trust a demo day experience enough to buy irons from any other company. I’m not saying that there are not other great irons out there. Of course there are. Rather, what I am saying is that demoing irons without the Optimizer information would probably not result in a purchase for me.

Plain and simple, I’d be concerned that they wouldn’t be correctly fit.

With the Mizuno fitting system, I don’t have that concern.

Now some of you may be concerned that the Shaft Optimizer is going to put you into an exotic shaft that will cause you to pay more. Not with Mizuno.

All of their custom shaft options come free of upgrade charge.

The same is true with their grips.

One price. What you fit is what you get.

Plus, and this is hard to believe, Mizuno’s irons will likely save you money this year compared to some other companies who are pricing sets a couple of hundred dollars higher. Mizuno irons and $200 in the pocket seems like a pretty deal good to me.

It’s The Tech

I guess that’s my take home from all of this. Mizuno’s Swing Optimizer technology makes it possible to get a quick, accurate iron fitting. Sure, there is more to a complete fitting than just the shaft choice. You need to spend a bit more time getting length, lie, and grip specs dialed in, but to me shaft fitting is the critical element.

Mizuno is currently the only company with the tech to get the fit quickly and accurately. Cleveland/Srixon also has a promising new system that leverages the Swingbyte 2 sensor (we’ll have more on that in  that Tim and I will look into in the coming weeks). However, those are the only two companies with any fitting tech.

In all other cases, you will need to rely on the experience of the fitter to get your specs correct.

Obviously there are some expert fitters out there who can set you up with perfectly fit clubs. However, I don’t know that they could do it quickly enough to fit you, and the other hoards of golfers, in a demo day setting. My experience suggests Mizuno can.

To find out more about Mizuno’s custom fitting program, click away right HERE.

Warning: Club Porn

I can’t leave you without sharing the results of all of this research, my new irons. JPX-850 Forged, Nippon N.S. Pro 1150GH Tour Stiff, Mizuno Blue Lamkin 3GENs (+3). If you look closely you will also see my next little bit of experimentation, Mizuno’s Blue Ion S5 wedges, shafted and gripped like the irons. These are so pretty it’ll be a shame (almost) to get them dirty. Enjoy!