
I have worked in the golf business for almost a decade now. The passion started when I worked at Fiddlers Green in Eugene, OR. After 3 years of working with the Whalen family at Fidds I decided I wanted to stay in the golf business and went to the San Diego Golf Academy (Arizona campus). After graduating from the golf academy I went to work for Hot Stix Golf and that's when the Ho'ing began. I was a builder and club fitter for them and my knowledge of golf clubs/shafts grew extremely fast. Following two great years at Hot Stix I moved back home to Oregon and helped manage Golfsmith by the Portland airport. I got a call a year later from a manufacturer in Carlsbad and took the job! I feel like I have had my feet in every part of the golf business except for greens keeping. I understand what customer service is and how to gain exposure to a business or a product…. This now brings me to understand why I am a Fujikura guy for life. I met Jeremy at Fuji through a friend of mine. We exchanged a few emails and I got lucky enough to take a visit of the facility and get fit in the FIT-ON studio. When I got too the studio on Thursday December 1st I was met by Jeremy at the front door. The blood sugar that day was running a little low because of my excitement so I wanted to make sure I had no excuses what so ever, so I swung by the vending machine and got a handful of M&M's. Now that my blood sugar was back up to wear it was supposed to be the tour began. I got introduced to almost everyone. The team at Fuji was really understands what customer service is about, everyone I was introduced to greeted me with a smile and thanked me for being there. The introduction almost made me feel as though I was back in Eugene at Fiddlers Green, that's how nice these guys were. I got into the FIT-ON studio after walking by a ton of cubicles, prototype shafts, offices, and a few Speeder Motore VC6.2 Tour Spec. I was introduced to John who was my fitter for the next two hours. We started by me warming up hitting a few of my drivers until my excitement came through again and I said I think I am warm. John says but you have only taken 5 swings. I confessed that my boss at work let me leave an hour early to get warmed up at the local Rancho Carlsbad GC. John and I started by taking measurements of my current R11 driver with a Motore 6.1 Speeder stiff flex. We checked the swing weight, CPM, and length of club. The first few swings you will notice from the pictures my swing speed was 102-104. John thought for my size that I should be swinging the club a little faster than that speed. We took the 10 gram weight out and exchanged it for a 5 gram. The swingweight went down too D1, which helped my swing speed increase to 110-112. By this time I was salivating at the mouth thinking that we hadn't even started fitting me for the shaft and we weren't even done fitting me for the head yet. We still had to fit me for the correct FCT setting and the all new ASP setting. The fitter new my miss was left by watching a few of my numbers so we cranked the ASP too open. We changed the FCT to 10 degrees of loft, in between Standard and lower. John and I discussed what shaft weight would be best for me and we decided on 60, 65,70. The two shafts we decided based on my numbers so far would be the 6.1 or VC 6.2 Tour Spec. I really liked the 6.1 because of the launch and how active the tip felt. What we found with the 6.1 was that it started offline -1.5 degrees and went further left. The spin was higher as you can see from the charts anywhere from 2700-3400. I really liked the feel of this shaft but I was going into it with an open mind and told John I trusted him to fit me into whatever he knew would be the best for me. Now it was time to try the new VC6.2 Tour Spec. We snapped the new shaft into the R11 and began the trial. The first thing that popped out to me with my first couple of shots was that I was starting my shot on the positive +1.0 and it would leak back to the target. With the 6.1 because of the torque it would start left of target and continue to go left. With 6.2 it would start right and finish at the target. With lower torque the spin rate went down to 2100-2500. I told John I think we have found the right shaft. I went from hitting to the ball 280 yards to 295. We moved onto the fairway and rescue and settled on a 7.0 to help get the ball in the air. I didn't feel the need to hit another 100 balls when we had all the results in front of us for the driver. We tried a few different rescue shafts and the one we decided on was the 904 rescue shaft. Like John said old school is hard to beat sometimes. After the fitting I offered to help them out with anything they might need from my end. It's a give and take world and I didn't want to be the guy just taking everything. I exchanged emails with John in hopes that we can play some golf together in the near future. I was now setup with a Tour Spec VC6.2 built straight in to my driver, 7.0 into my R11 4 wood, and a 904 for my rescue. What blew my mind is how we started the club fitting with the club head and then moved onto the shaft. John was extremely patient with me and all of my questions I asked. Working with the team at Fuji made me understand what customer service was all about and will make me even better at my job now. If any of you are in the area sometime you guys need to go get fit at the FIT-ON Studio. Enjoy the pictures below.
Edited by TMAGplayer1, 07 December 2011 - 05:23 PM.














