Iron Fitting

The Measurement That Carries the Decision

For irons it is lie angle, and it has to be measured rather than estimated. We use face tape and a lie board for the static read, then confirm against turf marks on grass, because a golfer whose lie board result says two degrees upright sometimes produces divots that say something different once the ground is real.

A single degree of lie error on a six iron moves the face pointing direction by roughly a degree at impact, which at 175 yards is several yards offline before any swing fault is involved. Golfers who have quietly compensated for years usually stop compensating within a dozen strikes once the lie is right, and the compensation is what was producing the inconsistency.

Length, Read Off Posture

Wrist-to-floor charts are a starting point and nothing more. What actually determines a workable iron length is the address position you can repeat: how much knee flex you carry, how far your hands sit from your body, and whether the shaft angle at address puts the sole flat on the ground without you manipulating anything.

Because we have already recorded and stabilised that address position, length becomes a measurement rather than a negotiation. Every quarter inch we change gets re-checked against your marks, since length and posture push each other around.

Shaft Weight Before Shaft Profile

We test weight first because it is the variable golfers feel most immediately and the one that most reliably changes strike location. A set that is twenty grams too heavy shows up as low-face contact and a fading dispersion long before it shows up as a complaint about flex.

Profile comes second, tested at a fixed weight so the two are not confounded. Steel and graphite both stay on the table throughout; graphite in irons is no longer a senior-only conversation and we fit a fair number of them to golfers in their thirties who simply strike the ball better with less mass in the hand.

Gapping, Built From Grass

Stamped lofts have drifted so far over the last two decades that a modern seven iron and a twenty-year-old six iron frequently share a loft. That makes any gapping conversation built on club numbers useless. We build yours from measured carry on grass instead, with the air conditions logged, and mark where two clubs are doing one job.

At this elevation the ladder compresses at the long end: carry differences that look tidy at sea level bunch together up here because thin air flatters the longer clubs slightly more. That is not a reason to panic, but it is a reason to gap from data rather than from a chart.

If your seven and eight iron carry within eight yards of each other on grass, no head change fixes that. A loft change does.

The Outcome People Do Not Expect

A significant share of iron blocks end without a new set. Bending the existing heads to the correct lie, changing grip size, and adjusting one or two lofts costs a fraction of a replacement set and frequently produces the larger part of the improvement.

We will still show you the candidates and their numbers. If a new set genuinely wins by a margin worth the money, the sheet will say so plainly, and if it does not, the sheet will say that instead.