Working with a well-qualified custom fitter is the best way to ensure that the golf equipment you buy is ideally suited to your swing and the needs of your game.
Golfweek has been hammering that point home for years, and more and more golfers are listening. While most players immediately see the rewards of custom-fit clubs when they play, there can be an adjustment period and questions for others. Will a slice-fighting driver work on the course? Is the lie of a new set of irons just right? Does a player’s sand wedge have enough bounce?
Arccos and Club Champion announced a unique partnership on Monday, and it could make questions like those a thing of the past.
Arccos, based in Stamford, Connecticut, makes tiny sensors that screw into the grip of your clubs. The company also offers grips that already hold the sensors. Once the sensors are linked to Arccos’s smartphone app, the system can use the GPS feature in your phone to track every shot you hit using every club in your bag. Overlaying that data on maps of the holes and courses you play, Arccos creates data-rich stats that can reveal things like your average distance with each club, where you tend to miss and which aspects of your game are strong and which need some work.
Club Champion, based in Chicago, is one of the biggest and most reputable club fitting companies in the United States. It has 74 stores around the country and is brand agnostic, carrying equipment from every major company and several smaller manufacturers too. Thanks to a unique hosel system, Club Champion fitters can attach any shaft to any club head, allowing golfers and fitters to try scores of combinations. Using TrackMan launch monitors, Club Champion fitters can show clients exactly how different combinations of components work with the player’s swing.
Now, thanks to the partnership, Club Champion will not only sell Arccos sensors and Arccos-enabled grips, but the company’s fitters will also be able to track and see how a client’s gear performs on the course.
After golfers give permission for their Club Champion fitter to monitor their play, Arccos will provide data that lets fitters better understand the player’s game and track their performance after the fitting. The fitters have all trained and certified as experts in the Arccos Caddie platform and the Arccos Dashboard. The dashboard lets fitters see insights, visualizations and shot-by-shot history of a player’s round. They can also see club distance averages, gapping, clubs used, dispersion patterns, miss tendencies and more.
“Having access to our clients’ Arccos on-course shot data allows us to fully understand each player’s unique golf DNA,” said Nick Sherburne, the founder of Club Champion and one of the company’s master fitters. “The data is golden. It helps golfers and our fitters better track performance while gaining an unbiased understanding of where they excel and what they need to improve.”
While some golfers may see an element of Big Brother in this, golfers who get an Arccos system at Club Champion are not obligated to take part in the program. However, the benefits to the player could make it worthwhile.
For example, if a player who used to slice is now hooking the ball using his new driver, the fitter will be able to see the issue, reach out to the player and make suggestions that could solve the problem. Some players also hit shots differently in an indoor fitting studio than they do on the course. Allowing a Club Champion fitter to access Across data could reveal those differences too.
“With Arccos Caddie, every Club Champion fitter can get a contextualized picture of their clients’ games,” said Sal Syed, the CEO and co-founder of Arccos. “This can be a huge positive for the fitter-client relationship before, during and after each studio session.”
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