The Pros & Cons of a Club Champion Fitting

Let’s start by answering the question at the top of your mind: Is a Club Champion fitting worth it?

I paid $125 for a hybrids and woods fitting, and in one hour, I was fit for a 3-wood that outperformed my gamer by 32.5 yards, and a hybrid that beat my gamer by 25.6 yards.

It’s up to you and your personal budget to determine how much better golf equipment is worth, but hopefully these figures help you make that decision. 

The other takeaway you need to know about the price is that the new clubs you’ll be fit into will not be cheap. New golf clubs are already expensive, and if you fit into an aftermarket shaft, as opposed to one of the stock options offered, those costs jump up in a hurry. You may get a price break if you purchase after your fitting, and Club Champion also has a trade-in program to get some money for the clubs you’re upgrading from, but your out-of-pocket cost is still going to be high.

While I opted for the hybrids and woods fitting, Club Champion offers everything from a full bag fitting, to fittings for just a putter or wedges. Prices may vary, and Club Champion has offered special deals like full fittings for $100 with a club purchase from time to time, but as of 2024, here are Club Champions current offerings and rates.

I decided to go with the hybrids and woods fitting from Club Champion because those are the least-new and most perplexing part of my bag.

In addition to being the next up for replacement, my 3-hybrid, 3-wood, 5-wood, and 4-iron, are in a constant 4-for-3 playoff for the final spots in my bag. For context, here’s what we're looking at with my current gamers:

I must note that I was not fit for the hybrid or woods, but the 4-iron is part of an iron set that I was fit for.

As you can see, those four clubs only give me two different distances. I mostly attribute that to how well I hit each club. I have a ton of confidence with my 5-wood, but tend to chunk my 3-wood, which is why they produce the same distances.

That’s exactly why a fitting is helpful. Just because one club should outperform another, doesn’t mean it actually will for you, and you don’t know which club and shaft combinations work for you until you try them. 

Armed with all this information, I went into my fitting with two goals:

• Find which current woods and hybrids best fit my swing
• Find which setup is ideal for me in this part of my bag

My fitting started with some warm-up swings, then we collected some baseline numbers with my current gamers. 

Even though this was a routine part of the process, it really set the tone for the rest of the fitting. It’s easy to become uncomfortable in a fitting, with all of your flaws measured and displayed on a 10-foot screen for a golf expert to see and judge. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case in my Club Champion fitting. 

Even though I wasn’t hitting the ball particularly well, my fitter made me feel comfortable and relaxed from the start. This not only set the tone for my fitting, but is one of the top positive takeaways from my experience overall.

After we had a good baseline for my current clubs, my fitter started by fitting me into a shaft. Using one head, the TaylorMade Stealth 2 hybrid, I tried a handful of different shafts. Even after we identified the one, we hit a couple more just to make sure. 

It was fascinating to see the impact a shaft can make despite using the same club head with the same swing.

I had a list of different heads I wanted to test, but being a lefty, I knew they would not all be available. Such is life. I was able to test the newest heads from TaylorMade, Callaway, Cobra, Titleist and PING, but didn’t get to try the PXG or Srixon heads I was interested in demoing. That’s about what I expected, and as other lefties who have been to fittings before know, that’s a lot better than it could have been.

To test heads, I hit 3-4 shots with each, my fitter dropped the worst strike, and we moved on to the next. After testing all of them, we took a look a the data from Trackman. We focused mostly on dispersion, club speed, ball speed, and distance. With a few shots from each club, it was easy to rule out the worst of the bunch one-by-one. Surprisingly, a couple of the heads I tested didn’t even out-perform my 15-year-old gamer.

After going through this process with hybrids, we repeated it with woods, testing the same lineup of 3-wood heads, including PING, Cobra, TaylorMade, Titleist and Callaway, with the 3-wood version of the Devotion shaft I fit into.

One disappointment I had with the woods portion of the fitting was that, despite being a fitting specific to hybrids and woods, I could only test 3-wood heads. I was really hoping to see some numbers with 5-woods, because I typically bench my 3-wood and rely heavily on my 5-wood.

Aside from that, the woods fitting was very similar to the hybrids fitting, and it was great. I left the testing with two great options that each gave me a 30-plus yard advantage over my gamer. It was up to me to choose between the one that went four yards farther, or the one with a tighter dispersion pattern.

Even though I wasn’t making a purchase, I still wanted to leave my fitting having identified my winners.

The Cobra AeroJet 3-wood was the clear winner as the best overall performing club I tested for the day. Since the AeroJet hybrid was also one of the top two hybrids I tested, I decided to go back and take a few more rips with it and compare it to the other hybrid contender, the Callaway Paradym.

Maybe my swing was hitting a groove (it wasn’t) or maybe I was just becoming more familiar with the club, but the AeroJet hybrid out-performed Paradym in my second round of testing, and felt like a much easier club to swing.

With all that information and testing, my fitter and I determined that my ideal fit was the AeroJet 3-wood and 3-hybrid, with the Paradym 3-wood and 3-hybrid an almost too-close-to-call second. 

Leaving my current 4-iron in the bag would introduce a gapping problem given the increased distance with the hybrid, but as a bogey golfer, I can’t say the gap in my bag between 198 and 222 yards would cost me too many strokes.

By the end of my fitting, I had accomplished both of my goals. I found the solution to 4-for-3 problem at the top of my bag by replacing both woods and my hybrid with a 3-wood and 3-hybrid. I also found the very best clubs for me to fill those spots.

On top of all that, I found a hybrid and 3-wood that outperform my gamers by 25 and 32 yards, respectively, so I got that going for me.

There were a ton of takeaways from my Club Champion woods and hybrids fitting. Here are the top pros and cons that I think you should know before you decide to take the leap.

I’ve elaborated on pretty much all of these already, but here’s what my top takeaways from my Club Champion fitting boil down to:

• I felt comfortable and at ease throughout the fitting, which was a top priority 
• For $125, I was fit for a 3-wood and hybrid that beat my current gamers by 32.5 yards and 25.6 yards, respectively
• Club Champion being brand agnostic gave me confidence that the fitter and I had the same goals. My fitter was perfectly happy recommending one hybrid and a completely different 3-wood based on how they performed as long as the difference in brands made no difference to me
• A fitting is a fun and different way to learn about your game and your equipment, even if you don’t buy anything
• Speaking of not buying anything, there was absolutely no pressure to buy
• My fitter sent all the data from my fitting to me, which is easy to understand using Trackman’s site or app
• My fitter never tried to give me a golf lesson, which would have been distracting and uncomfortable

If you’re debating whether a Club Champion fitting is the best next step in your golf equipment journey, check out these main drawbacks before you make your decision:

• Finding the best shaft on planet Earth for your swing is great, but finding out how much it costs could be a deal-breaker
• I went for woods fitting, and I could only test 3-woods. Since I usually bench my 3-wood in favor of my 5-wood, I would have liked to test 5-wood heads as well
• Not all heads I wanted to test were available in left-handed versions
• I did not get a cost breakdown of the clubs I fit into after my fitting. Even though my fitter knew I had no intention of buying, I would have liked to see the dollar amount of the custom-built clubs, just in case - although I easily got this information through a follow-up email

If you're upgrading any of your golf equipment, I cannot recommend being fit by a professional strongly enough. My experience at Club Champion alone opened up my eyes to just how much money I've spent on clubs that should be good for my game, but really aren't.

Even if you don't plan to buy anything, a Club Champion club fitting can teach you a lot about how your equipment and your game work together.

Just keep in mind that even if the upfront cost of your club fitting is reasonable, expect the custom build of your recommended clubs to be fairly pricey. That's the cost of getting clubs built to your swing, and I think most golfers looking to invest in their games will find that it's money well spent.