Golf Swing Stupidity Plus Golf Club Fitting Stupidity Equals the Current State of Clubfitting Trade Stupidity

This is another slightly different type of entry as I continue to explore and experiment with various business issues and potential solutions. In forming the entry, I firmly kept in mind primary goals of my work to help better educate golfers, clubfitters, and others with corrected and/or advanced new information regarding golf swing and clubfitting theories and practices. Part of this process includes addressing other related topics when relevant, and a very integral and crucial element is also trying to find ways to initially introduce as many people as possible to my work as it is displayed for their consideration.

Recently, a current member of the Worrisome Reasonless Xenogolf website forum (whose name is indicated below) posted a rather extensive reply on the site (seemingly almost as long as many of my own entries). In response to the inquiry of another member, the post tried to compare the golf club specifications of swingweight (or swing weight) and MOI club matching techniques. (As I have repeatedly stated previously, technically MOI stands for Moment of Inertia, but in its current configuration [the MOI value about the butt end of a golf club] it is much better termed Moment of Insanity as a golf club matching concept). And unfortunately, the member posted some of the most uneducated and inaccurate information I have ever witnessed regarding these two particular golf club specifications. But that initial sadness quickly turned to folly when he simultaneously also self-proclaimed how much of an expert he is regarding the specifications. He went on to add that there were many experts on the forum site that had clubfitting knowledge equivalent to his own, and he tried to dissuade people from posting anymore if they did not possess his level of clubfitting expertise (unequivocally about as funny and priceless as it can possibly get).

Such posts and actual statements by forum members perhaps prove my point(s) regarding how pathetic and damaging such online forums have been to the game of golf as a whole (and the clubfitting industry more specifically) far better than any comments I have come up with to date in trying to expose the unexaggerated truth of the current situation. Not only is the game becoming more and more unattractive to more and more people, but in certain ways it is becoming downright repulsive thanks in part to the types of posts and/or posters that have become so rampant on the types of public golf forums that are typically presented online today. I will not repeat any specific quotes from the forum member post addressed here, as it is loaded with nonsense from start to finish and would simply further spread tremendous shame that is already plaguing the golf industry and clubfitting trade. But based on my response below you should be able to deduce much of what he posted.

A unique part of this entry is that I will (about one day after I display it here) also post it on the Worrisome Reasonless Xenogolf forum site exactly as it appears starting below, in direct response to his post (somewhat going against my own previous recommendations of never posting on such forum sites). There are a number of reasons for proceeding in this manner. One is that I just cannot bear to see any more golfers so gullibly believe in the considerable amount of inexperienced and erroneous instruction the specific member often posts regarding the particular topics. Another is that it is a potential way to initially introduce more people to my work than I have been able to accomplish to date. And in proceeding in a manner of displaying my entry here first, and despite the posting terms published by the website forum, maybe I will be able to retain more of my intellectual property rights that are so critical and have more recourse against anybody that infringes upon any of the entry anywhere.

Now with that said, and in case proceeding in this manner makes no difference from an intellectual property standpoint (I will eventually need to be legally advised regarding this), I have still been very careful regarding not formulating anything for posting directly on the forum site that has any intellectual property value to it above a determined amount. Such posting strategies may include raising questions I know the answers to but not really answering them (answering them exclusively here), predominantly abstaining from correcting any past materials that are clearly in error, and/or not adding any original matter as examples. Thus, the forum’s owners, management, and/or the like will only be able to take advantage of my work in a limited fashion under the published terms of the forum regarding postings, which (among other things) impose a perpetually free license to utilize any post in absolutely any manner (if even constitutional).

So there is no disclosed information in the entry below that I would deem to be extremely enlightening in nature, and it is certainly not of the educational quality and/or detail that I fundamentally embark on for entries displayed exclusively here. To illustrate, it is noted in the entry that inexperienced posts like Howard’s are oftentimes made by people whose personal golfing motions have never matched up appropriately with swingweighting’s 14-inch fulcrum dimension. But beyond that, meaningful critical details are not revealed, such as the fulcrum dimension very broadly becoming a better fit for golfers as they play and practice more over a longer period of time, less experienced golfers very broadly having their fulcrum rotation points at locations generally less (or shorter) than 14 inches, the specific reason(s) as to why these situations commonly occur, and how to properly proceed if any given golfer does not match up suitably with the specification’s 14-inch fulcrum dimension. Nonetheless, there may be one or statements in the entry that I have not previously disclosed in any of my work. So even if more generalized in nature, any such statements might still serve to set a better foundation for other future entries.

Purposes of entries like this include trying to help golfers, the golf industry as a whole, and the clubfitting trade more specifically on a very large scale and far into the future, and the content does not comprise just some information of a more short-sighted nature. There is no premeditated plan to conceivably embarrass, hurt, and/or anger individuals that I might single out regarding certain devastating flaws in their personal work, and I take absolutely no pleasure in doing so. But the far-sighted nature of this work and many of the related specifics addressed compel this approach and make just broad generalizations regarding past authors quite insufficient.

There remains incredible denial within the clubfitting trade in particular concerning the works of certain individuals that are called (but should not be called) experts or educators in the field of clubfitting. Even on the surface of many of these works there is frequently a conspicuous lack of logic and/or correctness, and poor clubfitting theories and practices remain in plain sight yet to date have never been admitted to. And the teachings of these individuals are somehow still automatically followed by golfers, clubfitters, and others. So some of these individuals need to be specifically pointed out regarding the fact that they still do not understand certain golf swing and/or clubfitting fundamentals nearly as well as they (and/or others) think they do. If just very broadly referring to this group of people in a generalized, non-specific fashion, it seems rather inevitable that this trade will simply continue to remain in severe denial for an unknown amount of time. And as long as that continues, no large-scale and/or long-term improvements for the larger good of the game would seem possible. Accordingly, my entry as it will also subsequently be posted on the named forum website is as follows:

There does seem to be an honest effort above and I do think that people like Howard Jones do want to help others to some degree. But the plain fact is that Howard is just another one of countless participants here that have absolutely no idea whatsoever of what swingweight is all about and how to properly implement the specification. So his comments above regarding swingweighting should be summarily dismissed as being inexperienced and incorrect.

Given that this continually proven, foundational club specification has been around for nearing 100 years now, uninformed posts like the above greatly embarrass the game of golf in general, the clubfitting trade in particular, and the individuals who post such responses. And they make so-called expert forum sites like this look like a comical funnies section of a newspaper. Especially over the past decade or two, such public postings have contributed immensely to turning the clubfitting trade as a whole into the complete travesty that it currently is. This continues to weigh very heavily on the game of golf overall. And this has been a factor in the number of people that have abandoned the game in recent times (with no apparent end in sight based on posts like the above).

Not uncommonly, posts like the above are made by people whose personal golfing motions have never matched up well with swingweight’s 14-inch fulcrum dimension. Thus, they have never been able to personally experience how the specification works first hand. And so they are totally incapable of correctly explaining how the specification is intended to function (and what to do if it does not function well enough for any given golfer). They are then largely reduced to just blindly repeating teachings they read or heard from people like Wishon, Tutelman, and/or certain others that in the end remain just as unenlightened as they are concerning even extremely elementary clubfitting subjects. Yet somehow these people are still gullibly believed (by themselves like Howard’s self-proclaimed expertise above and/or others) to be experts in the field. This farce continues to go on and on and on in the clubfitting industry.

Among other things, and apparently due to a very poor formal/book education he received from one or more entities regarding the specific clubfitting topics, Howard tries to compare swingweight with MOI club matching under his badly informed belief that the two specifications are somehow related to each other (which they are not). He appears to have zero awareness of a vital fact that technically the two are in nature essentially complete opposites of one another in both theory and practice. So one specification can never be considered any sort of improvement or advancement of the other in any way, shape, or form. All of Howard’s comments that try to correlate the two are completely misguided and invalid.

As far as backweighting goes, if the addition of any backweighting to any given golf club (for the purpose of reducing the club’s swingweight value) results in a golfer being able to produce his/her base swing mechanics better (which it can under appropriate circumstances), then it is not unreasonable to expect that the golfer could potentially achieve increased clubhead speed despite the increased total weight of the club. Howard’s implication(s) above that this is impossible is rather inaccurate.

This is just the tip of the iceberg regarding how utterly unknowledgeable and unskilled the clubfitting industry remains regarding these particular elements (as well as numerous other clubfitting elements). Far-reaching humiliation that this trade burdens the entire game of golf with sadly continues to make the game look less appealing to more people.