Golf Club Waggle Weighting Rites and Rights

While intently focused on revealing Decoding One’s True Golf Swing DNA (critical to understanding what follows), the namesake of the WaggleWeight™ Company has been essentially ignored lately.  But two US patents have recently been issued for the advanced golf club specification of waggle weight, which improves and solidifies the foundation of a concept initiated by the inventor(s) of swing weight (swingweight), and which in time is expected to supplant that long-lived and very successful club specification.  If interested and not seen yet, please check out the Press Releases page of the WaggleWeight.com website to view the May 5, 2009 release associated with the issuance of these patents.

Applying rational thinking, the best way to golf well is to swing well, and the most basic element needed to swing well (equipment-fitting wise) is to make sure all of one’s clubs exhibit the same effective clubhead weight (could be described differently if desired such as the same golf club balance or even the same effective club total weight) at the start of each of one’s swings.  As the advanced waggle weight specification accomplishes this better than any golf club specification developed in the past, it seems foolish to now accept the one-size-fits-all fulcrum position of the swingweight specification for such a crucial swing- and game-changing club parameter.  Why anyone would spend a penny on a golf club purchase or adjustment before being fit or evaluated for the advanced waggle weight club specification is anybody’s guess.  A golf swing will certainly appear more difficult and will actually be more difficult to perform consistently if the waggle weight specification (“The First Specification of Clubfitting”) does not fit one correctly.

Being patented now, however, the new golf club specification cannot be used without the authorization of the WaggleWeight Company.  In fact, several organizations have already been bluntly notified in writing that using the waggle weight specification is legally prohibited by their US members.  I requested that they inform their present and prospective members of this ban, but this author would have golfer’s brain if he believed they all did and are doing so.  Therefore, I shall state these specific organizations right here.  The Association of Golf Clubfitting Professionals (AGCP), the Golf Clubmakers’ Association (GCA), the International Clubmakers’ Guild (ICG), and the International Professional Association of Clubfitters (IPAC) are among the groups notified that they are unconditionally prohibited from using the patented waggle weight club specification (as well as the patent-pending golf swing and clubfitting processes revealed in Decoding One’s True Golf Swing DNA).  Due simply to a fluke and an apparent connection between the IPAC and a custom clubfitting company called KZG, I consider the KZG Company to have also been notified.  If you are currently associated with one or more of these groups, considering becoming associated, or considering having any fitting performed by anyone connected to any of these organizations, please be cognizant that these entities have been individually notified some time ago already (around the end of October 2008) that they are prohibited from using these golf swing and clubfitting advancements.

I did leave open the possibility of forming relationships with one or more of these groups, but I do not really anticipate any such relationships in the foreseeable future.  Substantial overhauling would be required to turn them into truly efficient and successful clubfitting organizations and would not likely be undertaken anytime soon.  Such entities often have deep-rooted professional and/or personal ties to particular teachers and/or teachings and are usually committed to following them.

Organization members can often be observed pondering why they have not been more successful at taking a more considerable chunk of business away from major golf club companies (which they should have done by now).  They are frequently good at blaming the advertising dollars and ploys of large golf club manufacturers, but not very good at recognizing how and/or why they themselves are so much to blame for the current state and reputation of the clubfitting industry.  The general consensus (of the independent clubfitting trade in particular) is that the major club manufacturers have brainwashed golfers about certain things, and that to overcome this dilemma the “truth” about custom golf clubs must finally be spread far and wide among golfers.  The truth?

Now it is true that golfers in general, and this includes many very good golfers, are about as naïve as can be regarding many advertising claims about golf clubs.  This evidence further supports the claim that golfers are not really athletes in the comprehensive sense of that word.  Athletes are commonly assumed to be sufficiently aware (more than golfers are for sure) of how much (and why) their equipment affects their performance.  Athletes usually amass more experience with their equipment and compile more knowledge about it, enabling them to fit that equipment to themselves (even among average athletes) better than most golfers can.

Expanding on this, an ignorance of clubfitting by golfers certainly will not disappear simply by submitting to the so-called “education” and/or “experience” promoted by the custom clubfitting industry.  They will be just as vulnerable.  In fact, there are far fewer critical fitting variables than this industry claims, and if the custom club fitting/making trade as a whole could become more competent at achieving two or three of the more crucial variables better than the major manufacturers can with mass-produced golf clubs, it would be far more successful.  Only a true clubfitting lanoisseforp (professional spelled backward) could possibly use and/or endorse such an inapt clubfitting practice as the infamous grip-on-stick method for fitting one’s golf grip size, yet this remains the most accepted grip-fitting practice within the clubfitting industry.  There are people labeled as clubfitting experts who are convinced that one will swing more consistently by making one’s clubs feel more inconsistent at address.  Even more telling is the sheer number of fitters who can be convinced that this is true.

Perhaps now you can see that the major club manufacturers hardly have a monopoly on using ploys (or truths depending on your point of view) in trying to attract the business of Mr. Gullible Golfer.  On the other hand, is it possible that golfers are not as gullible as I make them out to be, that they are sufficiently perceptive to see some of the ploys by the custom clubfitting trade that can be worse than those used by major club manufacturers, and that this is the reason the clubfitting industry is not as successful as it could/should be?  Irregardless, putting aside modern technologies like swing and shaft analyzers and launch monitors for a moment, the elementary ABC’s of clubfitting in golf remain so poorly understood to this day and easily the worst in all of sport that clubfitting failure is essentially assured even before one gets the chance to utilize these modern technologies.

These widespread clubfitting industry traits, and the current ban of using the advanced waggle weight golf club specification, are not limited to the organizations listed above by any means.  In fact, waggle weighting is totally prohibited from being used until further notice.  This includes but is not limited to all individual golfers, club manufacturers of all sizes, and all PGA of America members (the PGA has also been notified in writing).  It also applies to all new entities that constantly seem to pop up.  Anyone who analyzes the pre-swing movement of a golfer and determines a fulcrum rotation point location to more precisely balance any of his golf clubs around is infringing on one waggle weight patent.

One of many options is establishing yet another organization that golfers could truly rely on for their swing instruction and/or clubfitting needs.  Unlike other entities, members of this organization would be the only ones authorized to use the most advanced, relevant, patented and patent-pending swinging and clubfitting methods and devices (including but not limited to the unequaled waggle weight club specification).  The advantage(s) gained over club manufacturers, PGA members, the above-noted organizations, swing teaching entities, and others would be indescribable and remain in force until the years 2025-2028.  Anybody who might be interested in founding such an organization can contact me to see if it leads anywhere.

At this point, Waggle Weight Wisdom is going to take some time off.  Developing more correct theories and practices and deciding exactly what, when, and how to reveal them is hardly the same undertaking as trying to put a new twist on the same old copied, faulty, and/or irrelevant golf swing and clubfitting topics that seem to have been around forever.  My current plan is to be back and continue correcting additional theories and practices that are still erroneous, next revealing new clubfitting standards that are unreachable by today’s methods.  Yet it is not my firmest plan to continue.  Thus, if you have gotten any benefit and/or enjoyment from this enterprise, if you hope to get any more, and if you want to best influence its continuation, please consider showing some support by helping to promote awareness of the WaggleWeight™ Company and its intellectual properties.