[Unwiseevove]

I'm sure there are a few people that have been to one of the Performance Lab locations and done the full MATT Lab fitting, but I wanted to share my particular experience in hopes that it would help people that are maybe on the fence paying to do something this awesome. I'm sure this will be quite a long review but I hope to make it as easy to read as possible. I didn't get to take any pictures of the specific process, just the lab in general so I apologize.

To start, the guys at the lab in Portland, OR were extremely awesome to work with. Jon is the usual fitter there and within 1 day of me emailing him saying I was interested in a fitting and describing all the bad experiences I had before he emailed me back with all kinds of questions and assuring me that this would be like nothing I'd ever experienced before. We quickly set up a time and date and as the day came nearer I became more and more anxious. My appointment was at 10 am this morning at Columbia Edgewater CC (the Portland location) so I got there about 15 minutes early to make sure I was able to find the place okay. I walked down to the pro shop where the guys directed me into this room that literally looks like a bank vault. Inside was Nick, from the TM center in San Fran who was filling in while Jon was away for the weekend. Nick was awesome. The minute I walked in I had a good feeling that things were going to be different from my previous fittings and Nick did everything he could to make me feel at home and make sure we got things right.

We started off with Nick asking me questions about my game, my current clubs, and what my goals were with the fitting. I told him my typical misses (slice, pull slice) and which clubs I was really comfortable with (putter, hybrid, wedges) and which ones I really wasn't (driver, irons). Nick pulled out everything in my bag and carefully examined everything: the shafts, clubheads, settings on my driver, grips, weights, he went through it all. During this time he told me to just grab my 54* wedge and hit some balls into the net to get warmed up and used to hitting off their mat. I was a little nervous and could tell because I skulled 3 right away, but I quickly reminded myself that I'm not here to impress anybody, just swing freely. After warming up Nick explained the system to me and the suit I was about to hop into. He went over the cabinent and we started attaching all the suit parts/sensors so the high speed cameras could pick up everything about my swing. I have no idea how many sensors total it was but I was wearing them everywhere (shoes, knees, elbows, chest, hat, wrists, pockets, everything). Plus the golf club has another 5-8 sensors. Honestly, it didn't feel awkward at all and you can hardly even tell the sensors are there, it's very easy to swing in them.

So, finally we get down to hitting balls with the sensors. Nick hands me a SW first, I take 5-6 swings with it and all the data is recorded. Nick doesn't tell me any of it because he doesn't want it to influence any of my swings after that, which I'm okay with. We repeat the process with a 6 iron, driver, and putter. I made a conscious effort to try to make a smooth, fluid swing since that's been my goal lately in not trying to overpower the golf ball. Here are my static results that the system spit out. A few swings were deleted that I hit poorly. After Nick explained the data it was pretty easy to see why my golf ball does what it does. I've always struggled with a bit of a pull slice, because of an over the top move. Data backs that up.

Wedge
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6 Iron
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Driver
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Putter
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System recommendations (Static fitting)
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After the static fitting part Nick just made a few suggestions to my swing which my instructor back home has also been working with me on. I have to get back to alignment first and foremost. My shoulders tend to stay way open to my target line, which makes it very hard for me to swing inside out. Therefore, I revert back to old habits and start swinging outside in and over the top. Nick liked everything else about my swing and commented that I had extremely good coordination and feel to be able to get the club back square a great amount of the time even swinging OTT. Grip and posture he also liked and commented that with my smooth swing I was still generating great clubhead speed and I really had no need to try to overexert and swing harder. We talked about clubface more and how people get so caught up in clubhead speed that they forget about hitting the ball square, where the "trampoline" really is.

Here are a few images from the CD he burned me that show the OTT/Shoulders issue pretty well

Driver setup
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Driver impact
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Driver down the line
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Finally, we took the suit off me and Nick collected a ton of clubs in the RBZ staff bag for us to go outside to the range and do a dynamic fitting based on what the system and he thought would suit me best. This was the part I was most excited about, and it turned out to be everything I'd hoped.

Deleted wedge section since my post is too long. ATV wedges were awesome.

Next we pulled out a R11 6 iron head and wanted to try a few different shafts. Nick brought out the S300, KBS Tour stiff, DG XP S300, and PX 6.0 flighted, thinking those would be the best options for me to try. I hit some with my current irons in S300 and Nick studied the launch monitor for a few swings. He said he wanted to bring my launch down just a tad and spin up just a little bit. My ball flight with the S300s in my Mizunos is quite high, and he wanted to see something a little more penetrating, which I was cool with. My easy swing was netting about 161 yard with the Mizunos in S300. We switched over to the R11 with KBS Tours. Man, these really felt great. I hit about 5 more swings and we were both pretty satisfied with the results. I was getting another 6-7 yards with these shafts and the R11 heads and only 1-200 rpm's of sidespin, which I was happy with. But, just to be sure we carried on. And I'm glad we did. The DG XP S300s were absolute monsters for me, and felt like no iron I'd ever swung before. They had a certain "pop" to them that the KBS and DG S300s didn't have, without sacrificing any feel at all. My numbers improved even more with the XP's. My average 6i distance jumped up to 173 and it was an absolute joy to swing them. Finally, the PX 6.0's. They didn't last long. Too boardy. The XP's were the winner here, followed closely by the KBS Tours. I wouldn't object to having Tours at all, the ball flight between those and the XP's were very similar I just happened to get a bit more distance with the XP's.

We moved on to 3 wood and hybrid. I told Nick I was pretty comfortable with my Mashie 2i and didn't really want to mess with it, so the only thing we were interested in hybrid was eliminating my 4i, which I told him I couldn't hit at all. Something I'd never thought of (or heard of really) that Nick suggested was an RBZ 3i hybrid head with a stiff steel shaft in it. Nick said it would give me the stability of an iron, and the easy-ness to hit of a hybrid, which was awesome. Great success here, and I'm going to pursue this route probably first out of anything I do. The RBZ 3 wood I wasn't as impressed with. I was getting decent numbers (230-235) with it, but it honestly just didn't feel that great in my hands, even with a few different shafts in it. Nick and I decided my Mashies were probably going to stay in the bag. He recommended if I ever got a chance I may want to upgrade a bit from the stock Miya shafts in them to something 10-15 grams heavier but that I wasn't killing myself too much with the 60ish gram shafts in them right now.

Finally, driver. We tried two. The RBZ 9* head and the R11S TP head at 10.5* set to 9.5*. Nick noticed with my current driver my spin numbers were a little high (3500ish) so that was the main focus, to bring down my spin to right around 3,000 he wanted to see. We started with the stock shaft in the RBZ and I quickly switched over to the R11. Didn't like the RBZ head at all, and Nick agreed the R11S was probably more suited for me. He said the RBZ would probably give me more distance, but the R11 would have a better dispersion for me, and he was right. The R11S felt a lot better, even with the stock shaft. We tried 3 shafts, the Fubuki alpha 70 in stiff, the Aldila RIP Gamma 60 in stiff, and The Aldila RIP'd NV 65 in stiff, in addition to the stock shaft. Wasn't a fan of the Fubuki, and I couldn't really put a finger on why, so we moved on. The Gamma 60 felt pretty darn good, but I was still having a few issues with a little bit of a fade-borderline slice. Finally, the NV was an almost perfect fit. We got the spin down to about 2980 consistently and the numbers and ball flight reflected it. It was an absolute piercing flight that didn't balloon at all, and I could see in the distance that it was getting quite a bit of rollout. The LM had my swing speed at 107-108 average with a ball speed up in the high 150's, low 160's. I felt pretty good that it was only showing 3-400 rpm's of side spin, and felt I could get that down even more with some practice. Finally, we were both happy with the distance. The LM was showing a carry of about 265 average right down the pipe. I stepped on a few and was able to get it out farther, but I was really, really happy. All of this was done using a 44 1/2" club length, which Nick suggested to help me keep better control. I walked away being extremely happy with the driver.

Considering I'd just been fit for a putter not a month earlier and was very happy with the way I'd been rolling my Odyssey MX #7 we didn't do much with putters. He checked my setup and everything on the putting green to see if he'd make any loft or lie adjustments in his notes and he let me roll a few different models just to see if there was anything I liked. One thing that really stood out to me was the Manta Center shafted putter. It was a dream to roll, and if I wasn't rolling my MX so well I'd easily take a look at it.

Finally, we got back into the lab and Nick took about 20 minutes to write down all his notes and type up a sheet for me of all his suggested clubs including loft/lie adjustments, length adjustments, shafts, heads, driver head adjustments, grip style and size. Anything I'd ever wanted, he put down and it was great to finally see a list of clubs that were custom fit just to me. Because the printer was having some issues he was going to have Jon email the list to me once he gets back this week so when I get it I will post it up here so everyone can see the final results of the static & dynamic fittings. I don't remember everything off the top of my head (mostly length, loft, lie adjusments) but a few quick notes about things I will for sure be looking into:

-R11 irons with XP S300s. The shafts for me were the big selling point, but I was pleased with the R11 heads as well. My next set of irons will have the XP shafts. We'll see about which head I go with.

-3 hybrid head with XP S300 shaft. This was so intriguing to me and something I'm really going to look into. I'm pretty excited about it.

-10.5* R11S with the Aldila RIP'd NV 65 shaft. Again, the shaft for me was HUGE. For now I will probably look into buying the shaft and having it cut down to stick into my R9 460 head and adjust the settings to what Nick recommended and see if I can get away with not purchasing a new driver right now.

-ATV wedges. These really are fantastic. Not sure I want to drop the money for a whole new set after I just purchased a whole set of 588's, but they are absolute gamers. The ATV sole is the real deal, and I wouldn't hesitate to throw these in the bag.

Other than that, my mission is to continue to work on my game now that I really understand what my club does when it impacts the ball. I know I have to work on my alignment to the ball and swinging to right field, as Nick and others on here have put it so many times. This has been a continual work in progress for me over many months and I'll continue to work at it. I hope you've all enjoyed this massive wall of text and I hope some people will ask questions, I'd love to answer some. I apologize for being vague in some of the details, trying to remember everything with so much data all day was quite a challenge. I'll have more answers when I get my sheet back, and I can probably remember things asked specifically. All in all, the $300 tag for the fitting was absolutely worth it. If you've never been fit before, I'd say it's even more worth it. I'll leave you with a few pictures of the lab:

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