The Golf
Performance Center opened in
May of 2019
and is starting
to show its
full potential.
By:
Corey Roberson, Director of Golf
As a quick recap: The Golf Performance Center is a state-of-the-art facility housing tools that can help every golfer play better. In both bays we have a 3-camera Swing Catalyst system and one bay is outfitted with TrackMan while the other has FlightScope® and a 3D Motion Plate. In short, we can measure everything. As golf professionals, we’ve always had the ability to use our eyes to see ball flight and the swing to diagnose what’s going on. With the addition of this technology, we can also measure the differences between swings/shots and help players visualize the changes we are trying to make.
Instruction is a component of getting better at golf — another big area is club fitting. Over the last couple of years, we’ve grown our club fitting operation and this is becoming a trend at high-end private clubs. We have fitting components from the big four club manufactures — Callaway, PING,
TaylorMade® and Titleist®. We also have a few selections from smaller vendors like XXIO. Having the proper tools is
part of the equation, but you also need an educated professional who understands golf club performance and can identify areas of improvement in your bag. That’s where we come-in. Our Golf Professional team is dedicated to helping our membership play better golf and through a club fitting, we’ll give you honest feedback on what works and what doesn’t. I’ve been fortunate to learn about golf club performance from some of the greatest fitters in the world including Glenn Mahler who is at the Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) and Jeff Barton who was at the Oven (Nike’s® R&D center for golf clubs). These two guys have fit every type of player imaginable, from beginners to Tiger Woods. They helped shape my club fitting philosophy and that philosophy is embraced by our Golf Professional team.
Every club in your bag has a purpose. When we go into a fitting with a player, we are analyzing their current bag setup (how many hybrids, what’s the longest iron, etc…) and measuring each club on Trackman to determine where we might be able to find performance increases. This is an important principal to understand because it dictates what type of performance we are looking for in each club. The driver is a distance club — we want it to go as far as possible. Here we look at launch angle, spin rate, ball speed to maximize carry and total distance. We are firm believers in the motto ‘if ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ That means if we can’t beat your current gear, we’ll tell you that. Our goal isn’t to sell clubs, it’s to help our members play better golf. There are many times when tweaking the setting on a driver will increase performance enough so that it doesn’t make sense to buy a new one.
We’re going to get a little technical here. Stopping power (how quick you can get a ball stop) is an important factor when looking at irons, hybrids and high lofted fairway woods because we are hitting these clubs into greens and the game is all about controlling where the ball stops. We all want more distance (myself included) and we try to give players that if we can while maintaining or increasing stopping power with these clubs. This metric is determined by launch angle, spin rate and landing angle. Many players think spin is the key in determining stopping power, but the launch and landing angles are equally important. We also need each of these clubs to fly a specific distance so that our bag is properly gapped. The rules of golf allow us to have 14 clubs, but that doesn’t mean that we need 14 clubs. Having two clubs that fly 165-yards doesn’t do us much good.
Every player can benefit from what the Golf Performance Center has to offer so if you’re looking to lower your scores (which makes the game more fun!) contact one of our Golf Professionals.
Corey Roberson is the Director of Golf at The Clubs of Cordillera Ranch. He can be reached at croberson@cordilleraranch.com or 830.336.4653.
