The importance of your Lies & Lofts

The golf club at Santo da Serra has recently opened a Repair and Fitting Centre which is exclusive to the island. We offer a number of services from a lies & lofts check, reshafting, regripping and custom fitting your clubs with modern custom fitting tools. There are a wide range of grips and putter grips to choose from in the Pro shop, where you can also select the size of grip depending on your grip size. We can measure you for your lies & lofts and do a shaft fitting by measuring your swing and ball speed. Interestingly enough many of the golfers I have checked for their lies and lofts have had to have alterations to their clubs to get the right lies and lofts specific to their technique.

You are probably asking yourself what are the lies & lofts of your golf clubs?

The loft of the club is related to the how far and how high each club in your bag goes. For example a shot from your pitching wedge (pw) will go a lot higher but not as far as your 5 iron.  The reason why a standard pw is around 48 degrees of loft and a standard 5 iron is around 30 degrees of loft depends on the various manufacturers. It is possible for example to change a 48 degree pitching wedge to a 50 pitching wedge to suit the make up of your set if you thought that the club was a little strong. It is extremely important that you have your lies and lofts checked to make sure that they are correct for your game and that the clubs have not altered themselves from constant playing especially if they are a forged set or a soft metal. 

The lie of a club is the angle that is created by the shaft at the bottom of the club. Golfers often ask what is the correct lie angle for their clubs?  Well this depends on the golfer.  At impact you should make contact with the center of the sole of the club. By doing a dynamic lie test where impact tape is put on the sole of the club and the player is then asked to hit balls form a impact board.  By examining the tape the correct lie angle for your club can be determined.  Once the correct lie ange has been calculated each club in your set can be altered.

Club being altered in the lies and lofts machine

                    
Are your clubs  too flat or too upright? An example of a club that is too upright is where the impact tape is marked on the heel of the club, this type of shot will tend to finish to the left of the target.  A shot where the impact tape is marked on the toe of the club means that the club is too flat and the ball will tend to go to the right of the target.                                                                         

Heel Strike

Toe Strike

It is important that a golfer marks the tape in the centre for the correct lie angle to be assessed and if  any necessary changes need to be made to create the correct lie angle to to suit the golfer. If you are interested in checking your clubs for lies and lofts you can book for a free fitting today.  This is one of the important services we are providing at Santo da Serra, for any other inquiries you can contact the pro shop.

Once you've had your clubs checked and if necessary altered you'll be raring to go out onto the driving range or play on the course, so here is a quick WARM UP exercise for you.

How many times have you driven  into the car park of the golf club and ran down to the first tee without warming up properly. This is a simple way that you can warm up effectively before practicing or hitting your first tee shot of the day. Simply leave the headcover on your driver and make some swings with the head cover on. It is a great way of getting a slow smooth takeaway to start your backwing while maintaining a good rythm and clubhead speed to your swing. Make some backswings first and try a few full swings with the headcover on.

Until next time hope you enjoy your golf and have fun.

Just to remind you that the THE BRIT golf tournament will be held at Santo da Serra golf club for the 3rd year running on Saturday the 22 October. All members and visitors are welcome to participate.  The fee for visitors  is €25 which includes the green fee and a 18 hole stableford competition on the day. For details about the tournament and enquiries about the the Repair & Fitting Centre please contact the pro shop on 291 550100 or email the club reservations@santodaserragolf.com.