Most golfers don’t know how to tell if your clubs are fit for you, and assume a proper club fitting needs a launch monitor, a hitting bay and a few hundred dollars.
For the biggest fit problems in the average bag, it doesn’t need a launch monitor. You need a tape measure, a marker pen, a range session and about an hour.
I know where those problems usually hide because I’ve looked at a lot of bags. FitMyGolfClubs, the app I built, grades every club in a golfer’s bag across eight fitting factors.
Our latest results come from 231 graded amateur bags, and they point to a short list of things you can check at home. Here’s how to do each one, in the order most likely to find something.
1. Check How Old Your Clubs Really Are
This is the least glamorous check and the most useful. In our data, club age was the single weakest factor in 37% of bags, more than one in three.
Grooves wear, shafts tire and designs move on. Wedges wear fastest, because they take the most full swings out of sand and rough and rely most on groove sharpness for spin.
How to check: write down each club and the year it came out (the model name is usually enough to look it up). Then look at your wedge faces in good light.
If the grooves have rounded edges or a shiny, smooth patch where you usually strike the ball, they’re costing you spin. Replacing just the oldest clubs, often the wedges, is usually the cheapest fix with the biggest return.
2. Find The Gaps and Overlaps In Your Set
Set club age aside and look only at fit, and one problem leads the list: loft gapping. In our 231 bags it was the weakest fit factor in 42% of them.
Loft gapping is how evenly your clubs are spaced in distance. When it’s off, two clubs fly the same distance (a wasted slot in your bag) or a hole opens up where you have no club for a common yardage.
It happens a lot in mixed sets. Modern irons often have much stronger lofts than older ones, so a new 7-iron can fly as far as an old 6-iron, and a new set paired with old wedges often leaves a big hole just above your pitching wedge.
How to check:
- Look up the stated loft of every club on the manufacturer’s spec sheet. Don’t assume your pitching wedge is the same loft as last year’s model.
- At the range, hit five solid shots with each club and note the typical carry distance (where it lands, not where it stops).
- Lay the numbers out in order.
As a rule of thumb, neighbouring irons should be roughly 10 to 15 yards apart. If two clubs are within a few yards of each other, or there’s a 25 to 30 yard jump anywhere, you’ve found a gap worth fixing.
A loft adjustment at a golf shop, or swapping one club, usually solves it.
3. Test Your Lie Angles With a Marker Pen
Lie angle is the problem almost nobody checks. In our data it was the weakest factor in one in five bags.
Lie angle is the angle between the shaft and the sole of the club at address. If it’s too upright for you, the toe sits up and shots tend to start left (for a right-hander).
Too flat and the heel sits up and shots tend to go right. It happens even on a good swing, which is why so many golfers blame their technique.
How to check: draw a straight vertical line on the back of a golf ball with a marker. Set the ball down with the line pointing straight up and hit a normal iron shot off a mat or firm turf. The line transfers to the clubface.
- Line straight up and down: your lie angle is about right.
- Line tilted toward the heel: the club is too upright for you.
- Line tilted toward the toe: the club is too flat for you.
Do it with a few irons. Lie angles should progress steadily through the set, and mixed sets often break that pattern.
4. Measure Your Club Length
Clubs that are too long or too short make you change your posture to reach the ball, and that costs consistency.
How to check: stand straight in your golf shoes with your arms hanging relaxed. Have someone measure from the crease of your wrist to the floor.
That wrist-to-floor figure, together with your height, is what fitters use to set a starting length. Then compare it with your clubs’ actual lengths from the spec sheet or a tape measure.
If your posture feels cramped or you find yourself reaching, your length is a good suspect.
5. Make Sure Your Shaft Flex Matches Your Swing Speed
Shafts get most of the attention in equipment talk, and the data suggests that’s a bit misplaced. Only 2% of bags scored below a C on flex consistency, which measures whether the shafts in a bag are consistent with each other.
That’s a different question from whether your flex suits your swing. For that you need your swing speed.
An inexpensive personal launch radar, or a swing speed reading from a golf shop, will give you a number.
Compare it with a swing speed chart to see which flex your speed calls for. Too stiff usually costs you height and a little distance. Too soft can send shots higher and less predictably.
What To Fix First
Work down the list in order. Replace worn wedges and clubs that are more than a few generations old. Fix the obvious distance gaps. Then check lie angle and length, and check shafts last.
Most golfers find their biggest problem in the first two steps, and neither needs anything more than a pen, a range and an honest look at their bag.
A launch monitor fitting still has its place, especially if you’re about to buy a new set. But you’ll get far more out of it if you walk in already knowing where your bag is weakest.
Sean Morrissey is the founder of FitMyGolfClubs, which grades a golfer’s whole bag across eight fitting factors without a launch monitor. The figures in this article come from 231 amateur bags graded on FitMyGolfClubs between March and September 2026.