Club Fitting’s Competitive Edge
When I started club fitting almost twenty years ago, the savvy consumer picked their fitter based on who had the best launch monitor. Compared to what we have now, all the launch monitors were laughably bad, but whoever had the newest one had a meaningful edge.
Once Trackman and Foresight became standard features in every golf shop, the smart golfer picked thext fitter who had the most fitting combinations. Why would you go to a fitter that had a handful of demos when another had dozens of heads and shafts that could all be mixed and matched?
In 2026, having tens of thousands of hittable combinations is still noteworthy, but it’s becoming more common. Today, the astute golfer is choosing the company with the smartest fitters and the best fitting tools. On those metrics, no one can compete with Club Champion and their AI Co-Pilot.
Chasing the Best Fit
The idea for Club Champion AI Co-Pilot was born in mid-2021, the result of a conversation between Nick Sherburne, Club Champion’s founder, and Ryan Cox, a longtime Club Champion client.
Ryan’s goal was personal: he wanted to hit fewer balls during his fitting. He wanted to get to the right answer as fast as possible and saw AI plus Club Champion’s mountain of data as the obvious way to get there.
Nick’s goals were multiple. He wanted Club Champion’s fitters to be the smartest in the industry. As he told me, “Having a lot options is great, but the fitting is only as good as the combinations you can think of. No one can realistically master all 65,000 combinations we have.” Nick also wanted to give his fitters more help on difficult fits, pooling the knowledge of all the company’s fitters.
Additionally, Nick noted that AI Co-Pilot allows the fitters to put more focus on the client. Because the fitter is not solely responsible for generating every new idea, they can pay more attention to how the client is swinging and their subjective feedback on each combination. Finally, with his typical candor, Nick told me that shorter fits mean more fits in a day, and that’s just good business.
Building Club Champion AI Co-Pilot
With the concept rooted in his mind, Nick and Inspire11 got to work building the system. He calls it a “predictive learning model” that also leverages Trackman’s Optimizer to help fitters find the best combination of head and shaft for each player. To date, Club Champion has invested over $1.2M in building the software.
While the system is impressive, Club Champion’s real edge is their data. Every Monday, Nick feeds the system roughly 250,000 new shots. That averages out to 1 million shots each month, meaning that Club Champion AI Co-Pilot is currently working with, conservatively, 50 million data points, all based on the swings of real golfers, not theoretical models.
The System in Practice
When Club Champion AI Co-Pilot was first rolled out, Nick said there was some resistance. Veteran fitters, in particular, had difficulty adjusting to this new technology. Now, however, even the oldest fitters have become converts.
Nick told me that newer fitters loved AI Co-Pilot from the jump. Club Champion’s 65,000 combinations can be overwhelming, and AI Co-Pilot provides them a roadmap while they develop their own knowledge.
There’s hard data to show that AI Co-Pilot is meeting some of the lofty goals of its creators. Nick reported that fittings are fifteen minutes shorter, on average. As someone who, like Ryan Cox, wants to hit fewer balls in a fitting, I think this is a major victory. Hitting things can be fun, but who doesn’t want a shortcut to the right answer?
Even more compelling is the way that Club Champion AI Co-Pilot has impacted fitters’ recommendations. In the decade before AI Co-Pilot’s release, one specific OEM was Club Champion’s top-selling OEM every year. In the last three years, every year has seen a different top-seller. This speaks to the way that AI Co-Pilot helps fitters see all the possibilities on the wall rather than getting locked into certain patterns.
Does the Fitter Still Matter?
At this point, the question above asks itself. The answer is a resounding, “Yes.”
The most important part of any club fitting is the conversation between the player and the fitter. Without an understanding of what the player wants, even a perfect AI system would be clueless. And, yes, AI systems can offer a series of questions, but it can’t replace the understanding of a real golfer.
Nick often refers to Club Champion AI Co-Pilot as the fitter’s “backup brain.” I like thinking of it as a caddie to the fitter’s golfer. Is a caddie helpful? Absolutely. Can it make the difference between a good and great performance? Yes. But can the caddie hit the shots? No.
Additionally, the system is blind to the performance of new equipment until fitters put it to real world use. In this way, the fitter and Club Champion AI Co-Pilot form a virtuous cycle of knowledge building. The fitter uses their knowledge to collect data, the system aggregates the entire company’s data to make recommendations, and the fitters use that to further their own understanding. The final result is better fits.
Do We Still Need Live Fittings?
Another fair question, producing another loud, “Yes.”
AI recommendations are great, but they still need to be confirmed. Nick estimated that Club Champion AI Co-Pilot might be 80% accurate. That’s very impressive, but it also means that without live testing 1 in 5 players would spend their money on clubs that don’t work for them. Getting those shortcut directions is awesome, but you still need to confirm that they’ve taken you where you want to go.
This also ignores the human, subjective element. All fitters and most golfers know that there’s an interaction between the club and the player that is never going to be fully understood by a machine. All the numbers in the world may tell you that Combination #373 is going to optimize you off the tee, but if you can’t stand the look or the sound or the way the shaft feels, the numbers mean nothing.
While club fitting has evolved at a lightning fast pace, the fundamental recommendation of Plugged In Golf holds true. When you’re ready to get new clubs, invest in the best fitting you can if you want to play your best golf.
He founded Plugged In Golf in 2013 with the goal of helping all golfers play better and enjoy the game more.
Matt lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago with his wife and two daughters.
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2 Comments
Seems pretty cool, especially the fact that you don’t need to hit as many balls during the fitting. I’ve had problems getting fatigued during the fittings I’ve gone through.
That being said, I really dislike Club Champion’s business model and am hesitant to go there even though they have the best selection of shafts. Seen way too many people get taken advantage of there. I recently saw someone’s order sheet from an iron fitting and CC tried to charge them an extra $1200 for KBS tour lites on top of the normal iron MSRP price. Those are literally the most basic, non-upcharge shaft option from every OEM but because they were “pured” they were an extra 1200 bucks.
Jarrett,
There’s no doubt that Club Champion is a more expensive option, but there is a pretty simple explanation: they have to buy each component individually, then they weight sort (which OEMs don’t do), then they PURE (we have testing to show its efficacy), and then they build to tighter tolerances. I don’t think it’s accurate to say the $1,200 was for KBS Tour Lite. The final cost may have been $1,200 more than the retail price for the irons alone, but that includes more than the shafts. There are a lot of people who will still say that’s too much, and that’s fine, I don’t spend other people’s money, but I do want the facts laid out accurately.
Best,
Matt