Why women golfers should never skip getting fit for clubs

Question: I’m a physically fit woman golfer in her mid-40s. I just got below a 20-handicap. Should I be looking at women’s clubs or men’s clubs? And do I need to be fit for them?

Answer: Having never seen you swing it’s a difficult question to answer but you’ve left enough breadcrumbs to put forth educated advice. We present the case study of Tricia Ruddy, a golfer with an eerily similar profile.

Ruddy had a handicap in the high teens and was looking to up her game after a loss in the finals of her club championship in 2023. A good athlete in her early 50s, she was playing a set of women-specific clubs. A clubfitting was suggested and the result was golf-altering.

“I’d never been fit before,” said Ruddy, who went on to win the championship the following year with her new sticks. “I went in just wanting to leave feeling comfortable with the set of clubs I was walking out with, but I was blown away by the process. I realized there's no two people alike. There are no two physiques that are alike. There are no two swing paths that are alike. Everyone has their own natural tendencies. The process was so intriguing to me, and I think the best part is I went in completely brand agnostic. I went in with a blank slate and I let the professionals do all the work.”

The professional in this instance was Woody Lashen, co-owner of Pete’s Golf, a perennial Golf Digest 100 Best Clubfitter based in Mineola, Long Island. His job of getting Ruddy in the right clubs wasn’t smooth, even letting out a joking “what am I going to do with you?” at one point.

The challenge was that Ruddy had plenty of speed but needed launch and a longer length. She also had some gapping issues. The result was a 7-wood and a 9-wood and an iron set where the longest iron was a 6-iron in the HL version of Callaway’s iron with lighter, but stiffer shafts.

This underscores the challenge of getting in the right equipment without getting fit, especially for women—a group that often feels they won’t benefit from the process. “There’s nothing off the rack Tricia could have got that would have worked for her swing,” said Lashen. “She might have got something better than she had but not something that would have let her live up to her potential.”

According to Lashen, of all the women who get fit at his shop only 20 percent get fit into clubs specifically designed for women. To be fair, most women getting fit for clubs are better players so that makes sense. Still, one is not to ignore that there are numerous women’s offerings (Callaway Reva Rise, Ping G Le3 and TaylorMade’s Kalea among them) that will work for a swath of slower-swinging players with plenty of tech and thought behind them.

“In developing the G Le3 line, we also made proper gapping a top priority to help ensure women get the best results from their set,” said Ping executive vice president Stacey Pauwels, who oversees the development of the company’s products made exclusively for women. “That starts by visiting an authorized Ping fitting specialist to determine the ideal set make-up and specifications, based largely on the player’s swing speed.”

The other reality about women’s sets is that while we strongly recommend getting fit, a large segment never develop an interest in golf or a competency in the game that spurs them to that level. This is not a gender-specific problem, certainly, but women-specific sets offer an easy option for those who fall into this category.

Regardless, whether the recommendation is a women’s set or something else, there’s no shortage of options available for golfers who also are women. As Ruddy, who now sports a 15 handicap, said, “We live in a world of technology and technological advances. I’ll never buy clubs again without getting fit for them.”