Feature:Ultimate Fitting Experience
Ritz-Carlton Lodge, Reynolds Plantation
The door to the TaylorMade Performance Lab at Reynolds Plantation looks like one of those impregnable solid steel ones that lead to a vault of gold bullion or a nuclear reactor. Considering all the high-tech equipment and for-your-eyes-only data collection going on behind the door, the silver fortress is entirely appropriate.
One of only four such sites in the U.S., the Lab offers the most comprehensive, state-of-the-art clubfitting wizardry you’ve ever seen. If your idea of a fitting session is hitting balls off a lie board or pounding drives on a launch monitor, welcome to the future. After a session here, you’ll learn more about your swing and equipment than you thought existed.
The key to the experience is the Motion Analysis Technology, which tells you everything you and your club are doing at all points during the swing, courtesy of elbow, knee and shoe coverings, as well as a hat and vest, that hold 32 reflective balls. Also sporting reflectors are a wedge, 6-iron, driver and putter that allow nine stop-motion cameras throughout the room to capture more than 40,000 data points during a full swing.
The result is a futuristic, three-dimensional animated image of yourself looking like The Silver Surfer, or at least, “The Silver Golfer.” The computer gathers information on every facet of your swing—from the routine like swing speed and launch angle, to the proprietary like hand speed—to provide the most accurate club prescription possible (of TaylorMade clubs, of course).
Seeing your swing in such detail from multiple angles may not help your ego, but at least you know that you’ll be armed with the best possible equipment for your game. Which is both good and bad—you won’t be able to blame your equipment ever again.
