By Chris Broadie
Ever since PING founder Karsten Solheim first helped tour professionals find consistent success by fine-tuning the loft and lie of their irons, lie-angle fitting has been the foundation of PING’s fitting process. His legacy lives on today through our iconic Color Code Chart. A properly fit lie angle enables the club to be dynamically flush to the ground during the impact interval and helps align the face square to the target.
When getting fit for irons, it is therefore critical to find a fitter who both understands how to accurately measure lie angle and how to properly utilize this information.
The first step is to accurately measure lie angle. Today, an overwhelming number of tools can be used to measure lie angle, none of which are void of criticisms or imperfections. Radar-based launch monitors face difficulties with their hardware being positioned 10 feet behind the ball – any difficulty measuring the angle of the shaft near impact can throw off the accuracy of its measurement. Camera-based technology, like Foresight’s GC Quad, relies on markers being placed on the face perfectly parallel to the ground. Similarly, the vertical Sharpie line test, popular among many fitters, relies on the line on the ball being placed perfectly perpendicular to the ground. Considering that a 1-minute change on a clock is a change of 6 degrees, and a good lie-angle fitting is to the nearest 1 degree, it can be quite difficult to hand measure lie angle to the accuracy required. If your fitter is going to use the Sharpie test, make sure they are meticulous with the position of the vertical line.
