Welcome to Fully Fit 2026GOLF’s new platform for providing you with real-golfer insights into what 2026 gear might be best suited for your game. To this end, we assembled six GOLF content creators of varying abilities and ran them through the gauntlet of six full-bag fittings (driver to putter!) at six major club manufacturers in Phoenix and Carlsbad, Calif. Our hope: that you might see shades of your own game in one of our panelists’ and take some learnings and inspiration from their fitting experiences.
***
It was a grand experiment.
Instead of sorting each of the major golf-club companies’ new releases for this year in a way that doesn’t guide you toward what’s best for your own game, we did something different. We dispatched six of our GOLF creators to six of the leading manufacturers’ fitting facilities in Phoenix and Southern California for six full bag fittings over the course of nine days.
The mission was simple: piece together each of our panelists’ dream setup of 2026 clubs in hopes that you might relate to one of their games and be able to learn more about what clubs might work for you.
MORE FULLY FIT: Fully Fit hub page | Why we’re ‘testing’ golf clubs differently this year | Browse 2026 drivers | Browse 2026 irons
Dream trip? No doubt — but exhausting, too! (Cue the tiny violins.)
The panelists included our GOLF Fully Equipped gear team — Johnny Wunder (director), Jake Morrow (content manager) and myself (associate editor) — along with GOLF editors Sean Zak and Maddi MacClurg, and Fairway Jockey president Wadeh Maroun.
It was an education like no other. We learned about our swings, our games, our clubs and our bodies — as in how many golf balls we could pound in a week without breaking down.
To browse our final bags from the project, clicking the links below, or keep reading for a brief overview of our trip.
Jake Morrow (handicap: 0) | Jack Hirsh (2) | Johnny Wunder (2) | Wadeh Maroun (2) | Mad MacClurg (5.6) | Sean Zak (7.8)
Fully Fit 2026 Day 1: Ping Proving Grounds (Phoenix)
Table of Contents
- Fully Fit 2026 Day 1: Ping Proving Grounds (Phoenix)
- Fully Fit 2026 Day 2: TaylorMade Kingdom (Carlsbad, Calif.)
- Fully Fit 2026 Day 3: Titleist Performance Institute (Oceanside, Calif.)
- Fully Fit 2026 Day 4: Cobra Tour Fitting Experience (Encinitas, Calif.)
- Fully Fit 2026 Day 5: Ely Callaway Performance Center (Carlsbad, Calif.)
- Fully Fit 2026 Day 6: Cleveland/Srixon/XXIO at the Navy Golf Course (Cypress, Calif.)
Jack Hirsh/GOLF
Our trip kicked off in Phoenix on a flat grass driving range in the middle of an industrial park. The location of the Ping Proving Grounds makes all too much sense when you consider the long industrial history of Ping’s parent company, Karsten Manufacturing.
At the Proving Grounds, we encountered our first shocker of the trip: the new Ping G440 K driver, a club that could be hit all over the face and still fire the ball off like a rocket. The new S259 wedges also proved popular. Had we all just found our driver on the first stop of the trip? Certainly, it was too early to make any decisions, but it was good reminder that every company’s equipment is so good; final selections would be no easy task.
Fully Fit 2026 Day 2: TaylorMade Kingdom (Carlsbad, Calif.)
;)
Adam Christensen
A quick hop over the sun-baked desert to the Southern California coast, and we were on to our next stop at TaylorMade’s Kingdom. The name was apt as we changed shoes in a locker room next to Tiger Woods’ golf bag while looking at the bags of Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy from their respective 2025 major victories.
At TaylorMade, the fitting wars kicked into high gear with the multiple permutations of their new Qi4D drivers, fairway woods and hybrids. Many of us were also eager to be fit for a Spider putterthe winningest putter family on the PGA Tour last year.
Fully Fit 2026 Day 3: Titleist Performance Institute (Oceanside, Calif.)
;)
Jack Hirsh/GOLF
Our next stop took us to arguably the most impressive of the OEM’s facilities: the Titleist Performance Institute. TPI is less of a fitting facility and more of a Candy Land for golf nerds. It’s a massive 33-acre driving range set on a plateau overlooking the Pacific Ocean with 10 different greens that can play as a par-3 or short course designed by David McLay-Kidd.
Here our panelists were schooled on Titleist’s “three Ds” of iron fitting while also getting introduced to the latest Vokey SM11 wedges and Scotty Cameron Phantom putters — not to mention going through a top-to-bottom ball fitting to dial in the most important piece of gear in the bag. We were halfway done, but plenty more still to come!
Fully Fit 2026 Day 4: Cobra Tour Fitting Experience (Encinitas, Calif.)
;)
Jack Hirsh/GOLF
At the end of our first week, we arrived at the back of the range at Encinitas Ranch Golf Course to work with Cobra’s team and their new OPTM metalwoods and 3DP iron lineup. Cobra’s Tour Fitting Experience makes use of their old Tour Truck to give players the experience of a Tour-level fitting, and we got just that, especially with the appearance of Tour rep Ben Schomin.
We could have ended the trip right here. Cobra’s full 2026 line, top-to-bottomis the best it has ever been, and everyone could have walked away with everything they needed to play great golf. But the show goes on!
Fully Fit 2026 Day 5: Ely Callaway Performance Center (Carlsbad, Calif.)
;)
Adam Christensen/GOLF
Our second week of fittings saw our group refreshed after a weekend off and ready to head to Callaway’s Ely Callaway Performance Center, where speed was the name of the game.
Callaway’s new Quantum drivers were fast and, coupled with new 2026 Chrome Tour golf ballsthey were even fasterwith many of us seeing our fastest ball speeds of the trip. Now we all had a ton of things to think about when it came to our setups.
;)
Adam Christensen/GOLF
Our sixth and final stop on the trip took us north to Orange County, where a young Tiger Woods learned the game at the Navy Golf Course. We were all on our last swings, having pushed our bodies to the limit, but sometimes that’s the best time to get fit.
For our final day, we were run through the lines of Cleveland/Srixon, including their popular ZXi line of irons and RTZ wedges. If we were sure what our bags were going to look like, leave it to one last fitting to give us more options than we could ever need.
