Brian Harman, now a Titleist staffer, sat down with the company to talk about why he signed on with the purveyors of the No. 1 Ball in Golf.

The left-hander is gaming a full bag of Titleist clubs, as well as the Pro V1 golf ball. He just put Titleist’s 917 D2 driver in play at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, where he impressively finished third behind Dustin Johnson and Jon Rahm.

Titleist’s full talk with Harman is available on the Team Titleist blog. It is well worth a read in its entirety, but this bit about his driver and iron setup will be of particular interest to GolfWRX members

Q: Let’s talk about some of the clubs in your bag. You’re gaming a new 917D2 driver here at Kapalua. Can you talk a little bit about the fitting process and why the 917D2 is right for you?

Brian: It took all of about, I don’t know, maybe 25 minutes for us to get it figured out. It went right in, man. It’s one of the easiest hitting drivers I’ve ever hit. JJ [Titleist Tour Rep JJ VanWezenbeeck] and I worked on that. It didn’t take much time at all. The numbers were perfect. I actually spun my old driver a little too much at times. And with the 917D2, the spin came right down and I’m just so excited about the year, I can hardly stand it. I’ve been hitting it at home for a long time, and it’s just been itching to get in play. So, I’m excited about this week.

JJ VanWezenbeeck, Titleist Tour Rep: We spent some time working on shaft length and setting. We were able to show Brian that the length of his previous driver was part of the cause of some of his dispersion issues. So when working on shaft length we were balancing swing speed versus dispersion. We found by shortening his driver by 1/2″ we were able to not sacrifice speed. The D2 head was a great fit for him and we were able to test some SureFit settings that optimized spin and direction.

Q: And how about your irons? You mentioned that you’ve played Titleist irons since the CareerBuilder Challenge last year. Were those CBs?

Brian: Yep, I started with 716 CBs in Palm Springs and I’m playing 718 CBs now. I just love the look at address and how they feel. But more important is the consistency. I can control the trajectory and I know exactly how far the ball is going to carry.

JJ VanWezenbeeck: Brian’s iron game had been very good since switching to the Titleist CB and he was very happy. We double-checked his numbers with the 718 CBs heading into the new season and everything was spot on. The one issue he had this year was his 4 iron. It was slightly height deficient and caused some gapping issues. 75% of Titleist iron players on Tour play a mixed set, so this wasn’t anything new. We tried TMB and AP2 with limited success. Brian prefers a much shorter blade length, so to solve the issue we used a 718 CB 3 iron bent weak to give him a little more speed and height. It fit the gap perfectly and gave him better height.

File this as the 10 millionth example of the importance of fitting both to achieve a desired ball flight and set a player up with the equipment s/he is most comfortable and confident with.

Also, as Sean Crocker told us in our interview earlier this year, and a quick perusal of the WITB section reveals, considering a mixed/split set is often worthwhile in the fitting process (even though Harman eventually went with all 718 CBs).

A final interesting equipment-related tidbit: Harman marks his ball in the manner below. Can you guess why? (Clue: he’s an avid hunter)