Well, you could have gone to a fitting salon like Club Champion and they would have started with upcharge/exotic shafts.

My guess is most golfers will get close with stock shafts and a majority will flinch at an upcharge bill. So, not that it was easier, but you may have needed to have asked questions about less common shafts. In your case the fairway shaft should have ar least begged the question.

I had a similar situation. I got so much better results than with my prior driver I stopped at the first shaft except for that variable flex exotic shaft that was clearly not for me. Now with GTS in hand, the right side miss and ballooning ball flight is solved. There is a strong left fade that I fight, so I’ve booked another session to look at a few more shafts including one upcharge Tour AD, to see if it is the archer or arrow. He did ask me if I had other options in mind. I didn’t at the time. On me.

Really the fitting process should be an ongoing conversation between you and the fitter as far as what you wanted out of a particular club, and the performance each model of head and shaft that was tried. If a stock, non-upcharge shaft met those goals, and you as the individual wanted to see if another upcharge shaft model offered any performance gain, then you could have asked the fitter about them. Their job is to fit you into a product that works best for your needs and goals, and not try to sell an upcharged product unless the gains were much better performance.