If you are going to make melee weapons, make them have a sorta far distance. The tf2 weapons (preferably the fireaxe) has short range and the zombies can hurt you tremendously before you even hit them.
His current set seem to be a 'tier two' set of melees - mine hit about once every second with a slow start, his two or three as well as doing more damage.
The problems hitting are with lag - a perfectly viable hit can fall short if on the server you're actually half a second behind where your client thinks you are...