Sports
Ben Giunta
In this episode, host Claude Harmon interviews Ben Giunta from the Live Tour, discussing the vital role of equipment managers in professional golf. They explore the dynamics of equipment fitting, the ...
Ben Giunta
Sports •
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Interactive Transcript
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This is an I Heart Podcast.
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It's the son of a rich podcast. I'm your host,
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Claude Harmon this week, Ben Jenta from the Live Tour event. And listen,
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I think the guys that work on all of the tours all over the world,
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PGA Tour Live, LPGA, DP Asia, Champs Tour, the guys that are looking after
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professional golfers and their equipment. I think are some of the unsung heroes
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in professional golf because they're people that are so important to what
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professional golfers are trying to do and equipment plays a vital role. So I think this
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is a really good pod not only talking about equipment at the highest level, but also talking
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about equipment for you and what to look for with your equipment. So it's a deep dive into
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equipment for you golf equipment nerds out there. This is a good one or we get to it. This
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So then we're here in the live tour truck to the end of the live season. And before we get into
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kind of what that world is like, there's one tour van on live that kind of encompasses all of the
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manufacturers. They call them OEMs, but all of the big manufacturers now are a part of live.
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That wasn't the case in the beginning. This used to be actually the old Calloway truck.
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But just to give the listeners an idea, so we've got one truck on live for how many players?
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I would say any given week we probably have 58 to 60. 58 to 60. DJ tour any given week. It's going to be
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probably one. Well, in between 120 and probably 150. Yeah, and then when we get to the FedEx
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cup, it's stuff like that. But a normal weekend or week out, you've got about 150 PGA tour players.
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And how many trucks on an average week are on the PGA tour? Probably a dozen. Yeah, it doesn't.
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So every manufacturer tailor made title is, yeah, cobra. Maybe you've got component companies,
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component companies, the shaft companies, stuff like that. So the idea to try and put one truck
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together for one tour and then one truck for 50-some odd players. I can remember in the beginning,
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the first time we really kind of saw you guys doing stuff was in Portland, the second live event.
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But so how did you guys get involved in this product? Yeah, so ironically, the very first event
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was at Pumpkin Ridge, right? And that is our second event. Well, first domestic, first domestic event.
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Right. So that happens to be where I'm from. And so when we kind of caught wind, one of my,
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so I came from Nike, right? Yeah, you were, you were the Nike tour. So Nike had equipment from when
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to when? Well, so equipment came out in probably 2002, 2003 somewhere in there and went all the way
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to 16 16s when they pulled the cord. Yeah, I can still remember being at Hartford and with Brooks,
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Brooks was full head to toe Nike had all the golf clubs and stuff and he'd really only been
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with Nike for a very short period of time. Maybe it was a season. And so it was his first season. So
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I can still remember when we were like, oh gosh, you know, we've got 14 clubs in the ball now to
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kind of figure out what we're going to do and where we're going to go. Totally. So I, you know,
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having my Nike history in the background working out on the tour, working with these trucks,
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working with these athletes, I had a coworker that did the same thing over in Europe and he actually
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covered the first event in London. They had reached out. And when, and when we was getting off the
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ground, right, they were recruiting talent, specialized talent. And there's not a ton of people
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in the universe that do what we do that have specifically, I think, do what you do at the
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tour level. There are loads of people that keep clubfitting. There are some great clubfitters that
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aren't on the PGA tour or are working with elite athletes. But to work with tour players,
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it's a little bit like I always say the tour vans are like the pits for Formula One, right?
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That's where the cars come in. That's where everything gets tweaked. So you had the background with
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Nike. Live was looking to do something. Yeah. So they were kind of bootstrapping the whole thing
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right at the gate. And they were looking at each individual venue. And since I happened to be
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based at Pumpkin Ridge for the first event in the US, it was an easy conversation. They asked if I
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would like to do it. I was like, yeah, might as well. This will be fun. And that just led to future
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conversations. Once they kind of got to know these guys and they got to know my background and they
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realized not only did I have experience working with the athletes, but I experienced working on
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these trucks and I had a roller decks with the OEMs. And I could probably pull this whole thing.
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I could be the conduit to get the support that this league needed to get it off the ground to
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support the athletes, right? It was very toxic, you know, initially to get off the ground. Nobody,
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no, none of the manufacturers wanted to touch it. They didn't really know how to support the players.
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They were going to do it off course indirectly. But I was able to, you know, because I had the
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experience previously, I knew everybody. And so I just started making phone calls and
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gathering product and kind of putting the plan together. And shortly before we actually even
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launched that port on event, they asked me to build the trailer that we're sitting in right now.
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Yeah, I think that, you know, in the beginning, I mean, I've been, this is the 50th
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live tournament. I've been to all of them. I mean, it was very kind of, you know, a gang of,
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kind of like, and a brother, everybody knew that, you know, everybody wasn't really happy with
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what was going on. But we still had to play tournaments and we still had to basically prepare
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very much like we've always prepared. So the relationship that you found between, you know,
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someone like yourself that is on the kind of equipment side, those relationships take a long
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time. I mean, I look at, look at DJ, you know, DJ was with Taylor made his entire career, you
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see Sabar bro who built all his clubs and stuff. You do kind of build these as the player and the
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manufacturers, especially at the tour level, you, you do build a relationship. I think every player
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eventually, if they're with a manufacturer for a very long time, Ben Showman at Cobra, who I'm
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supposed to buy, you know, Ben has a real personal relationship with Ricky Fowler, you know, Keith
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and DJ are boys, you know, Keith was at his wedding. So the relationship with the equipment
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being built and looked after and maintained, again, I think he's very much like a Formula One
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Pit Crew, a driver needs to have total confidence in the engineers, the strategist, and then the guys
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working on the car. So how do you build that relationship? And how have you seen that relationship
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evolve over the years as the technology in fitting the technology available for fitting? And then
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the technology available that's constantly evolving from a build side of things. What do you
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feel like is the most important thing for you as a as a club, rapper, a club builder to establish
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with a player in their team? Yeah, I think you hit it on the head. It's about establishing a
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rapport with the athlete and it just, it just flat out takes time. The first year we were out here,
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you know, guys were, they kind of knew we were here to support them and if they really needed
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something, they would come in and get the work done. If you look at a couple years later now, we,
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our whole model was a very proactive approach when I was with Nike. And so I kind of took that and
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I'm like proactively up and down the range, just checking in with guys, making sure that their,
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you know, equipment is performing how it needs to perform. And I'm trying to get ahead of it,
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right? I'm trying to seek out, okay, is there an opportunity for them to be better? And I'm talking
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with the caddies, I'm talking with the various coaches, you know, right? Like trying to get a sense
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of what's happening with the athlete, not only directly with the athlete, but with the team around
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them. Because that's how you did those relationships. And at the end of the day, like once they're like
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the player, they need something, where they'll just come in and try to get it done, or they're kind
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of searching. And that's when the trust in that rapport really comes into play because if we can
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execute at a high level and we can deliver a piece of equipment that addresses some sort of issue
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that they have, then we're winning, right? We're building confidence in the player, they're not
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worried about the piece of equipment anymore. They're going up to the golf course and they're playing
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golf. So, you know, this is so different than working for one manufacturer because we have every
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manufacturer, we have every shaft, you have every, you have all the heads, you have different
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irons and stuff like that. So you can basically be somewhat equipment agnostic. And a lot of the guys
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that went to live just, I think everybody knows this, a lot of the manufacturers that they were with,
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you know, didn't renew. I mean, DJ was with Taylor made, when his contractor went out, they
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didn't want to renew. I mean, there were guys that for the first time in their career were somewhat
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able to try different stuff. How many clubs on average do you feel like in the old days, most
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companies wanted you to have in the back? I think most of those deals were somewhere between 11 and
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12 clubs, you know, maybe a big deal had 13, but there was always like one, for most players, there
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was at least one or two pieces of equipment, they could kind of float around in the bag. And maybe
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they had to play the driver, maybe they had to play the putter, but you know, fairway woods were
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always fair game, hybrids, utility, that those types of clubs were always fair game. So the player
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could kind of search what they wanted, but they were, they were strapped to whatever was within
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the portfolio of the manufacturer they were contracted with. Yeah, and the other thing, I think if
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you're a rookie on on any tour and you sign with a manufacturer, you're most likely going to be
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playing 14 clubs in the ball. And then if you play better and you become a superstar and stuff
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like that and you're going to go to a new company, the deals, I think have historically been, okay,
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maybe the putter is off limits, maybe the driver is off limits or something like that for the
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better player, but a lot of players just had to play 14 clubs. So now that there are players that
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can tinker, what is the difference in your opinion between tinkering with your equipment and
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maintaining your equipment? Because I think the, yeah, the misconception is everyone out here is,
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if they're, if they're coming into the, the tour van, they're tinkering in there, looking to try
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something or change something, but a lot of times it's just maintenance. So we'll get to the tinkering
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part first, but just weekend week out maintenance. And again, to use the formula one analogy, the
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maintenance on the car, the maintenance on the equipment for you guys is what, what are the players
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from a maintenance standpoint asking you guys to do weekend and week out at the tour? Yeah, so the
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most used pieces of equipment here are the Loft & Lime machines, Potter Loft & Lime, Iron Loft & Lime.
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You know, we some of these players were checking weekly because they just want to make sure that
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Bryson. Yeah, they're set, they're set right where they need to be, right? They hit a lot of golf balls,
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they hit it hard off of a variety of different terrain. Sometimes it's soft conditions, sometimes it's
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firm. If you're in firm conditions, the materials will move. So it's just making sure that you have
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a consistent baseline. And that's where the Loft & Lime aspect of it kind of comes in. And then
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grips, those are the two, two things that are checking the loss and the lies. And then they're looking
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at grips. The other thing I don't think people realize as well, if you travel 18, 20 weeks a year
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with your equipment, they are through wear and tear of getting on and off airplanes,
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listen, a lot of these guys, both on the PJ tour on live, a lot of the superstars, they fly private,
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they're putting their, they're not even putting their equipment in a club, go carry, it just goes
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into the back of the plane. They don't even put anything over the top of the clubs. They just
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put it in the back of the plane. But things, irons get bent, wedges get, get something,
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gets dinged and banged. I think DJ is, in my opinion, a cut just a complete savant when it comes to
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Loft & Lime. I mean, he will sometimes say to AJ, listen, this wedge should be going this distance,
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there's got to be something off with the loft of the lie. He'll take it to you guys. You guys will
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do it. It'll be one degree out or two. But at the tour level, if you're, if you're a sandwich,
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it's supposed to be 56 degrees and it's 50, it's been bent to 55 or 54 or it's been bent the other way.
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Yeah, it makes that's going to have. So when you're checking Loft's and lies, the player comes in and
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says, okay, if you're going to work with a player in the beginning, you want to basically check
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all of their equipment. Yeah, we blueprint that we've been blue. So give me the, give me the blueprint,
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tell me what that's all about at the tour level. So I would say like easily the first couple of years,
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every player that we'd come in, we blueprint the bag. Great. So we're running through the Loft & Lime
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on irons and wedges. We're measuring them, see what they are, write them down. We're checking
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what shafts in there, what length, what swing weight. The whole thing going through the bag.
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So you're just getting data. Yeah, exactly. baseline data of this is what the player's bag
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is. So in future, if their equipment gets off, yeah, we've got to basically, we've got to,
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or if you're going to build them something new, if they say, listen, hey, I want to try a new
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wedge or something like that. One of the things I always noticed that you, that all the reps do,
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but if they're going to build, let's say, can I get a new three wood, right? The first thing that
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you guys always ask was, listen, you'll always come to either the caddy or the coach and say,
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because the players hit balls or working or practicing or on the course, you'll say, listen,
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can I get their three wood, measure it, weigh it so that we're trying to get, because that's the
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other thing I think people would be fascinated by your, you're trying to match apples to apples,
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because the last thing you want to get is have them testing apples to oranges, which they are,
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but the grips got to be the same as theirs. The swing weights got to be the same as theirs. So
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that data collection blueprint, how long does that normally take for 14 clubs just to get there?
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Yeah, 15, 20 minutes. We can rip through it pretty quick. And I think the interesting thing you
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bring out like a three wood, right? Or we're trying something new, we use that data is a baseline
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exactly, right? Make sure we have the right length, we have the right swing weight, the right grip,
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like the things that are immediately going to be different, but usually, unless we're replacing
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a club that's broken, that's failed, and we're just building a peer backup, there's got to be
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something we're looking to do different. And so if we're controlling 80% of the variables, and we go,
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okay, we need a little bit more loft, we might use the exact same shaft head, everything, but we're
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chasing literally three quarters of the degree more loft. That's it. Everything else is exactly the same,
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because that's what the goal is is to maybe get the ball a little higher, add a little bit of spin,
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and loft's going to be that one variable that we're going to start with.
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At the tour level, both on your time on the PJ tour and here on live, what is the number one numbers
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from a launch monitor standpoint that when you're looking at, let's just go through irons, right?
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If we're looking at irons, what are you looking at? And what are some things that the average golfer could
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take to their set up and say, okay, what do I want my numbers to be? Let's say you're looking at
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iron numbers and you're looking at players. So baseline iron numbers for a nine iron, a seven iron,
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and a five iron. Are there any baseline numbers you're looking at just generically from a launch and
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spin standpoint? Yeah, so I think if you took a seven iron, we're going to want to see a launch window
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of very player specific and speed determined. But somewhere on tour, the high speed guys, there are a
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group of, I mean, basically out here right now of the 50-ish players on live, what percentage of
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those guys would you categorize as high speed guys? I would say 90% of them. Yeah, so 90% are in the
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high speed range. So there are seven irons are all kind of going to go a similar-ish distance.
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Like there isn't really, maybe, maybe Bryson can get 20 yards more. But you know, DJ Brooks,
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Cam Smith, Waco, John Romper, there's seven irons are all going to go within. Yeah, probably 10 to 15
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yards of carry, if you're okay, carry, right? And that's what we're doing. So you're looking at a
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launch window somewhere between probably 14 and 16 depending on the athlete and how they deliver.
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Spin rates were, you know, rule of thumb is basically take the iron they have,
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times it by a thousand. So seven iron, you're looking at roughly 7,000. You know, maybe, I like to
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maybe go a couple under that, you know, 6,800 for an average seven iron, right? And it's a six iron
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would be, you know, 5,800. You just kind of take that across the board. You know, apex, you know,
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peak height is another element of it. So that's where you're going to get the speed off the face,
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times the launch, add the spin, and we're going to hit peak heights. Most, most guys are living in
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that 100 to 120 foot range at this speed level, first stock shots. Those numbers kind of parallel
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one another, whether it's a five iron, a six, you know, down to your wedges, those that launch and
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spin window is really pretty same. Obviously, there's a progression there, but that is going to
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allow them to control the golf ball because that's the name of the game out here is you use a piece
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of equipment to hit a golf ball in the air and you have to figure out how far it goes and how it gets
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there. I think the average golfer is obsessed with as they should be because they don't have speed.
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They're obsessed with club head speed the most. I think the average golfer doesn't really spend a
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lot. I mean, if you tell them what ball speed is, but everybody kind of has been in a program or
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something and looked at my club head speed or something like that. But at the elite tour level,
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I think I hear 90% of the conversations around controlling the spin. So the spin of the golf ball
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coming off the face, generalizing the problems for tour players and higher speed players. And then
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what you do when you're not on live your day job of just fitting regular golfers from a spin standpoint,
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Ben, what is the average golfer struggle with? I mean, do they spin it too much or do they not spin it
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enough? Yeah, I think it actually can go both ways. I would say the way a lot of the product is
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engineered now. A lot of them are not spinning it enough. And that's how you get these irons to go
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so far for the consumer is they're launching high. It's the classic high launch low spin, but you
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don't want that with a seven iron. You just don't you can't control it. And that I would say that's
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probably the biggest is under spinning. These irons just fly slower speeds. And to play good golf and
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play consistent golf, you absolutely have to have the proper launch and spin ratios to control the
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golf ball because it can fly to one point. But if it doesn't stop, it doesn't do you any good. You
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land it in the middle of green goes right to the back. Usually you don't want to be long. And then
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the other thing Ben is from the instruction side of things to me, one of the big significant
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differences, specifically in the irons for the average golfer is the the tour player pretty much
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consistently has a manageable and effective angle of attack how much they're hitting down on the
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ball with the seven iron. The biggest complaint I hear from the average golfer is I don't take them
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other than kind of a sand wedge, maybe pitching wedge nine iron, but I'd say over the course of
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365 days a year with the average golfer non tour player, the biggest complaint that I hear in the
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biggest fault that I see from an iron standpoint is not hitting down on the golf ball enough. So
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that's where I think you're talking about the equipment now is designed to help the golfer
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hit it further. You know lots of offset big, you know, center of gravity, big heads and stuff like
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that. But if you don't hit down on your irons, you hit these kind of flat bullets because the ball
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doesn't launch high enough. Yeah, I think it depends on the player, right? It's but you're right.
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Like if you're shallow, you don't create a lot of lift. I think that's where the CG of the heads
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helps with a lot of the game improvement stuff. So they do get some, but really the the factors that
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that doesn't spin either if you don't hit down on the golf ball, you're not creating the spin
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to help one launch at high and keep it up in the air with the right spin. And then also
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everybody, you know, you go to every tour event and player hits an eight iron hits it, you know,
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15, 20 feet past the flag by design, spins it back. The average golfer would just they love that shot.
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They love seeing it. But the fact of the matter is they just don't drive the car fast enough. They
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don't have enough speed. So hitting down on the golf ball with your irons as a rule of thumb for
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the average golfer is going to help them get that higher launch and that higher spin.
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Better spin. Yeah. And I think that's where the club fitting element for the average player.
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It is really, really important. Make sure you get the right head that's going to get you into the
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right launch window. You get the right shaft that's going to help kick it. Even if your club
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delivery isn't where it needs to be or it's not consistent enough, if you can get the right shaft
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to kind of release through impact, it's it's really not that much different than we're trying to
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do out here with the high level players. We're still trying to get the shaft to release through
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impact, which keeps the head more square and allows you to deliver the club head to the golf ball
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with the proper amount of loft to get the ball flying. What percentage of recreational handicap
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non elite golfers would you say have never been club fitting? I think I think now a lot of people
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have had some level of fitting. You know, the detail of fitting that we do out here, not many,
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right? I mean, I think there's some outfits out there now that specialize in. Yeah. And then
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DJ tour super stores golf gal, let's see, all of these big box kind of retailers now. You can go in
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there golf tech and stuff and get fit. So for everyone listening that let's say you haven't,
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you've got a set of golf clubs that maybe you were given or you just kind of got as a Christmas gift.
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They're not really fit for you and you're a 15 handicap. What is a good cheat code for a 15 handicap
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or to go in and be able to say to a club bit or listen, I'm looking to invest some money in my game.
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Golf is important to me as a player and as a person. And I want to get club fitted. I think a lot
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of people listening, that's kind of scary because they don't know what they don't know what they don't
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know. And you know, there's going to be a lot of maybe terms. So what are some questions that the
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average regular golfer can ask when they're going to go in and get fitted for golf clubs for the
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first time or they're looking to go, okay, my game is improving now, right? I was at 20 and now I've
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worked for the last couple of years. I've been taking lessons and there will be a point where the
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instructor says, listen, I think there's some gains. I say this all the time, listen, your golf
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swings improving, you're getting better, you're hitting the golf ball further. I think we need to
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look at maybe adjusting what we're doing shaft wise, what we're doing loft and head wise. So
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when a player goes in and says, listen, I'm looking to make some upgrades. I'm like, what are some
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questions that they should be asking the fit? Yeah, so the novice player is going to want to make
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sure that you've got at least the right length of the shaft, right? The right flex. You know,
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loft and lie is always going to be important just to give you the best opportunity to deliver
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head square. And then generally, like at least a head that's trending to help you get the ball
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flying. The other part is for especially for the more novice player is making sure that they have
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the right assortment of clubs. Yeah, so the set makeup, give me what you think for, let's say a kind
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of 10 to 20 handicap. Yeah, what should they be looking at from a bag setup? Let's start with the
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wedges. So average guys on the PGA on the PJ tour or live or any of the big tours. Yeah,
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LPD most players now are kind of in that three to four wedge category. Do you think that's something
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that kind of the 10 to 20 handicap or should be looking at? I so I actually do partly because of
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the way that the irons are engineered. So if you kind of look from the middle of the bag out,
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a lot of these irons have stronger lofts, right? So you're looking at sometimes 28 to 30 degrees
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lofts, seven irons. So it's an old school standard would have been probably 34, 35, right? Most
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of the guys out here with live or somewhere between, well, most of them are probably right around 34 to
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30. Yeah, and I think the tour guys on the PJ would be around the same. So the waterfall effect
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of when you have an iron that's strong like that is it gets down to the wedge, the pitching wedge,
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which would be kind of your first wedge can sometimes be 42, 41, like they're really, really strong.
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And it used to be right around 48, 49, right? Yeah, so you just by the evolution of technology is
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going to suggest that you probably need to have a gap wedge that's somewhere between 48 and 50
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degrees depending on what the loft of your pitching wedge is. And then you're going to want
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54s and 58s, I think in the retail space for more novice are much more playable than those
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will 56 and six. I think the 50, having a 54 versus a 56 is the difference in the loft is going
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to if you miss it, you have the opportunity to hit a lot further. But then I agree with you. I think
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a lot of players I see, you know, in that kind of 10 to 20 handicap range, they've got a 60 degree
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wedge in their bag. They they're trying to hit it really, really hard. It balloons. It spins way
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up and it doesn't go anywhere. So that kind of good kind of four degree loft increment. So
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I think a good rule if if you're going to go 56, 60, 54, 58, I do see sometimes you get these kind
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of big kind of barren valleys where the loss are just way off. They've got these dead zones in
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their wedge set up. They got a 60 and then they're kind of all over the board. So making sure
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those lofts 54, 58 and then, you know, from an iron standpoint, you know, a 10 to 20 handicap,
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but it doesn't have a tremendous amount of speed. What would you think would be kind of the threshold
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of their last real iron before we get into kind of the hybrid? Yeah, it's probably somewhere about
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five four iron somewhere in there. I mean, you might start progression in a five iron. I would say
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four iron is a good breaking point where you're going to either have a utility iron or a hybrid
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or a lofted wood. It's hard for the average goal for to get a four iron into the air and it's speed
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driven. It's speed. They confidence because you look in it and it's a straight straighter face to
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blade. The lofts are stronger on it. So it might be 21 degrees, but it still looks when you look down
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at it like it's not going to get in the air. Yes. You're going to want to hang back because one
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from a swing standpoint, you're not getting the golf ball in the air. Optically, you feel like,
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okay, to get it in the air and need to swing up on it. But I've talked about this on the pod before,
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the easiest way to make your iron game better is to try and hit more down on your irons. Yeah.
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But most golfers are coming over the top of it and hitting down on it with the irons and that
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got. So I think the hybrid world and the utility iron for the majority, if you're in the 10 to 20 handicap
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range and you've got a four iron in your bag and a three iron in your bag, that's just that's
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crazy. Yeah. You're just never going to use those. So you've got two clubs in your bag that one
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don't perform. And as a result of them not performing, you basically stay away from them. So you've
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got two dead clubs in your bag that never get used. Yeah. Or if you get stuck in that 180 to 200 yard
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position, which you're going to live in, you don't have a tool. So throw a tool and that's
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useful. Hybrid a nine wood, those are going to be much easier to get the ball in the air and hit
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straighter. Let's talk about driver fitting guys. I think everybody listening wants to hit the
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golf ball further. At the tour level, you mentioned it. I've mentioned it before, but a holy grail of
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driver fitting is high launch low spin. Yeah. Right. I think a lot of people know that. Can you
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golf for dummies, dumb that down for everyone listening and say, what is that? What does that mean?
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And why is that the holy grail? Yeah. So think about. Well, first of all, the driver, the difference
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between the driver and the iron is the iron is on the ground. So you've got to get the golf ball
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that's on the ground in the air. The driver is already in the air. It's on a tee. Yeah. It is. And
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I think, you know, an athlete's club delivery is going to dictate how much lofted impact
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they're going to, you know, deliver. Right. So some players may hit up on it more and they
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they are looking at a very low lofted part to get at the end of the day. We want to watch it
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somewhere between 11 and 13 degrees and probably for a high level player for high speed player,
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somewhere between 21 and 2400 DJ likes to hang given his delivery. He likes to hang between
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1800 and 2200 anything in that range is really, really good for him because he has speed because
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of the way that he delivers. Whereas someone else that that is an elite player that plays professional
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golf, like a guy that doesn't have the kind of speed that the DJ has that delivers it very different.
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Let's say a guy like honor Bonnale Heary, Bon wants to spin kind of where? Yeah. He's he's looking at
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the low 2000s. Yeah. Absolutely. And part of it is the ability to work the golf ball at that
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those spin rates. Right. So if you hit a draw, it's going to come down a little bit. You hit a
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fade. It's going to come up a little bit. Generally speaking, DJ hits a flat fade. It's pretty unique.
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So his fade probably spins about 22, right? When he's playing his best, he's right around 2000.
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Yeah. Brooks, who has a similar shape, they both hit fades, but Brooks hits a little bit more down on
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it than then down and left on it than DJ. DJ's kind of angle of attack. You know, it's kind of
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around that kind of 0.5 to zero. Whereas when Brooks was playing his best of the years that I worked with
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him, you know, with the driver, he was when he was winning major, he was wanting to have to
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agree down on it. But the spin rate for the regular golfer, they're tending to spin the golf ball
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too much. Yeah. I think that with the driver with the yeah, because of club delivery, you start to
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swing it farther left with an open face. You're, you might as well be playing pick about hitting
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down on it and hitting. Yeah, those are all spin creating. Now that the product is all engineered to
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help keep the head more stable through impact. If you can keep the face more square relative to
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the path that it's being delivered on, it'll spin less. And it will, you know, your start line will
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be a little bit tighter, even if it's a little bit left because your path is left. If the head is
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relatively square to that, it will hold that line a little bit better. It still may fade back,
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but it's not going to be a huge slice. So the fitting aspect of that is making sure that you,
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you're able to control the face impact relative to your path. This is definitely getting into your.
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Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I think everybody looks at the first time they get on a
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launch monitor, they're going to, they're going to look at their club at speed and they're going to say,
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okay, how can I get my club at speed faster? I've talked about this on on the pod before I was out
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at Titleist years ago when they were kind of one of the first ones to kind of have their own kind
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of proprietary launch monitor technologies, pre-track man days stuff. And I was there. They were looking
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at club at speed numbers with a driver and a player said, okay, how do I get more club at speed
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number? How do I get how do I increase my club at speed number? And I never will forget this to
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play or say, why don't you just try and work on having that club at speed be consistent every time
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you hit it? The immediate thing is, how do I get more club at speed? Yeah. What we're all trying to
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do at this level is how do we make what the player does consistent and he does it all of the time?
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When you get too much spin with the driver, the golf ball, that's when the average golfer sees that
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kind of go up and lift and then keep lifting and ballooning. For the tour player, the ball gets out
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to an apex and doesn't rise and stays there. It looks like it just gets to kind of 36,000 feet and
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they turn the seatbelt sign off and then the ball just flies. So when a when an average golfer,
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and the other thing, golf, Ben, I see so many players playing with not enough golf. They have
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low-lofted drivers. DJ kind of his loft is kind of around. Yeah, he's like a, if you look at the
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normal piece of it, like what it actually is, it's probably around 11. 11. Yeah. Take that into
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yesterday, five minutes for Bryson was going out. He had his guy Conner with the backpack and he was
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it was colder yesterday than it was the first round. First round, it was warmer. So he was
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messing around with driver heads based off of the temperature and the ball and he was torn around.
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So DJ's hitting balls next to him. He's got an 11 degree driver. Bryson put a five degree driver.
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And I mean, that is a staggering distance. That is a completely different animal based off of the
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way that they deliver the golf club. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, Bryson sits in that five and a half
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six degree window most of the time. Again, that 10 to 20 handicap range. What is the in your opinion,
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the no go threshold of two little loft that you wouldn't want to go less. You need to have more
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loft than this number and you wouldn't want to go lower than this number. I don't think you really
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want to be below nine. I mean, even like guys who have some speed, some amateurs that have the speed
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and deliver fairly neutral, you know, it's harder to hit it straight with less loft. Right. So
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the if you have more loft, why do you hit a sandwich straighter because it has more loft. Right.
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So it works the same with the with the driver. You just have to be really good at controlling the
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spin because the spin is is yeah, going to get the rise. It's also going to create the curving.
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And so it's it's all about again, it's the right, it's the right launch. It's the right spin.
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What is the player and it's it's optimal for the player. You can paint these wide pictures of,
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yeah, somewhere between 10 and 12 degrees is where the actual loft on the golf club needs to be.
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But it's going to vary based on club delivery. You know, spin rates if you look, if you just
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threw a dart and you're like, what what's optimal for the vast golf space? It's launch it. Let's
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launch it at 11 degrees and 2500. And you can apply that to almost any spin rate or speed range and
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any caliber of player. Yeah. And it's like, okay, that's going to be in play. So that would be a good
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cheat code. If you ever, if you ever get on a launch monitor and you're looking at your numbers,
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optimal would be kind of launching it really 11 and above and spinning it at mid 2000. Yeah,
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25 to 28. You're not going to get into much trouble. You're not going to leave a ton on the table
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and you're not going to, you know, come up really, really short if you spin it at 2800 and you
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miss it. Like, it's totally fine. One of the things that I've seen Ben when when players get fitted
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for drivers and and they get a driver across the board, whether it's a tour player or non tour player,
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when they do get a driver that that is fitted for their game and what they do, the center contact
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with the driver, they start to hit it less off the heel and less off the toe. They're hitting it
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more in the center of the face. And through the launch monitor technology now, I look probably more
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at ball speed numbers with the driver than I do with club heat numbers because if you're catching
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it more in the center of the face, the speed at which the ball is coming off the face, that ball speed
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number will jump. And if the ball speed number jumps, the amount of side spin and curve diminishes.
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So I think everybody that is slicing the golf ball, you get on a launch monitor and we do see
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sometimes that six, seven, eight degree left path. The face is hanging wide open and it's hard
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for them to then control the spin. Everybody thinks, okay, I want to get my path to the right.
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That's incredibly hard for a lot of players to do is to get that path way to the right. So I
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always look at the path number and think, okay, if there's six, seven degrees left with the path,
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if we can just get that in half, dial that back to maybe three, they're still going to be left,
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but they're going to catch it more in the center of the face. They're going to catch it more in the
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middle of the golf club. And it's going to curve less. Yeah, I think, you know, from all the experience I
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have working with high level players and the consumer. Yeah, if you can narrow down the left,
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right, usually the face doesn't get hung as far open. So it's a win-win. You don't all the sudden
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go from swinging it seven left to three left, but the face stays the same amount. Oh,
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well, I think I'm always trying to have players when they look at their path numbers, right,
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how much that can affect the ball speed. So you've got that path with the driver kind of in that six,
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seven, eight degrees left. You're hitting down on it. You're going to struggle to control the face.
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You're going to get a lot of heel strikes, a lot of toe strikes. You're not going to hit it
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in the center of the face. So the more you're missing the center of the face, more goes, you know,
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kind of all over the place. And I think when a player gets a driver that's fitted for what they do,
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regardless of their handicap level, they're going to hit it more in the center of the face. And
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I've seen the ball speed numbers jump. So not necessarily they hit it further because they're
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catching it more in the center of the face. It's curving less. But when that ball speed number jumps,
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the club had speed number sometimes goes down maybe a mile, a mile and a half, but they hit it
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10 to 15 yards further because they're catching it more in the center of the face.
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That relationship between getting a set of golf clubs as you're changing your golf.
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That's a thing that I always get asked by the average golfer as well.
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Hey, I want to get a new set of golf clubs. I feel like my golf scene. How can I somewhat
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future prove my bag? Because it's expensive to buy golf equipment. You know, we're so spoiled
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out here on tour where somebody wants, you know, Bryson wants, you know, three drivers,
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you can make them three drivers. He wants to try three three woods. You can make them. The average
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golfer, they just don't have the money to be able to do that. How can you future prove a set of
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golf clubs if you're looking to get a new one? Yeah, I think if you look at the big picture of
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of using what you have or adding on to it, like using the technologies out there,
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using track man, using foresight to see, like, look at the data. See, see, you know,
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the, you talk about ball speed, right? That's an efficiency number. That's how solid you're striking it.
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And if one is club delivery is an element of it, right? But how the shaft, you know,
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reacts and releases with the way you deliver the club head. So how's the part moving through
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impact to give you that efficiency? So if you can use the technology out there to make sure that,
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again, it always comes back down to launching it, spending another right window. But the efficiency
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of the strike is how you can sit there and build your own golf bag to maximize what your potential
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is going to be. How different in 2025 is the equipment that the regular golfer, non-tour access
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player? How different, let's say a driver. So you're going to get a new driver from whatever
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manufacturer you go to one of the big box stores and you're going to buy this driver, right?
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I've just used the company that, you know, that I'm a filler cober. You're going to go get a
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cober driver. You're going to get, go get fit for it. How different is that driver versus the driver
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that Ricky Fowler is building? Because to me, I look at you can, you can, as just a regular human being,
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if you can afford it, you can go buy a Ferrari, which is a Lamborghini, which are some of the fastest
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most race car that you buy. And then there's a formula one race car. So how different is the equipment
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in 2025? And then kind of do a deep dive into, I think it's probably more so with drivers than any
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what you're doing on the inside of a driver that I think a lot of people don't even have a concept
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that is a part. Yeah, I think the heart and soul of let's use the driver for example, right, is
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you know, a tour part versus a consumer part of what you would get at any of the golf shops.
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It's the same. The difference is the ability to tune it for the player, right? And so I think,
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you know, stuff out on tour, we have the tools and the resources to decide, you know, does one
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head have a quarter degree more loft or a half a degree more face angle than an X, right? If you
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walk into a golf shop, you look at five drivers that are all built exactly the same. Let's see,
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pick up a 10.5 degree head. It's going to be the heads. All five of them are going to be 10.5.
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They're all going to tend to be 45 inches long. So there was a sameness to them. There's a
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sameness to them. But if you really dive a little bit deeper and you start really getting technical
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with the heads, they all sit fractionally different. They're all a little snowflakes. And so
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we can go through our drawers and cherry pick heads specifically for the player.
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Some players want to see more loft with the driver. Some people don't. Some people want the
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driver to sit a little bit more open. Some people like to have it a little bit more closed. So
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how do you adjust a driver? This is like you said, the average golfer is just going to go pick a driver.
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They don't really know what they like. So how do you then adjust the driver head
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to look like it has more loft, to look like it doesn't have more loft, to look like it has more
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face, does it. And then what you're doing on the inside of the driver with a hot melt stuff,
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because I just find that fascinating. Okay. Yeah. So when we talk about fine tuning the driver for
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the player, right? I'm always going to start by just cherry picking ahead that's going to be closest
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to the loft and facing all that we want. And then we can tune them with the adapters.
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You know, every manufacturer has an adjustable adapter. So sometimes we'll use that as a tool.
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But when we talk about like the guts of the driver and manipulating, maybe we want to kill an extra
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200 RPM of spin. Maybe we want to make it slightly more draw bias or fade bias. We use a material
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it's out here in the industry is called hot melt or rat glue. And we can inject that.
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Basically it's a hot glue sticky glue into the head to really tune. You know, I can tune the acoustics.
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It can tune the launch and spin characteristics. It can change the feel of the head itself.
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And the hot melt is basically weight. Yeah, it adds weight. Yeah, there's a weight element to it.
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But it's a kind of a sticky glue that we use a hot gun. And then you inject it where?
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And straight into the head. So for a driver head, it's normally that port where you can
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inject it is kind of down where? Yeah, so sometimes you can go into the
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Hossil. Usually there's like a small little hole around the Hossil cavity. Some of the drivers
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you can go right through the weight ports. You know, a cowboy driver's got several weight ports
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and you can go right through those ports. And so if we want to make a driver low spin,
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for example, we're going to move that weight more forward into the head.
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So it will kind of move the CG just slightly more forward. When you do that, you can put it
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closer to the face. You could put it up on the crown, but it moves the center gravity just
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enough to create a slightly different spin characteristic. So if we need to knock off
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150, 200 RPMs of spin, we can do that with the glue. If we can get it enough in there, you know,
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throwing a gram or two doesn't really do anything. If we throw four or five grams in there,
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then it starts to manipulate the head. And I've watched you. When you guys shoot the gun into the
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head, you'll take the head and then you'll tilt the head to wherever you want that glue to go.
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And then the glue goes there at Hardens and it settles and it stays there and it adds that
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different component. I'm always fascinated by and the one thing that you guys will always say is,
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for us as the coach, you'll always ask if a player is working on a driver, hey, what does he want
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the driver to do? Meaning what shape does he want to do? And where does he not want the mist to go?
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Yeah. Okay. So like for DJ DJs and want the golf ball for fade guys, they don't want the golf ball
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going left for the draw guys. They don't like the golf balls going right. So that kind of
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moving around the glue. That is to me like when they bring the cars into the garage and they just
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do a little tweak in the setup, right? They change kind of, you know, the angle or kind of the way
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the car is going based off of the track. Sound wise, how important do you think sound is to club fitting?
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To club fitting, it's not really that important because it that's just a result of the ball hitting
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the face. It's acoustics. But generally speaking, you know, most of these guys want to hear kind of a
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dollar, thuddy or sound. That's just what they grew up playing with. And normally like the high
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pitch sound, you know, there's been some ping drivers from time to time that get really high pitched.
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And you know, I don't think the player hears that as much as the people around him to be honest.
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So then they say, man, that driver's loud and then the player starts thinking, oh, I've got a loud
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driver. Yeah, exactly. So the sound doesn't change really performance. It's just a result of the
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engineering. But that hot glue can dull out that sound and make it a little bit better.
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You know, I think the other really, when you talk about these little fine tuning elements of
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the equipment, light angles are really big piece. So, a light angle is going to dictate your
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start line. So when you talk about a driver, you know, if a player, if DJ is missing it a little bit
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left and it's, is it, the question is, is it, is it a start line miss left or is it, you know,
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is the head starting left and going left? Right? So there's, there's a difference there
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and how we would tune the equipment. You know, if the start line is a little left, we may want to
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take a club and go a little bit flatter with it to move the start line a little bit farther right.
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Shaft technology with the driver, I think, um, heads are hugely important getting the right
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loft, getting the right lot, you know, that whole setup. But I think for the average golfer,
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there are just, there's, I mean, there's only a certain amount of driver heads on the market,
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right? From every manufacturer. So, you know, every manufacturer will make a certain amount
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of driver heads. They'll have a high, a high span, a low span and stuff. They might be,
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what do you think three or four heads in the product line across the board?
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There are a million different shafts you can try, right? Why is Shaft technology so important and
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what are, in your opinion, working with the everyday golfer? What are the issues that they struggle
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with from a shaft wise? And from the tour level, what do they struggle with? Yeah, it's the timing
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device. It's what goes from the human body, from your hands to the club head. It's that shaft,
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especially in a driver, it's the longest shaft in the back. It's a timing device. I've never heard
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anyone describe a shaft as a timing device. So you have to get that shaft to release through the
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impact zone. So the shaft, you know, of course, it can control launch and spin, but it impacts direction.
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So again, kind of back to the start line, all these little tweaks, like if I give you, if I give
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a player a shaft that releases a little bit later, it's going to push the start line right.
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Right? If it releases earlier, it's probably going to move it left. So again, it's matching up,
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it's working with the player, it's the coach, it's what are the, what is the objective? And
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how do we optimize that? Right? It's no different with the everyday consumer. It's exactly the same.
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It's figure out the timing device. How do we put a piece of equipment into a player's hand
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where the shaft releases through the impact zone, delivering the head as square as possible to
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get it to fly in there? Any generalizations you see at the recreational non-elite player
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shaft-wise with the driver that you see a generalization on the bad side?
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Yeah. I would say, well, generalization, I think your player is going to benefit from a shaft that
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plays a little bit stiffer than it is too soft, because I think it's going to give you more stability
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through impact. Now, when you start to fine tune it, you don't, if you're only swinging a driver
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at 95 miles an hour, you don't want to be swinging an extra step. Right? I'm talking about like
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small hedges. If you are a quick tempo golfer and you swing it at 102 with a driver,
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and really the threshold for an extra stiff is 107 to 108, but you have a fast tempo and you're
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kind of quick and jerky and you put a harder load on it. Stiffer, more stable is going to give you a
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better chance to deliver in that head to the ball more squarely. Right? If you're somebody who has
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lower speed, yeah, you're going to want a shaft that's going to be a little bit more active to help
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maybe give you a little bit more kick at the bottom. I think everybody is kind of that auto-flex that
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came out that Berean, you know, one shaft you had with the pink that you said the mortgage
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your house to be able to afford. I think everybody, you know, imitation, everybody imitates, I think
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every manufacturer now has kind of like a really good game improvement driver shaft for the older
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golfer that's going to give them a lot of kick that's going to give them a little bit more speed
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at the bottom and things like that. But from a shaft standpoint, lengthwise for just the everyday
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golfer, at the tour level, what do you feel like most people's drivers' lengths are? Some are
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between 44 and 3-4 and 45. 45? Yeah. Anybody over other than Bryson going longer? There's a few,
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not many, very small percentage of guys really kind of going over that threshold. Because I do see
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some and some recreational 15-20 handicaps that are trying to hit the golf ball further that come in
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with a 46 inch driver and I'm like, dude, what do you do? You can, you can hit it farther every once in a
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while. But I, yeah, it's real thumb. I'm always all of our clients. We're pushing to shorter. We're
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going to go more tour standard because it's easier to find the middle of the face. The longer the golf
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club, the length of the shaft, the harder it's, yeah, the car might be fast, but if you can't get the
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car around the track, with like to me, that is what I'm always thinking about is from a speed
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standpoint. Yes, speed is important. What speed doesn't do you any good if you can't get the
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car around the track without crashing? If you can be efficient with what you have, you're going to win.
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And, and, you know, this is true probably any golf course in the world, right? If you hit it in
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the fairway, it's the ball's going to go farther. The fairways are faster than the rough. So hit it
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solid, be efficient with what you have, put it in play and find it. You think it's important for a
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15 handicap or two, maybe once a year, get on a launch monitor and get some baseline numbers so that
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when they are playing good or they're not playing good, they can look at those numbers, but also from
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a club fitting standpoint, hey, you know, I was a 15 at the beginning of this year. I'm now down to,
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you know, I've been working hard. I've been playing a lot. I'm now down to a 12. Let me go ahead and
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look at what my numbers are with my driver. Am I hitting the golf ball? You know, as my club
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at speed increased, as my spin, what is it doing now versus what it was doing six months ago to a year?
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Yeah, if you want to be smart, I think you want to create a baseline when you're swinging it pretty good
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and you're hitting it pretty solid. See what your path, face to path, your club head speed, you know,
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your efficiency numbers look like. And then yeah, check it every six to eight months and see,
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like if you're trying to get better and you're working with a coach and you're in the gym, right?
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And you have a, let's use a driver club head speed as a baseline at a hundred miles an hour and
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you're physically trying to get better through better body movement and just physically more fitness.
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And now you're moving that driver at a hundred and five hundred and six miles an hour,
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that's going to impact launch and spin and maybe the equipment that you need, but you have a metric.
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You've got a baseline from where you were maybe six to eight months ago of improvement. And if you
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start to hit go through these different thresholds with speed, that's going to start to impact,
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you know, maybe what kind of equipment you would need, but it also, you can go the other way, right?
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If you look at, you're not hitting it very good, but you have a baseline of when you were hitting
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good and let's say you're down two degrees left, you know, a degree and a half and the face is
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relatively square and that's when you're hitting it pretty good, but all of a sudden you're swinging
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it more left and more downing your hitting it not very good. At least you can sit there and go,
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it's not the equipment. Equipment didn't really change. My golf swings changed so you can put the
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time and energy into adjusting your golf swing and trying to get back on track to where you were
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swinging it good. I think that's where the technology is really helpful is you can create baselines.
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You don't even have to own the technology, right? You can go to a lot of these shops or find a coach
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that has it, capture that data, put it, you know, put it in your phone, put it in your notes,
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and so you've got it and you've got a reference point.
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Start to finish if a player, let's say, Bryson wants you to come in here and says, listen,
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want you to build me a new driver, okay? Start to finish if you don't have any distractions.
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How long is that process take and talk me through the new build process of building a new driver,
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but start to finish. How? So I would say start to finish, start from the player walks in to where
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they can walk out and hit it. Temperature dependent because of the glue carrying is a little bit of a
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variable, but if it's warm, 45 minutes. 45 minutes. So we're going to take a few minutes and we're
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going to cherry pick the heads. We probably already know what the shaft is. We already have the data.
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So we know how much we have to tip it, you know, what is tipping? So it's a raw shafts generally
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or about 46 inches, right? So if you shorten just the tip section of that shaft,
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it makes the tip section of it a little bit stiffer. The tip section, the part that goes into the
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clop into the head. Yeah. So we're shortening. So big picture, a little shaft 101,
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shafts are broken up into like three different parts. There's the tip mid and butt. So the tip section
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is engineered in a certain way that you shorten that eight to 10 inch window, right? It's going to
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make that part of the shaft a little bit stiffer without impacting the rest of it. So it generally
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gives you more stability in the bottom of the golf club, which helps help you hit a little bit straighter.
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So we'll we'll tip it, we'll prep the shaft. So we'll scrape the paint off of it,
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make sure it's nice and clean, kind of stand it up to create a little bit of roughness. So when we
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use the epoxy, it kind of gets into the fibers of and helps it stick and helps it stick better and
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we'll rough up the inside of the adapter that we're also using, right? So mix the glue, throw a
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little sand in there, make it nice take fit, slam it together, and now it's just time. It's just waiting.
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Yeah. So there's like, it's like, there's like a wall in this tour truck. And if someone, there's
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clubs and that one's that one's still drawing. And then so the caddy will come back in because the
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player will be like, no, Worcester's driver, they want me to try the caddy or me. Oh, come in,
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you're going to give it five more minutes, some more, we're waiting for it to dry. So then you then
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figure out grips. Everybody's grips are different. There are some players that just put the grip on
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and one rap and then but DJ's very specific in. So DJ's wrapping on his iron or on his clubs are what?
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Yeah. So he's got a build up in the right hand. So we'll take, so a grip is roughly 11 inches or so,
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we'll take half of a piece of a tape and we'll layer that into the right hand only,
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right? So we'll kind of stagger the tape and then we'll go over it a few times with some other
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tapes. So the right hand is slightly bigger than other. Some guys that like left hand bigger?
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No, I have not really, there might be one or two guys that kind of reverse. But most guys,
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if they are going to have something different, yeah, they're going to build it up, right? Paul Casey's
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an example of that where we have three extra pieces in the right hand and it's all staggered
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differently. And then another piece that goes right on top of it, you know, a guy like Thomas
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Peters has got seven wraps on underneath a midsize grip. So it's all personalized. But again,
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then that goes back to what we talked about at the beginning of the pod was you build that relationship
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with the player, it's where if the player knows that you can build them a golf club. Number one,
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that's going to work, but also get the grip component right. So it feels right as well. They then
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have the confidence for you to go, Hey, you know, you build this for me. You know what I like and
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they can put it down and it feels good in their hands and it looks good and it looks the way they
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want to get the grip wrong in the swing weight balance point wrong. They won't even hit it.
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Yeah, they just pick it up and they're like, this doesn't feel right. They immediately know that
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it's just wrong. Yeah. So we, you know, we never let that happen or we try to.
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But yeah, like so once the epoxy is dry, then we cut it to the proper length and we put the grip on
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and, you know, epoxy takes 20 minutes. It takes another 10, 12 to dry. Sometimes you'll come out and
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you'll put the club on the players bag and the first thing the player asks is, can I hit this
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now and you'll say, give it five minutes of the grip or you'll say, yeah, you can go with it now.
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They always want to hit it immediately and they always don't want to wait long enough
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for everything to dry because they have no patience. This is the hardest type of player to work with
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from a club fitting stand. What guys who have a unique sense of feel because feel is not something
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you can measure necessarily, right? You can measure swing weight, but you know, when you talk about
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the shaft feel or impact feel that a player has, it's very subjective. It's the holy grud. It's the
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only I always say to the guys, listen, you are the only one that can tell us what's going on with
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the players. I always say, you're the only one that can tell us we can never get into your body.
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I can look, I've seen, you know, with the guys that I work with, I've seen thousands upon thousands
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upon. I've worked with DJ since 2012. I mean, the amount of golf swings that I've watched him make
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in practice, in practice round, in off weeks, in tournament weeks is staggering the amount of,
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but I will never be able to feel what he feels. You've built thousands upon thousands of golf clubs
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for players, but you can only build them to the way that they tell you they want it built and then
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give it to them. And then ultimately, they're the driver of the car. They're going to come in and
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go, the car feels loose. The car doesn't feel like this. If you watch drive to survive or anything
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they'll come in and the engineers are like the cars. The same setup as we had last time. They're like,
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it feels terrible, it feels terrible. So we had a scenario this week. This is a good example of
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like that, that fine tuning element, right? So we're building back up three woods for LaHirry.
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And we take it out there and we hit it and it's fine, pretty good. He's like, it just doesn't feel
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quite right. And so I'm like, all right, well, let's move some weight around. And so sometimes before
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we maybe hot melt something, we'll use lead tape. And let's pull a little weight out from the front
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because it had an adjustable weight in the front of the head. Lighten that up, put a little weight back.
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Let's see if we get the launch and spin and get the head to move the way you're looking to do it.
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So we do that. It was a terrible experiment. It didn't work. And I was like, all right,
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well, let me try that. So I take that same piece of tape, the same four grams and I put it into the
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heel. I literally moved it from the back of the head into the heel. And all of a sudden it was
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perfect. The head started to release exactly how he wanted it to, right? We didn't change the weight
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overall, right? Sometimes if you go a little bit heavier, a little bit lighter, it will change how
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the shaft deflects. We didn't change any of that. All we did is change where the weight was in the
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head and what he was feeling down through impact, how he was controlling the face of impact. And
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all of a sudden it was perfect. It's a tiny, tiny adjustment. But at this level, the players are so
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in tune to what they do, what they feel and what they want to feel and what they want to see.
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The Bryson experiment, and obviously Bryson is a very unique golfer. He's a very unique person.
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He's an incredibly demanding person on his equipment. I think Bryson's always looking for unicorns,
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specifically with the drivers. I've watched him go through 15, 20 different heads in one practice
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session and stuff. The rabbit hole that Bryson can go down. In your opinion, as someone who is on
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that side of things, there's the technical side of what he's doing. But I think Bryson's trying to
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match, it's an, it's a science experiment. He's trying to match a very unique technique of swinging
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the golf club and delivering the golf club. And he's asking a lot of his equipment. What's
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that experience been like with Bryson? What have you learned from being around Bryson from a club
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build and fit standpoint that you didn't know? Yeah, I think the one thing, especially actually the
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last couple of weeks, because he's been doing a lot of ball testing. Yeah, right. And so the one thing
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that really has come to light, I would say in the club fitting world. And this is all about using
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these pieces of equipment to get the ball into the air to go somewhere. You have to control the
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actual golf ball. That's that's actually the name of the game. And I think with all the ball
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testing that he's done in some small tweaks with his equipment, you know, and I'm smart and say
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small right. He might be modifying the loft by a degree again to get the right spin ratios to
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control the golf ball. I think that's the one thing that I've learned really learned the last
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couple of weeks is how important it is to control the golf ball because if you can't control it,
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which he's had a little bit of a difficult time doing, especially experimenting with these balls
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that launch and spend differently than what he's been playing the last, I don't know, 18 months,
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is he is having a harder time controlling how far it goes downwind, how far it goes into the wind,
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like those types of things is it's really interesting. I think his golf swing is constantly evolving.
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It may look the same, but where it is in space at the speed that he delivers it, his fraction for
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air is like so, so small. It's so small. So when he's rifling through all these drivers,
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depending on what his club delivery is at that time, maybe he needs a little bit more
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loft, literally like a half a degree more loft or maybe it's a little less loft.
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You know, like that's the difference between him hitting it full send straight exactly how he
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wants it and hitting it, you know, his misses usually a big hook and that's the little bit of a
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difference. And going back to the car analogy, everybody specifically on the tour level,
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but everybody in the game is trying to drive the car faster. The best players in the world
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are constantly trying to drive the car faster without crashing it. And that constant quest for speed,
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I think we are in the speed era. Lastly, for the average golfer, would you feel like equipment-wise
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are the easiest low-hanging fruit to gain speed? To gain speed.
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So I would say it's actually more on the fitness side of it, right? Like prepare your body,
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stretch. To move. To move. Prepare your body to move. Don't just like roll out of the car,
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go to the practice range, hit a couple balls and expect that you're going to be a peak performance.
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Right? Like do some exercises, do some stretching, come up with a consistent program,
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both on the golf course and off the golf course. Getting your body to move efficiently and
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consistently. I always tell people out here the most impressive thing about these athletes,
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isn't how far they hit it or how much speed they have. It's how good they are to get their
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body to move the same day in and day out. That's the most impressive thing. Like if you think about
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going to play golf for seven days in a row, six days in a row, it's really hard and to get your
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body to move the same for seven days, let alone week after week after week. And then you throw life
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on top of that. Strange bad, strange pillows. How much sleep did you get? Do you have a cold? How's
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the body feeling and stuff like that? It's getting your body to do as well as it can.
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And I think building in those routines, especially if you stretch just a little bit and you do a
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couple, you know, leg exercises, some air squats before you hit a golf ball, you probably
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will hit it better and your body will move more fluidly. I mean, we could sit here and talk for
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hours. Ben, the Instagram site is it's the tour of an I think it's a really cool insight into
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some of the builds you guys do. And then your day job when you're not out on tour, you guys have
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this kind of tour build setup in two locations. Yeah, so we're at Pumpkin Ridge out and just outside
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of Portland, Oregon. And then just outside of Nashville, we're at a club called The Hermitage.
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So we've got two retail locations that my business partner Jason Warner and he's in Nashville.
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I'm out in Portland, where that's our day job. You know, so we that's actually the same model as
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we have out here, right? We have access to every manufacturer, every shaft, every component.
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And we fit outdoors off of grass, just like we do with these players. It's all component builds.
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I mean, it's it's close to a tour experience is you're going to come. We work with the best
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players in the world. And we build the equipment the same way. Well, we can week out year in and
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year out. I mean, you guys are the young sun heroes of the tour. You guys are the mechanics and
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I don't think the players can thank you enough because you guys basically keep the car
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running, keep the car on the track and and help them perform and get some rest in the off season.
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And we'll do it all again next year. Thanks for talking to us. Yeah, thank you.
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So, none of which comes to you almost every week. Thanks everyone for listening.
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This is an I Heart podcast.