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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2004 (Part 10)

Why Do Wrong Clubs Work Right?

I have no competitive success to report this month. Alas, I succumbed to the curse of golfers who work in the golf business and find that their opportunity to play suffers. My highlight was guest day at the Olympic Club courtesy of my friend Bob Ireland. We lucked out and played the Lake Course. Conrad Ray, the new Stanford Men’s golf coach showed us how he survived eight years on tour, shooting a smooth 72. I caught myself dreaming about turning the clock back 35 years. In 1968, the Stanford golf coach taught first aid and ran the driving range. On the PGA Tour, the winner took home $10,000, not $1,000,000. Back then, our dreams were black and white. Today, the kids are dreaming in full color. Conrad will move Stanford up in the Pac 12. It’s a tough job. At Stanford, the players still go to class.

I used up a couple of range cards at Paly working out some new ideas about the magic driver and my “back to basic” blades. With help from Iron Byron and Heather, we made some discoveries that went against the conventional wisdom, par for that course.

If you’re not ready to lay down $800 for your TaylorMade R-7 TP but still want to tweak your setup a little, I’ve got some ideas that will work but won’t break the bank. And the season-long competition to see what’s in the bag for the Irish Links trip is over. All that and more, as we usually say . . .

A Dollop of Personal Philosophy
I play the unique American game known as “rooting for the underdog.” Americans love the guy who succeeds against all odds. If you like golf equipment, there are hundreds of stories every year about the little guy with great ideas. Unfortunately, you usually hear the story once and the little guy disappears. How can an individual inventor, craftsman and entrepreneur sell his idea in today’s market for golf equipment?

The golf equipment industry is dominated by a few multinational conglomerates and a few more “hopefuls.” Titleist, TaylorMade and Callaway get most of the money. Cleveland and Ping clean up the scraps. And then there’s Nike . . .

The big guys rely on “hero marketing.” They pay exorbitant amounts of money to a few famous players knowing that we all respond to star power. Face it, in your heart of hearts, there’s a tour player you’d trade places with. When I was a young player, the “Big Three” (Palmer, Player and Nicklaus) were in their prime. I liked Arnie, so I played Wilson Staffs, just like him. The same is true today.

Depending on your age group and skill level, you are a good bet to buy the same equipment as everyone else of like age, ability and disposable income. If you’re between 30 and 50 and your handicap is under 15, I can tell you what’s in your bag. (Probability: 75%) If you bought a driver this year, it’s a TaylorMade R-7. (If you took my advice, you bit the bullet and laid down the extra bucks for the TP version.) If you didn’t buy an R-7, you probably shelled out for a Titleist 983K or E. You surely didn’t buy a Callaway. The big “C” just fired its president because no one bought their Fusion or warmed over Berthas. You didn’t buy a Ping, they’re all still for sale on eBay. Bargain hunters picked up Cleveland and Cobra. If you bought more than one driver, you might have given your business to a company that make quality long drive heads (SMT, Alpha or Ashton) that you call a “scramble club” so you don’t feel too extravagant.

If you’re like me and give your money to the underdog, you could have bought a KZG Gemini or a Nakashima NP-1.

The big winners this season were TaylorMade and Titleist. TaylorMade has the hottest products with the R-7 and RAC irons. Stories like Cleveland’s V.J. Singh turning to the R-7 winning a major and taking over the #1 ranking doesn’t go unnoticed. On the other side is the Mickelson army, loyal to their Titleist brand. If you’re in that camp, you could be playing the Titleist forged CB’s or blades. (OOPS! Late breaking news: the Titleist Army is looking for a new General. Callaway signed Mickelson for $7 million a year which proves my first point about exorbitant pay and shows how desperately Callaway wants to sell the ERC.)

Your wedges are Vokeys or TM RAC’s with their cool new colors. Your putter is a Cameron. (Your Cally Two-Ball is in the closet.) That’s pretty much it.

The same goes for other age groups. If you are over 50, you grew up with Hogan, Wilson and MacGregor. You’re willing to experiment a little, mainly because the venerable brands have been “rode hard and put away wet” too many times. There’s still a vestige of loyalty for Hogan and those of us who root for the underdogs are hoping that MacGregor will make a comeback. Most observers think it’s already too late for Wilson. Once in a while, you’ll pick up a Ping. If you gave up on name brands in frustration, you might have chosen quality Japanese forgings from KZG or Miura. “Lowbrow” buyers bought Infiniti.

There’s one more company: Nike. To me, Nike is an enigma. Despite leading with Tiger, Nike appears to have made little headway in golf equipment. (It’s really all about the ball anyway.) It’s not that they don’t have good products. They hired the last big name designer, Tom Stites. They started with “players” blades to make a statement and then released the truly innovative Slingshot irons. Their driver troubles have been well-publicized, but the new Ignite seems to be gaining momentum.

I’m putting my money on Nike in the long run and here’s the reason. They’re winning hearts and minds at the junior level. Tiger is the biggest star for the next generation. His personal involvement and his foundation are helping the First Tee Program succeed. The First Tee program is essential to the growth of the golf industry. Nike has Tiger locked up and that’s all the star power they need. Kids coming into the game today are likely to choose Nike. I see a lot of “Nike Kids” bags around the Palo Alto Muni. To stretch an analogy, Nike’s strategy is almost like the Chinese taking over Hong Kong. The Chinese left everything the “same” except one thing. They changed the language in the school system from English to Chinese. One generation and everything will be back to “normal.” Nike just needs one generation. They’re not trying to change YOUR mind.

Meantime: The Definition of Insanity
You want to improve your golf game. You know a lot about golf. You KNOW what you like. So you never change. We see it every day. Players come into the Golf Lab with a new set of clubs that’s exactly like their old set. They insist that they play a certain swingweight and are convinced that a point or two either direction will be impossible to hit. Most players don’t even want to test clubs that are different from what they’ve already got.

The reason is that it’s frustrating and time consuming to test different equipment. But how will you ever know if another setup would work better for you if you don’t try it? That’s the definition of insanity. Refuse to change what you’re doing but expect different results.

If you’re willing to be adventurous, it’s not as hard or aggravating to test new equipment as it used to be. You start by knowing the exact specifications of the clubs you are playing. You might think you’re playing “regular” but find out you’re playing “stiff” or even “X”. Then, when you test a new club, you will also know its exact specifications. When you compare the performance of two clubs with the help of a launch monitor you will find out which one works the best for you.

Some New Ideas that Work
The summer tournament season is almost over and new products are about to start hitting the “buzz” circuit. For me, it’s exciting to see how the “dance of the elephants” is going to shake out. You can be sure that the product development teams have been hard at work. By now, they’ve got most of the 2005 new product designs pretty well finished. It won’t be long until 2005 prototypes start showing up. Then there’s the big PR push leading up to the PGA Merchandise Show the last weekend of January. But that’s the new stuff. If you’re conservative and frugal, you might want to think about adopting some older ideas that proved themselves in 2004.

Lightweight Driver Shafts
The single most important factor in increasing distance and accuracy is overall club weight. Since all heads weigh almost the same, the shaft is where the difference counts. There are two schools of thought about weight. Some experts advocate heavier weights to “keep your swing on plane.” I’m on the other side. I think that sub 60 gram shafts for drivers are about to become more popular. It’s simple; you swing a lighter club faster. The results of the testing we’ve been doing at the Golf Lab demonstrate why I’m high on lightweight shafts.

For strong players the conventional shaft wisdom calls for heavy, stiff, high bend point and low torque. Iron Byron is the Golf Lab’s human robot. He can dial up his swing speed past 120. He likes to send the ball out over the right tree line and curve it back into the left side of the fairway. He’s a perfect candidate for the usual heavy, stiff, high bend point, low torque solution.

But in the past month he has a new magic driver in his bag. The head is a Nakashima 10¡ NP-1 380 with a .5¡ open face angle. It’s paired up with a Fujikura SIX shaft. The shaft is a mystery. It’s relatively soft by his standards testing out at 263 CPM. It also has relatively high torque, around 4¡. If there’s a shaft that shouldn’t fit, the SIX is it. But Iron Byron is hitting it off the planet and it’s straightened out his ball flight. You might remember this club from my last article. It’s the one I built it for myself and gradually modified it until it was impossible for me to hit with my wimpy 110 MPH swingspeed. By serendipity, Iron Byron picked it up and hit a few shots on the launch monitor. It looked good, so he took it to the range and then the course. The rest is history. We never would have believed that setup would work for him -- because we know too much for our own good.

The takeaway for better players: consider trying shafts that are “wrong” for you. Don’t be afraid of light weight, softer flex, and high torque.

Stiff Lightweight Driver Shafts Paired with Low(er) Loft Heads
In the last few months we’ve had a few sorry surprises when we made recommendations that didn’t work. The scenario was usually a good woman player who wanted more distance. We would test her driver and find it was too stiff and the launch angle was too low. We would build a new driver with a “correct flex” shaft and enough loft to get the ball up to the “proper” launch angle. Two weeks later she’d be back, saying that the ball flight was indeed prettier, but she wasn’t gaining distance. We would then waste a bunch of time retesting drivers on the launch monitor -- coming up stumped.

My friend Heather is a two-time S.F. City Amateur champion and onetime pro. We’ve built her new clubs with great results. With a driver swing speed just a tad south of 90 MPH, she is a perfect fit on paper for a men’s regular flex. Heather’s drivers were built according to the “correct flex” -- a PCS Equalizer 4.5. She loved the ball flight but continued to wish for more distance. She wondered if there was a way to produce a little lower trajectory and get better run out.

It was an accident that provided the breakthrough. Once again, I was working on finding my own (next) magic driver. With our trip to Ireland looming, I was looking for a little bit lower ball flight to keep the ball down out of the wind. I had a box full of Makser heads and a couple of new 50 gram shafts from Aerotech. Aerotech is a good story. They make a variety of products out of “composites.” They are the second largest manufacturer of hockey sticks in the world. Most of their business is to big distributors and OEMs under other brand names. But they have innovative technology, combining a sophisticated filament winding process with super fine steel fibers. Their flagship design is the patent-pending “Powercoil” product line. I was testing the 50 gram model. It flexed out at 260 CPM, just a tad south of “X” on the PCS Equalizer system.

I paired it up with a Makser 400 cc head. The Makser head has a high center of gravity and produces a much lower than expected trajectory. I built this driver with a slightly lighter head, following another idea that I’ve been testing. I think I like heavy swingweights (D-5), but with very lightweight shafts you have to bring the swingweight down a few points to maintain the same feel. This is because swingweight is a combination of head weight and shaft weight. When the shaft is very light, a standard weight driver head feels too heavy. Makser driver heads are light, around 195 grams. The driver came out D-2 with a 195 gram head at 45”.

During a practice round, I was drilling nice low shots with a tight little draw and Heather noticed. She grabbed my driver herself on the 16th hole and rolled one past the 150 marker. That’s 20 yards longer than her average. On 17, she put a good swing on her stylish Nakashima/Speeder combination. To compare, she hit the Makser Aerotech setup. The ball flew lower, hit hotter and rolled 30 yards past her first drive. All of a sudden, my magic driver was in her bag to stay. After the round, we went straight back to the Golf Lab to confirm results. There was no change in swing speed with the stiff shaft. Launch angle was lower by a little over 1¡. The combination definitely worked better than the “correct” setup.

We proved once again that we knew too much for our own good. If you follow the “science,” you fit a driver by matching flex and loft to swing speed to produce the correct launch angle and backspin according to the chart supplied by the launch monitor company. Most of the time that method gives the best results. But, with the freedom to choose heads with different weight distribution and very light shafts you can throw science out the window. We never would have built that driver for Heather in a thousand years. If you are looking for a breakthrough, you might try “Heather’s solution.”

The takeaway for women, seniors and 90 MPH SS amateurs is that your magic driver might be a high center of gravity head with a loft that’s too low mounted on a very lightweight shaft that’s too stiff. If you’re really desperate, you might try it a couple of inches longer than the 45” standard. You can always cut it down.

Open Face Angle Driver Heads
Good players are almost always worried about “losing it left.” Because of that, many players change their swing. The normal change is to “block” shots. Blocking is holding back a full release. You lose a little distance, but you take the left side out of play. I played that way for 40 years.

When you want to be competitive, every yard counts. The main problem with a blocking is that ballflight is a fade. That steals distance. As you get older, that’s distance you can’t afford to lose.

The advent of component heads that come with measured face angles and measured lofts is a huge breakthrough. One of the reasons that Iron Byron has been able to go to a higher loft head and straighten out his ball flight is he found a driver head with an open face angle. Makser drivers also come with square and open face angles. If you are looking for a little more distance and want to change your ball flight from a fade to a draw, it could be a great help to find a head with an open face angle. The open face looks square. It suits your eye at setup. You are then more likely to let your right forearm cross over your left at the moment of impact. If you let your release go, you will pick up more distance and change your ball flight to a right to left pattern.

Don’t Sell Yourself Short
We all diagnose our own swings and fit our own clubs. Over the last few years, I have convinced myself that I need irons that are a little offset and slightly oversize. I think I learned that from reading magazines.

Last month I decided to try an experiment. I’ve been playing with Ping Eye 3 O Size irons as one of my sets. I reshafted them with Project X 5.0’s and made my first hole in one. My index came down to 3.3. What’s not to like?

This month I built out a set of Ping Eye 3 BLADES, same maroon dot (5¡ up). I ground them down to the right weights and reshafted them with Project X 5.0’s. All specifications are as close to identical as possible. The Ping blades have very little offset and you can call them compact. It’s a very different look.

I put them in play for a practice round. I hit 16 greens and shot 72. Okay, we played the white tees at Paly so it wasn’t a really great round, but par is par and that’s good for me. There were two shots that I couldn’t have made with the O-Size irons. On the sixth hole I was partially blocked by overhanging limbs. I needed a low punch out of thick rough. I knocked down a 9 iron that scooted up to 10 feet under the hole. Knockdown shots with offset irons are very difficult to get on line.

On the 17th hole, I pushed my drive right. I was partially blocked by the very tall eucalyptus trees. I needed a fade. I made a good swing and curved the ball right around the trees and hit the green. That shot would have been impossible with the offset irons.

My takeaway: it will be a long time before I go back to offset blades, especially for my mid and short irons. I sold myself short. Your takeaway: if you’ve convinced yourself that you should be playing offset, game-improvement clubs from reading magazines, you should demo some normal players’ blades and make sure that the magazines are right. You can always split the set with muscle backs in the short irons and offset, oversize heads in the long irons if you’re not ready to take the full plunge.

Belly Putters
I’ve been writing about belly putters for a few months. I’ve described disappointments and frustrations. No more. The belly putter is in my bag. The one that won a trip to Ireland is a standard Odyssey center shafted blade that I bought off eBay. I didn’t even change the length. It’s a standard 43”. That part is just luck because I’ve tried every other length from 41” to 47”.

If you’re going to try a belly putter, I suggest looking for a center shafted model. The only other thing you need to worry about after length is weight. I just finished a “putt-off” between my Odyssey and a Scotty Cameron that’s a lot heavier. In several recent emails, Ralph Maltby’s Golfworks has been touting the benefits of very heavy heads to overcome the yips. They think that extra weight is a negative factor for distance control. I agree after playing the heavy Cameron belly and comparing results against the lighter Odyssey. You will have to do your own testing. But belly putters can also be too light. I thought that the Never Compromise center shafted blade didn’t have enough heft.

I think that belly putters are a fertile ground for custom club shops. You’ve got almost as many variables as with drivers. There’s length, weight, loft and lie angle. Even if the right fit comes “off the rack” you will never know it until you’ve tried a lot of different combinations.

The ultimate compliment came from my friend Heather. She’s a great putter and has seen me miss a lot of putts in dozens of rounds we’ve played together. Yesterday she said that she started expecting me to make anything from 10 feet in. The funny thing is that’s exactly how I feel. I the last month, I’ve had a few rounds when I’ve surprised myself. I even got a couple of positive comments from Conrad Ray during our round at Olympic. It might be that my old Stanford team mate Walt Driver will convince the USGA to outlaw belly putters. If he does, he might be right. But for now I’m playing the belly and not looking back.

Makser Golf Equipment
Since the theme of this article is “underdogs” it is appropriate to discuss Makser. Makser is really only an underdog in the United States. In Europe, they’re a top dog. But the biggest and most important market for golf equipment in the world is the US. Makser wants a piece of that action. They’ve opened up an office in Southern California and are putting a strategy in place to make an impact in the market.

In an interesting twist, Makser is going with a dual channel strategy. They are planning to sell their own manufactured products to green grass Pro Shops and off-course golf retailers. They are also selling their products as components to a select group of clubmakers who will build out Makser products on a custom basis in their shops. This is a strategy that has worked out for Sonartec, LaJolla and Miura. Customers get custom-fitted clubs at a reasonable price instead of buying an off-the-rack set and reshafting.

You hear it time and again, golf is a “people” business. Starting a new channel requires solid contacts and an extraordinary personality and Makser found the guy to do the job for them. Chris White became well known to the independent clubmaker community when he was one of the principals behind the Phoenixx Shaft Company. Chris was a regular around the Professional Clubmakers’ Society Expo and gained the respect of the membership -- even in a losing cause. His Phoenixx did not rise.

This time around he’s with a company with staying power and an interesting line. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with the Makser products over the last couple of months and found one that made it into my bag. That’s a rare occurrence. In my testing, I learned some interesting things that apply to other products.

.350 Diameter Shafts in Drivers
At the Golf Lab we usually don’t pay too much attention to drivers that come with .350 hosels. There are two reasons. First, there’s the belief that .350 drivers are made for hacks. The manufacturers are not too shy about admitting that the primary reason they go to the larger diameter shafts is to cut down on breakage, and subsequent warranty replacements. TaylorMade has made a habit of releasing their consumer drivers with proprietary (cheap?) .350 shafts. The first thing a lot of players do with their new TaylorMade club is take it down to their favorite clubmaker for a new shaft. .350 shafts just don’t get respect.

Second, the selection of shafts with .350 hosels is very limited. Fujikura makes two: the Vista Pro Series and the Speeder 757. Harrison has a handful. Most of the other shaft manufacturers have one or two popular models from their line that they offer in .350. But you don’t have much to choose from.

There is a corollary problem. Figuring out “playability” is a mystery. This all became a focus for me over the last couple of months because I was determined to give the Makser drivers a good workout and they ONLY come with .350 hosels.

The first issue is flex. When you test a .350 shaft, it shouldn’t be a surprise that it tests stiffer. The benefit of the .350 shaft should be stability. It stands to reason that you can play .350 shafts in softer flexes.

So that’s what I tried. I chose a couple of Harrison models and the Power Coil from Aerotech. I also had a Fujikura Vista Pro 70 in reserve. The Harrisons were A/R flex, testing out to 246 CPM at 45” -- a good stiff on the PCS Equalizer. After several range sessions, the Makser 400 cc head, 10¡ loft and square face angle won the sweepstakes paired with a Harrison Pro 2.5 shaft. The Aerotech was second place for me but it’s making the trip to Ireland in Heather’s bag.

Overall, the Makser experiment ended up pretty surprising. I thought that the Makser 400 was unusually straight. That could be the .350 shaft. We’ll find out more in the next couple of weeks. I’m also interested to try the full line of Aerotech Steel Fiber shafts in .350 tips. In future months, I’ll keep tabs on Makser’s progress in cracking the American market.

Finally, in the bag for Ireland
(14 club limit does not apply).

Driver: Makser 400 cc, Harrison Pro 2.5 shaft, A/R flex, Balance-Certified.
3 wood: Advanced Golf Technologies, Fujikura Pros3 shaft.
7 wood: KZG stock, Fujikura Vista Pro 90 shaft.
Utility: 23¡ Sonartec MD, New Fujikura Speeder Utility shaft.
Irons: 4-P, Ping Blade, Royal Precision Project X 5.0 shafts.
Wedges: Ping O size U, S, L, custom grind sole, Project X 5.0 shafts.
Putter: Odyssey center shafted belly. Stock.

Next month you’re going to have to put up with a travelogue about Ireland. We’re going to the end of the road in the far north. If that neighborhood is overrun with American tourists, I’ll be real surprised. “All the best . . .”

Leith Anderson is a partner in the Golf Lab in Palo Alto. He will answer all questions related to clubmaking and clubfitting personally. Contact Leith Anderson by email: Leith@calgolftech.com. Cell phone 650-743-2816.