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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2005 (Part 4)

Buy Your Game or Practice to Improve?

Just One More Low Gross

A few months ago I was in a contemplative mood while writing the Golf Equipment Chronicles and expressed the hope that I would have a chance to win just one more low gross prize at one of the Palo Alto Muni Club tournaments that I play every month. I was refusing to give up the dream of improving my skills and performing under pressure. I was rejecting the temptation to manage my handicap to a comfortable level and concentrate on picking up gift certificates for third place, low net.

I vowed to pay the price. Way back in June I bought my first senior play card at the Palo Alto Muni and started dragging myself out of bed every weekday morning to play the back nine. Some mornings I went out alone, a pocket full of balls to play multiple shots from certain key points. I changed my clubs every day or so with the goal of becoming very familiar with how different sets suited my game. I invented games to keep things interesting. Omaha Beach -- two balls each hole, one bunker shot required. Five iron off every tee to stretch the course. Two drives, play the best -- to shoot low scores. Since June, I’ve logged about 50 nine-hole rounds.

Some mornings I’m joined by Fred, Jimmy, John, Mike, Craig or the Dane. The stakes -- for those with enough self confidence to bet on their game -- loser buys breakfast. Readers who live in the Bay Area are always welcome to join the group.

The effort paid off. I posted a 74 at the San Jose Muni and won a card playoff for the low gross prize early in July. The next week, I played the “Red, White, Blue” tournament at Palo Alto Muni and posted a 68 -- four under par. Four strokes clear. Six of the tees were red, but it was still my lowest round in relation to par -- ever. Then I got an extra bonus. The week after the “Red, White, Blue” -- playing with the Dane -- I made my second hole in one of the year. The 11th at Palo Alto Muni. It was a perfect shot. A Neanderthal Ram 898 seven iron, S-300 shaft. The kicker? It was my first swing with that club. Fifty years without making or even seeing a hole in one and I make two this year. Go figure . . .

I’m 60. At some point, winning golf tournaments, no matter how small, will become a memory instead of a dream. But for now, I’m on top of the world. Worse for my readers, it gives me control of the bully pulpit to make some suggestions about how to stare down Father Time. I learned some new lessons along the way. For the record, here are some ideas that may help you in your own quest to get improve your game and maybe win one more low gross for yourself. Later on, there’s complete coverage of what was in the bag.

Ten Ideas to Help You Improve

Play Nine Hole Rounds. In America, we tend to make a big deal out of a round of golf. We plan days ahead and make reservations. We assume a round will take five hours. We get there early to warm up. Then, we’ll have a drink after we finish. Played that way, a round of golf eats a whole day.

Not so if you go out early in the morning or late in the afternoon. You play nine holes and finish before work or in time for a late dinner. The benefit is that you play a lot of golf and it’s not a big deal. In Scotland, golf is a small deal, something like taking a walk with your friends. Same story in Ireland. The idea is to get outdoors for a while, appreciate the weather and have a chance to hit a few good shots. Find a way to play low cost, low commitment rounds. There’s no substitute for on-course practice.

Own the Back Nine. The Palo Alto Muni is a screwy course. If you play from the blue tees, the first six holes are all the golf you need. The par fours are over 400 yards and the one par three is almost 200. It’s easy to go three or four over through six. From seven on, it turns into a pretty standard, and pretty easy Muni layout.

Even so, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made the turn a shot or two over par and then lost it on the back nine. It’s axiomatic that the difference between good players and the rest of us is that somehow, good players have learned how to “close the deal”.

Since I started playing the back nine in the morning, I look forward to making the turn. Now, I know the right club from every location. From the fairway, I know the hole locations and where to aim my approach shots to have a chance for birdie. I know which greens are three clubs deep. I have plenty of positive memories. The result is that I shoot lower scores on the easier nine -- as it should be. Better, I find that I’m not stumbling home with bogies on two of the last three holes. You’ll never get better if you don’t close the deal. It’s working for me. When I shot the 68, I birdied four of the last five holes.

Hit It Short. Here’s a great story from Mitch Voges, the 1991 US Amateur Champion and proprietor of Max Out Golf Labs in Sherman Oaks, CA. Mitch recounts a conversation with his brother, a good player in his own right. Mitch asks his brother, “How far do you hit a six iron?” His brother responds, “165, except when I’m playing really good. Then, I hit it 160.”

I remember a Ben Hogan story when he was asked about distance for a certain shot. His answer? “I don’t want to know.”

In my “mornings at the Muni” I sometimes play rounds where I purposely choose a club that’s too long for the shot. There is nothing more satisfying in golf than taking a little bit off of a shot, curving it just the right direction and landing it on the top tier, next to the pin.

At the Golf Lab, we have a lot of conversations with players about the distance they hit their shots. The launch monitor tells us that most players almost always overestimate their distance. If you’re thinking about the maximum distance you can hit any club, and then try to hit it that far, you’re missing the point. When you’re really playing good, you’ll hit it shorter.

Develop Your Touch and Feel. This is a big one for me. As part of my self improvement program, I bought a laser rangefinder. I took it out religiously for a few weeks, trying to dial in the distance from all of the familiar points on the course. Then, I realized that I didn’t need it. I began to look at the shot, and then hit the shot. I keep reminding myself of that Hogan line: “I don’t want to know.”

Amateurs over-engineer their swings. They get all wrapped up in their Pelz-inspired swing thoughts about 7:30, 9:00 and 10:30. If you play a lot, you look at the shot and then hit the shot. You don’t need to know how far it is. You don’t need to think about your backswing in the middle of your backswing. To me, the Dave Pelz theory of distance control is too mechanical. It might be useful while you’re struggling to understand distance -- because you don’t play enough. Sooner or later, you’ll be better off if you don’t pretend you’re a puppet with some higher power pulling your strings.

Cure Your Problem Shots. For the last few years, I’ve been hurt by my fairway woods. I topped too many three woods from the middle of the fairway. I found myself laying up on par 5’s. The downside of that strategy is that you end up too far back and can easily miss the green with an eight or nine iron. You wind up with a bogey on a par 5. There’s nothing worse for your score. You need to birdie the par 5’s.

This summer, I beat my fairway wood problem. I built out all the best head designs. Sonartec is the leading independent fairway wood company. They have six or seven styles, each available in three lofts. That’s specialization. There are the American Golf Technology carpenter steel faced heads. They’re the hottest that I’ve found, but they’re a little small and it’s hard to get used to the knuckling effect of the ball taking off with less spin. Lately, I’ve focused on the Nike T-60 fairway woods. This is a model that deserves attention. It has a deep face, which is usually a problem off of the fairways you find at good country clubs -- hard surfaces with closely mown grass. But the T-60 sole design is contoured in a way that picks the ball off tight lies. A deep face is great off the tee. The face angle seems to line up open but nevertheless promotes a draw.

I spent a lot of time working out the right shaft for my fairway woods. I ended up with a Fujikura Speeder 757 -- pulled from a 510 TP in my Nike 4 wood. This is a great option if you live near a clubmaker who does a lot of reshafting. He will have shelves full of pullouts that were too stiff in drivers, but will work great in fairway woods. You will probably be able to get your fairway woods reshafted for half price if you use pullouts.

Notice one detail. I’m playing a 4 wood. The higher the loft, the easier it is to hit. If your three wood causes you problems, don’t fight it; go with a little more loft. I’m hitting some of the par 5’s in two again. You might even find a 4 wood goes farther than a 3 wood.

Love Your Wedges. Golfers spend most of their time worrying about their drivers. Then, they think about their irons. Then putters. Wedges are usually neglected. To bring your scores down, you have to hit it close to the hole from the fairway. You need to work with your wedges until they deliver short birdie putts and par saves for you. When Tour Players come to town, they have several wedges in their travel bags and choose the final lineup based on course conditions.

If you play a course with soft sand in the bunkers, you need a high bounce sand wedge. Dense or wet sand requires low bounce. Choosing appropriate sand wedge loft requires close attention. The standard is 56¡. I find that I’m better off with a 54¡ sand wedge, complemented by a 58¡ lob wedge. A little lower loft in a sand wedge lets you play longer sand shots with more confidence. It’s also a loft that is useful as a gap wedge from the fairway. Higher loft lob wedges are popular on Tour for bunker shots. You play them with a square face instead of laid way open.

Hogan said it first, “It’s all in the dirt.” Tiger picked up that line. Most of us don’t have the time or the means to custom grind 50 sets of irons. But you can learn a lot from digging the dirt with your wedges. You don’t need to buy new. Find a used barrel and try out some of the classics for a few bucks.

Wedge shafts make a difference. Stock wedge shafts are stiff as pipes. Dave Pelz says “flex equals feel” and recommends Rifle Spinners. Tiger has said recently he likes a little more flex in his wedge shafts, so he’s backed up to an 8 iron shaft to make that happen. My variation is to use a Project X eight iron shaft in my wedges. After a summer of experimentation, I think that setup gives the best feel and control. You can satisfy your desire to experiment without breaking the bank by focusing your shaft experiments on your wedges. When you get the right feel, you’ll know it.

Measure Your Clubs. The most common problem we encounter at the Golf Lab is clubs that are too long. Most drivers are 45” or 45.5”. Ask yourself why the most common driver length on the PGA Tour is 44.5”. Most 3 woods that you buy off the shelf are 43” or 43.5”. Ask yourself why the most common three wood length on the PGA Tour is 42.5”. The same goes for your irons. If you’re playing graphite, they’re almost certainly an inch too long. Ask yourself why if a certain length fits you with steel, why would graphite fit an inch longer?

Golf club manufacturers sell clubs that are too long knowing that golfers remember their home runs and don’t care about their batting average.

If you want to test the correct club length for yourself, it requires impact tape and a few test clubs. Hit the longer club, look at the impact pattern. Then hit a shorter club, look at the impact pattern. Choose the length that you hit most consistently. An improvement on this simple test is to capture the data with a launch monitor. That’s a foolproof way to know what club length performs the best for you.

Play Clubs that Don’t “Fit.” That might sound a little crazy, but there’s good reason. To start, you have to know the specifications of any clubs you’re testing. It doesn’t do you a lick of good to pick up an armload of demos and take them to the tee line unless you know exactly what you’re testing. It’s just too hard to detect differences in golf clubs from hitting them on the range. Think about it. The performance difference between good clubs and poor clubs is just a few yards of carry distance. If you’re testing drivers, can you really tell where the ball is landing some 200 plus yards down range? Even if you could see where the ball is coming down, will you remember? The only reliable way to test performance is with a launch monitor. You then confirm launch monitor test results by observing ball flight on the range.

I learned something from my hole-in-one seven iron. It is a tiny player’s blade with an S-300 shaft -- too stiff by my current taste. But the ball went in the hole on my first swing. I found that the problem with the S-300 shafts was not in the short irons, rather the mid and long irons is where I lost distance and was tempted to over swing. I found that out by testing on the course.

Nothing says that you have to play all the same shafts. If you like S-300’s in your short irons, fine. Try graphite or lightweight steel in your mid and long irons. There is no such thing as a “matched set” any more.

Fit Your Putter. New technology is now available to test the performance of your putter. Launch monitors have discovered performance differences in drivers and irons for several years and have become the standard method for fitting clubs. Fitting a putter is still primitive. Most players take a few strokes on the pro shop carpet, sink five in a row and put the new magic putter in the bag. Or, you might copy the other 999,999 golfers who bought an Odyssey Two Ball last year.

There are test results that suggest that some putters simply perform better. Putting is half the game, you should make sure you are working with the right tool.

Play in Competition. There are two good reasons to join a club and play in tournaments. First, you get to play good courses in prime time on weekends with players of like ability. Second, the only scores that really count are tournament scores. For amateurs, the ultimate pressure is posting your score on the wall for your friends to see (admire?). Bobby Jones said, “There is golf and there is tournament golf. The two bear no similarity.”

In the Bag

I wrote about my driver last month. It’s the Taylor Made 10.5¡ R7 TP with a Mitsubishi Diamana 63 gram shaft, tipped about an inch to 255 CPM at 45” (grip off, 5 inch clamp). It’s the best driver I’ve had, and as you know, I’ve had a lot. Is it the head or the shaft? I can’t say for sure. But it’s the setup that helped me win two low gross prizes. Still in the bag.

I’m only carrying one fairway wood. It’s the Nike Ignite T-60 with a Fujikura Speeder 757 shaft. The flex is a PCS 6.3.

I’ve left my three iron in the car trunk. The Mizuno Fli-Hi 21¡ utility club has replaced it permanently. It’s shafted up with the Fujikura Banzai. I’ve tried a lot of specialized shafts for utility clubs and the Banzai is the winner.

My wedges are the trustworthy Ping O-Size, custom ground, shafted with Project X shafts and counterbalanced with Balance Certified weight system. I chose the 10-gram weights. They’re offset, a completely counter-intuitive choice, but they work for me. One more example of why you should try clubs you think you won’t like.

The irons that have been performing are a mixed set of Ping Eye 3+ Blades, shafted with unlikely Aerotech 80 gram Steel Fiber Shafts. The four iron is an Eye 3 shafted with a Project X 5.0 steel shaft. It’s not necessary for all of your clubs to match.

But the ultimate weapon is the putter. It might be a coincidence or the right phase of the moon, but the putter in the bag is the Heavy Putter -- model B3, heel shafted.

My Heavy Putter Honeymoon.

The Heavy Putter was the hit of the PGA Merchandise Show in January. The booth was a zoo. The buzz on the show floor was all about a new idea -- a two pound putter. The breakthrough thinking is counterbalancing a very heavy head with a lot of additional weight in the butt. Is the Heavy Putter a “better mousetrap?” If so, that would be a low grade miracle. Designers have been trying to invent a better putter for 400 years but most new putters are simply recycled ideas from the past.

I placed an order in January, but the putters never came. I tried to buy one on eBay -- a recycled freebie from Jim Thorpe but I got sniped at the last second. The show order from January finally showed up in early July. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the company that seemed to have missed most of the golf season.

I finally had a chance to play the Heavy Putter at the San Jose Muni -- made five birdies -- including three in a row for my 74. Then, I played the Heavy Putter in the “Red, White and Blue” -- made six birdies -- including four in a row for my 68. The big difference was making a lot of putts. After 50 years of so-so putting, I’ve got to give a lot of credit to the putter. So what’s the story behind the Heavy Putter?

Another overnight success, 10 years in the making. Stephen Boccieri is a clubmaker. In his first life, he was an engineer in the nuclear industry. That lasted 30 years. He’s 53 today. Like many of us who set out on the Don Quixote-inspired quest to understand golf clubs, he suffers the misfortune of loving golf. He is a good golfer -- most years he plays at scratch.

Boccieri founded his own company, Engineered Golf, in 1994. His mission was to offer R&D services to the golf industry. He spent several years on the “bleeding edge” of equipment testing, specification and design. He was one of the first engineers to analyze shafts, doing shaft profiling and dynamic load testing 10 years ago. He did custom work, evaluated equipment and performed X-ray and ultrasound analysis on heads. All in all, it was a lot of interesting work but there was little money to be made from manufacturers who didn’t really want to change their methods.

The Heavy Putter was conceived over three years ago. It was an idea that started with Boccieri’s partner, Bob Prince, experimenting with very heavy machined putters heads. They worked with increased head mass and altering heel and toe weights, trying to influence swing path. The sequence of experiments was to continue to add head weight, until it became too much. The breakthrough occurred when Boccieri offset the increased head weight with counterweight under the grip. The patented technology in the Heavy Putter is around the balance point and distribution of weight in the head and the grip.

What’s Different about the Heavy Putter? Sometimes a new idea comes out that works, and then you figure out why it works. Boccieri now explains that the technology “makes sense” to most players. Increasing the weight, raising the balance point and center of mass of the putter engages the larger muscles of the body and forces a player to create more of a pendulum stroke. The benefit is described as bringing the center of mass of the putter closer to the human body center of mass.

In Boccieri’s view, the Heavy Putter slows down the pace of a player’s stroke and stabilizes the stroke. He sums up the Heavy Putter value proposition by saying: We’re selling a better stroke.”

There was a little test marketing. The Heavy Putter was introduced as a limited edition putter, made in USA at $400 retail. The only marketing was through their website. Customers bought the Heavy Putter by word of mouth, sight unseen. The company sold over $100,000 worth of putters in two months. There was only one return, because it was the wrong length. Customer acceptance at the first level gave Boccieri and Prince confidence to take the company to the next level -- a debut at the PGA Show in January 2005.

To some extent, the company is turning the normal marketing sequence upside down. They are content to sell to ordinary golfers first, instead of wasting their treasure on the PGA Tour.

The Business Opportunity. Boccieri has studied the putter industry. If you’re selling a popular putter, you can have a little fun working out the spreadsheet. Here are the numbers:

There are 1.5 million putters sold annually in the U.S. Of that number, the Odyssey Two Ball extended family gets 1 million units. That makes Callaway’s acquisition of Odyssey a major home run. The Two Ball is two thirds of the putter market. Even so, that leaves 1 million putters a year up for grabs.

Boccieri is even more optimistic. He reckons that there are 20 million golfers in the United States. With the Two Ball waning, the theoretical limit to new putter sales is 20 million -- for a really good putter that can be proven to work. Why wouldn’t every golfer on the planet want one? That’s the upside. But he’d be satisfied with a small sliver of the 1 million.

Building the Heavy Putter turned out to be no small problem. After the PGA Show, Boccieri had a briefcase bulging with orders. The Big Boys, Golfsmith, Golfworks and Edwin Watts were all bargaining for a piece of the action. Unfortunately, the Heavy Putter is totally CNC machine milled out of a solid forged billet of stainless steel. It takes 40 minutes of machine time per head. Their little contract machine shop in San Diego wasn’t about to satisfy demand.

Satisfying that demand required establishing a supply chain stretching from manufacturing plants in Taiwan and China to fulfillment in Ohio. It took a while to get that all together, which is the reason for the delay in deliveries. The Heavy Putter Company was weighed down by its own success. For now, the supply is adequate and the Heavy Putters are shipping.

For true putter aficionados and collectors, it is possible to find some of the original Heavy Putters. They are the serial numbered originals that were produced in San Diego. If Heavy Putters become a major hit, the value of the original production will certainly increase.

The luckiest stroke of all was naming the company. It’s a rare occurrence that the company name describes the product. Even better, Boccieri was able to trademark the name “Heavy Putter”.

Is There Proof for Putters? Earlier this year, Rankmark commissioned a study by Max Out Golf Labs in Los Angeles to test putters. In robotic testing, the Heavy Putter performed better than any other putter tested, including the Two Ball.

In the emerging technology department, there is a new electronic gizmo, developed in Germany that is the equivalent of a launch monitor for putters. The Science and Motion (SAM) system detects the consistency of a putting stroke and measures the performance of a putter. For the first time, it is possible to compare the performance of putters.

Boccieri bought one of the early SAM systems and claims that their internal testing proves that the Heavy Putter improves the path and consistency of the stroke. In SAM testing, the Heavy Putter has proven to be even more effective improving the stroke of higher handicap players, who have less muscle control.

As you would expect, the Golf Lab has acquired a SAM putting analysis system. It is now available to analyze players’ putting and perform comparative analysis by appointment. This is a new system. We don’t have enough experience with it at this time to provide a full evaluation. (Look for that next month.) However, we believe that it’s breakthrough technology and that it’s especially important because until now there has been no good way to analyze and compare putters and help a player improve his stroke at the same time.

Tour Acceptance. Boccieri is sanguine about convincing PGA Tour players that the Heavy Putter is breakthrough technology. He holds out little hope that the “old guys” will make the switch. The convincing proof on Tour will be that some of the younger guys will adopt the Heavy Putter and their putting averages will come down. There is one shining example. Troy Madison put the Heavy Putter in his bag a year ago when he was number 100 in putting. This year, he’s number two on the Nationwide Tour money list.

In the meantime, the Heavy Putter boys are grinding it out. Ken McDonald is the Heavy Putter Tour Rep, working out of Don Parker’s Tour Van. His goal is to find 3-5 new players each week that will give the putter a try. To date he has 40 putters in the hands of Tour players.

Will the Heavy Putter catch on? The Big Dream is that it could be the next Two-Ball. But for Boccieri, the Heavy Putter doesn’t have to hit home runs. He’s quite satisfied to have developed a new idea that works and is particularly proud that the ingenuity of a couple of tinkerers created a product that makes the major OEM’s jealous. The Heavy Putter Company will be a great story to follow.

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.