Over the Green

Terry Koehler had an idea about wedges.

You know, those clubs used for shorter shots – scoring shots they’re called. He thought wedges ought to be designed to aid golfers hitting the ball close to the hole. From bad lies, good lies, sand or hard pan, whatever the conditions a properly designed wedge should be an effective tool not something that gets in the way of getting the job done.

Koehler, both a good player and club designer, further felt most golfers carry the wrong wedges. Wrong for their ability and wedges that can actually keep them from hitting the proper shot regardless of their ability. Since wedge play is all about spin and bounce Koehler designed wedges incorporating his ideas of how these two factors can be maximized.

Eidolon Golf V-Sole Wedges are the result. More…

While writing the item on the new Titleist Vokey wedges it occurred to me wedges or for that matter clubs in general are probably not very high on the list of REALLY important agenda items at parent Acushnet’s Fairhaven, Mass. headquarters. The reason of course is they have around 60% of the ball business and for this roughly $1.5 billion operation golf balls represent a huge chunk of the annual profit.

Sure, sure, Acushnet owns other big players in their respective market segment like FootJoy but it’s the ball business that runs this train.

Where this idle speculation led me, was when are we going to see a new Titleist Pro V1?

The current model hit the streets as the New 2009 Pro V1 in you guessed it, the beginning of 2009. And since Titleist has a history of going two years between introductions it would seem 2011 is next.

But there’s a problem. The USGA went and changed the grooves, effectively making them smaller, so all the highly paid Pro V1 endorsers on the PGA Tour will have to compensate for the resulting lower spin (read, can’t stop the darn ball on the darn green). I predict they won’t like that one bit and are already clamoring for a softer cover ball to compensate for the smaller grooves which in turn means the players won’t have to compensate by not hitting the ball in rough but hitting it in the fairway…which is what the USGA wanted in the first place, using the tortured blue-blazer logic, this is the way to reign in the increase of driving distance that is making all those wonderful old courses obsolete.

Boy, talk about – well as you can tell I’m not a fan of taking away something from golfers to aid their scoring ability like the present box grooves, but that’s another column.

By the way, in case you didn’t know TaylorMade Golf makes golf balls too and though they have a single digit market share they are working hard at increasing their sales. Of course the big target is Acushnet not Calloway or Bridgestone or whoever. TaylorMade has announced the first ever five-layer golf ball called the Penta TP (clever, huh?) specifically for use by their staff players and supposedly it does help to compensate for the loss of spin from the smaller USGA grooves.

Therefore, while Acushnet is probably not laying awake nights worried about TMaG, I’d bet a dollar to a doughnut we will see a new improved Pro V1 by the start of the 2010 PGA Tour season.

Titleist Vokey Spin Milled C-C Wedges
As often noted in this column the rules change concerning iron grooves has sent every club maker back to the drawing board to update designs and especially in the wedge category new ones are being announced. Titleist’s Vokey wedges, incidentally the best selling ones in the U.S., is offering Spin Milled C-C wedges with the C-C standing for “Condition of Competition.”

To conform to the new rules designer Bob Vokey basically reduced the size of the grooves but Titleist will continue to sell the old Vokey Design Spin Milled wedges with larger grooves from 2008 through next year.

Titleist provides some interesting data on the differences between the two groove configurations saying that the new groove wedges with give higher trajectory-presumably to compensate for the immense drop in spin rates versus the old grooves and admitting shots with the new grooves will run much further when they hit the green also in keeping with the lower amount of spin.

“The new groove standards will put more pressure on better players’ short games,” said Bob Vokey, Master Craftsman and Senior Product Development Manager, Titleist. “It will be crucial for them to determine the most effective combinations of loft, bounce and sole grinds in their wedge set-ups. There is less room for error when players do not have as much spin as they are accustomed, and they must be much more precise in their execution. Having worked directly with tour players, club pros and better amateurs in developing these new Spin Milled C-C wedges, I believe we have covered the spectrum in regards to providing the most effective combinations for players who are required to use the new grooves under a Condition of Competition or choose to play them.”

Vokey Design Spin Milled C-C wedges hit retail outlets Nov. 1, carrying a MSRP of $125. And to be on the safe side each new Spin Milled C-C wedge will have a sticker: “This Vokey Design wedge conforms to the new 2010 USGA/R&A groove rule and can be used in events that adopt the new rule as a Condition of Competition.”

Nike Wants You to Crush It

Nike’s newest is the CRUSH golf ball and quoting their press release, “designed for golfers who are motivated by out driving everyone in their foursome and then owning their bragging rights.”

Ah well, so much for shotmaking.

“I believe we’ve done a great job designing a longer and straighter golf ball for a wide range of swing speeds at a mid-tier price, “said Rock Ishii, Director of Product Development for Nike Golf balls. “CRUSH is a natural fit for those who love the game and want to continue to evolve as better golfers.”

Available starting next month, the CRUSH has a MSRP of $30.

Golf’s Greatest Day – by Bill Bales, CEO of aboutGolf

For the last couple years I have sporadically presented my opinions through the Web site www.TheNext500Years.com. The site is home to a myriad of musings related to how we might assess the future of golf by reflecting on the approximate five hundred year history of our game.

With that as the preface, I assert that golf’s greatest day in its five-hundred-year history was October 9, 2009.

If you are a diehard golf guy/gal and you don’t know what that date means, shame on you. As a patriot, I remember where I was when JFK was assassinated, when Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon, and when the events of 9/11 unfolded. And, as golfers, we should remember where we were when we first heard that the International Olympic Committee officially announced that the game of golf would rejoin the Olympics in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.

Golf last was played as an Olympic sport in Paris in 1900 and St. Louis in 1904; before Walter, Bob, Ben, Byron, Sam, Arnie, Jack, young Eldrick and modern media made golf culturally significant.

Folks, this is a BIG DEAL. This makes Tiger, cavity back irons, metal woods, and Natalie Gulbis’ miniskirts look like Bo Peep.

Do you know what this means? I do.

It means that every podunk country in the world will start scrambling to figure out how to produce Olympic class golfers. It means the likes of China, Russia, Germany, Korea, Japan, and others are going to invest more dough than is used to make a Man Versus Food pizza to create and expand organized programs to produce golfers. It means every worthwhile country in the world will be digging their heels in and doing everything reasonable to crank up our great game on their soil.

What’s the payoff? Well, the GAME of golf wins. We get more participants and more lovers of the game. And, the BUSINESS of golf REALLY wins. We’ll sell more Sasquatch drivers, more Pro V1 balls, more Nike shirts (lots more Nike shirts), more Footjoy shoes, more Visiball golf ball finder glasses, more Ballzee pocket golf ball cleaners, more…

You get the picture. The return of golf to the Olympics represents a shift of monumental proportions within the golf culture. In modern terms, it’s a paradigm shift, an inflection point. In anthropological terms, it’s on par with the industrial revolution.

But such an event begets disruptive change (like with paradigm shifts, inflection points, and cultural revolutions). The game is going to change. The business is going to expand. Golf culture is going to hyper-evolve.

Why such big effects on golf, when it wasn’t such a big deal with other Olympic sports?

Consider the following:
*Golf is a mainstream sport with massive participation. Active golf participants cross over almost all age groups, a wide range of physical abilities (and disabilities), and even though golf has previously been considered an exclusionary sport, the Olympics will push it into a wider socioeconomic range of participants. Compare this to track and field in which the participants are typically young, athletic, and extensively trained. And, even though track and field is bigger outside the U.S., golf generally has a much bigger following. Most Olympic sports are fairly obscure, and virtually all of them–besides golf–have participation limited or at least heavily weighted to young, fit, specialized athletes.

*Golf is big business. Besides having large mainstream participation, it requires a lot of stuff: clubs, balls, bags, shoes, gloves, golf courses, golf carts, golf pros, driving ranges, golf resorts, swing aids, simulators, launch monitors… Most sports require not much more than the likes of a ball, good shoes, and some open space.

The Olympic movement is going to make golf “hip,” which will make the game a bit less formal. Participants will place more emphasis on performance, and less on decorum. Spectators at events will get more rowdy (we’ve already had a taste of it at the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup–”Ole, Ole Ole Ole”). The staid game we’ve known all our lives is going to get a little crazy.

Don’t rule out that professionals on the PGA TOUR one day will be members of teams, like NASCAR (Team Nike), wearing uniforms with large numbers on their backs. Countries getting into golf in a big way for the first time will contribute new cultural nuances surrounding the game and some will find their way into the mainstream.

The modern Olympic movement is going to help transform the game of golf into a sport for every man. It’s going to get a bit rude, crude, and unattractive, and it’s going to be a beautiful thing.

I can’t wait.

Mizuno MP-68
Mizuno has a new entry into the muscleback iron category, the MP-68 designed according to the company to produce “a penetrating, predictable, and workable ball flight for complete shot control.”

Dick Lyons, Vice President and GM of Mizuno USA Golf Division said in the product release statement, “Mizuno has a long and storied history of producing the very best muscleback irons in the world. The difficult challenge we undertook was to deliver a new age in muscleback design to further enhance the benefits the MP player is looking for. The new 3D Muscle enables the player to have full control over their shot. Moreover, the feel of the new MP-68 iron is also enhanced with our dedicated Modal Analysis technology. For the player who demands complete ball control and amazing feel, the MP-68 delivers.”

As could be expected the MP- 68s meet the USGA’s change in allowable groove configuration for 2010. Mizuno chose to use U-shaped grooves similar to the now illegal box or square grooves “which conform to the Condition of Competition 2010, [to] produce the ideal spin rate for maximum playability in all conditions.”

MSRP for a set of MP-68s (3-PW) with steel shafts is $1,100 and with graphite shafts is $1,200 and you can find prices on the street for $200 less.

According to vice president Bill Holowaty a guiding principle of his company is best expressed by something the founder has said on numerous occasions.

“Make the best possible product we can and eventually the good golfers will find me.”

Katsuhiro Miura of Miura Golf thus stakes out both his and his company’s philosophy. To golf cognoscenti Miura is known as the premier iron maker in the industry. Not for high volume and not for a burning need to compete with the market leaders, but for the highest quality in both design and construction, targeted at an admittedly tiny segment of the golf market – professionals and low handicap amateurs.
More…

Since virtually every golfer suffers sooner or later with a short game that ranges from barely adequate to having no redeeming value, the information found on TheWedgeGuy.com from wedge-maker Eidolon Golf and president Terry Koehler is “good stuff.” In a three-part series Koehler supplies his six rules for “The Basic Chip Shot.”

The second part of the series, “The Basic Pitch Shot” was posted Oct. 9. These three articles add further to Eidolon’s “short-game solution” library and are maybe the largest collection of information regarding the short game on the web. Best of all there’s no charge.

“From what I hear daily, golfers want more basic and simple information on the short game,” says Koehler. “More importantly, they want simple techniques they can digest and implement without hours and hours of grueling practice. What we’re creating with TheWedgeGuy.com blog is a library of simple and clear short game solutions.”

In “The Basic Chip Shot,” Koehler explains why he’s a believer that golf should be learned from the hole backward. Or if you’ve been playing a while, consider working to improve your scoring from the hole backwards. Koehler breaks down chipping into six basic elements of good chipping technique.

Among those rules:

Choose a club that will just loft the ball safely over the fringe, so that it lands on the green where bounce and roll-out are predictable.

“I marvel at those who will chip the ball to the fringe or collar, then become exasperated when the first bounce is not what they anticipated, so that shot ends up very long or short,” Koehler says. “For consistency, figure out where the ball needs to land on the green, and then how much roll to allow for after that, to get it all the way to the hole. If you want to carry it only 10-20 percent of the way, a 6-8 iron is usually good. At the other end, if you want to carry it more than half way to the hole, you might opt for a pitching or gap wedge. It only takes a little experimentation to learn this basic piece of the puzzle.”

The 2009 Handa Cup will be held Dec. 5th and 6th at World Golf Village – home to the World Golf Hall of Fame – in St. Augustine, Fla. The annual match-up, played on World Golf Village’s Slammer & Squire golf course, features international and U.S. Legends of the LPGA competing in a match play competition. The event is open to the public and single-day grounds passes are $10.

The fourth-annual Handa Cup is a fixture on The Legends Tour’s growing schedule and is sponsored by the International Sports Promotion Society (“ISPS”), an organization created by Dr. Haruhisa Handa, a Japanese businessman and philanthropist. It is a part of The Legends Tour’s “Handa Series,” which features other international events sponsored by Dr. Handa.

“For the fourth consecutive year, a group of legendary women golfers will offer exciting competition in the shadow of the World Golf Hall of Fame, where many of them are recognized with the most distinguished honor for their achievements within the sport,” said Jane Blalock, president of The Legends Tour. “The international nature of the event is the perfect complement to the Hall of Fame’s global focus and presents another wonderful golf event for residents and visitors to the First Coast to enjoy.”

Announcements will be made in the coming weeks regarding players on the U.S. and World Teams. Tickets for the 2009 Handa Cup may be purchased at the gate or on-line at www.thelegendstour.com and special two-for-one passes to the tournament are available for World Golf Hall of Fame guests.

AP1 & AP2 Irons

Titleist introduces for 2010 updated versions of the AP1 and AP2 irons, the result of research in sound and vibration analysis with the goal of improving feel by reducing harsh lower frequency vibration.

This research led to combining technologies and materials in the back cavity that include a soft elastomer medallion and aluminum plate as part of Titleist’s Tuned Feel System. The AP1 has a thinner face and larger back cavity with tungsten nickel in the sole. The AP2 has a softer more solid feel, improved sound and turf interaction according to the company.

“The new AP1 and AP2 irons retain the dual cavity design and multi-material construction that is the key to their advanced performance,” said Dan Stone, Vice President, Research and Development. “However, the designs have been significantly upgraded for feel with the addition of our new Tuned Feel System. Additionally, the structure of the new AP1 provides improved forgiveness, while a modified sole on the new AP2 provides improved ground control.”

Both models will be available Nov. 1 with the AP1 carrying a MSRP of $100 per club with steel shafts and the AP2 $142 per club also with steel shafts. Graphite shafts will list for $25 per club additional.