Sticks: Clubfitting the Pros

by Vic Williams

Techs work quick wonders inside the TaylorMade fitting van.

Van With The Plan

When the PGA Tour Rolls Into Town, A Club Factory on Wheels Follows, Equipped to Keep Players Fit and Happy

Grant Waite couldn’t wait.

The Aussie PGA Tour veteran had just wrapped up a Monday practice round at the Reno-Tahoe Open and had some issues with a wedge and a 7-iron.

“This one needs a little more bounce, and this one, I’m not hitting it as far as I should,” he told the guys in TaylorMade’s clubfitting trailer.

They got right on it. One guy sparked up the wedge on a grinder for a few seconds, checked the grip and handed it back to Waite, who nodded his approval. As for the 7-iron, “it’s almost one degree weak,” the technician said, bending it back into line.

“Thanks, mate,” said Waite, who went on to tie for 25th.

The TaylorMade boys would repeat the same drill with dozens of other Tour players over the next three days, providing what’s become a vital service to demanding, exacting guys forever looking for an edge. They tweaked lofts and lie angles to pinpoint specs, swapped out shafts in a flash and, when needed, assembled entirely new clubs in minutes. It was like having a mini-factory right there, 50 yards from the first tee. And TaylorMade was the only major manufacturer setting up shop in Reno this year, which meant they got visits from contracted TaylorMade players and competitors’ players alike.

“We’re one big family out there. We’re not going to turn away business for anybody,” says Keith Sbarbaro, TaylorMade Vice President of Tour Operations. “If a competitor’s staff player comes by and wants some work done by us because their company’s not there, we’ll help them out. Players on tour generally aren’t with the same company their whole career. Just because he’s with Callaway now doesn’t mean when his contract is up, we might not want to recruit him and treat him well all the time.”

Sbarbaro helms perhaps the most vital department in TaylorMade’s marketing arsenal. Advertising is one thing, but wooing and signing a top-name player is the ultimate coup in this business. Sergio Garcia, Retief Goosen and Natalie Gulbis give the brand added luster, and tend to attract other players, too. That’s why the company’s big main van and two smaller ones (including the one in Reno) log hundreds of thousands of miles per year to keep their existing roster of players, and prospective ones, hitting ’em long and straight. The big one works primarily the PGA Tour. The smaller ones work a combination of Nationwide, senior, LPGA, top amateur events, college visits and anything else that has to do with sports marketing. “We’re pretty much servicing our staff players,” Sbarbaro says. “On any given week with a full field event, we’ll average around 60 drivers, upwards of 100 fairway woods, 40 hybrids, 40 or 50 sets of irons, plus a bunch of wedges and putters. We’re servicing all that equipment so everybody’s happy with what they have, if they play TaylorMade.”

And if they don’t?

“A lot of stuff is contracted depending on what company you’re with. A lot of guys can play whatever fairway wood they want, or putter or wedge. Some guys are free on the drivers, and we try to recruit them to play TaylorMade. If they do, we make sure they’re happy.”

The company fields two sales reps and two technicians at most events, and one technician at smaller venues such as the RTO. They fly in Sunday night and the truck arrives by Monday morning. The guys take care of players through pro-am Wednesday before saddling up for the next stop; usually Sbarbaro there working the range. “We’re on the road four days out of every week,” he says. “The big truck can handle two technicians working simultaneously, building clubs all the time without running into each other. “They can produce a lot more equipment, which is what you need on a weekly basis on the PGA Tour.”

The hours blow by on practice days when players work hard on nuance, charting everything from trajectory to shot shapes to how much roll they get on the fairways. When something’s out of whack, they’ll hit the truck for a tune-up. “Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the busiest,” said one technician at the RTO as his partner got Waite back in gear. “Some guys will experiment with different shafts. A lot depends on the set-up of the course that week; if there are a lot of long par 3s or reachable par 5s, they’ll want to put a hybrid in the bag.” Just then, Carlos Franco showed up to get one his Rescues tweaked; 20 seconds later he was on his way.

Sbarbaro says the turnaround time on just about any job is negligible. “If it’s a simple re-shaft, it’s five minutes. We can build a new driver start to finish in five to six minutes and have it hittable. For a full set of irons, it’s a half hour if one guys going full steam. If an airline loses a guy’s clubs and he shows up, we’ll have him out of there in an hour.”
And if he’s on TaylorMade’s staff, he can be assured that every stick will carry his fingerprint, thanks to the truck’s computer database, which links into the company’s mainframe in the Southern California headquarters. “If we built Sergio Garcia a 3-wood at TPC, and he liked it, we can go back whether it be at TM or on the Tour Truck, know the exact specs and duplicate it,” Sbarbaro adds.

Overall, most onsite tweaking revolves around the big sticks, and since the trucks only carry molds for TaylorMade drivers, everyone else is pretty much out of luck.

“We’re a wood company. We’ve got so many drivers in play, the biggest thing we do is build drivers and fairway woods,” Sbarbaro says. “I’d guess we build four times as many woods out there as any other company. Iron-wise, we and Titleist have about the same amount, so we don’t build a lot of irons on the road. A lot of guys don’t switch irons as often as woods. Fairway woods, hybrids, Rescues, drivers — certain guys can change a lot. A guy’s always looking for a little more distance, or maybe he was playing with a guy who was hitting it past him with a Burner and he was playing the SuperQuad.”

So, which of TaylorMade’s new drivers is winning out on Tour? Sbarbaro says it’s almost a 50/50 split. “They’re two different products, but they’ve both been accepted unbelievably well. We’ve got 80 percent of our players playing one or the other. That’s hard to do when you’re coming out with new product every year. All our top staff players generally switch to the new products. If it’s better, they’ll play it. Simple as that. If it’s better than the one they had, they’d be dumb not to change.”

And hopefully the general public changes right along with them, taking the same advantage of technology and fitting know-how. Sbarbaro is quick to discount the popular opinion that Tour pros have access to gear the rest of us don’t. In fact, he says the opposite is true.

“We make a line that might not be played on Tour, a few game improvement things, but most of what we make is what’s played on tour, and that’s what drives the product. The Quads and Burners we’re using are the same ones you can buy in the store. There’s no difference.”

In that case, it’s up to Joe Bogey to get with the program. “Any club that’s fit to your swing, loft, flex and everything, just makes it easier to hit and keep in play. If a driver’s not fit for you, you’ll have a hard time keeping it on the golf course. Tour players are so good, they can kind of adjust. But for the average guy, I see it at my club all the time — if a guy finds a good driver, it changes his game.”

Sbarbaro sees no end in sight to TaylorMade’s quest to build the perfect club. “As far as the vans go, I don’t see more technology to build clubs faster. We’re already customizing, bending and building drivers to specific lofts and swing weights and everything in five minutes. But as far as golf clubs, there’s definitely some changes coming. We’re not at the USGA limits for MOI. We’ll get closer to that. You can definitely get a driver that will go farther on mis-hits that will make it easier to hit. We’re going there.”

And the world’s top sticks will go there, too, one tournament at a time. FG