Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right, age sixteen, It's the Golf Show on the
Ticket joined by Mark Valier and Keith Becker today from
MK Golf Tech. And of course they're the premier club
fitters in South Texas. And I had a scenario this week.
I have a friend that I've known for almost forty
five years thereabouts, and he lives up in Oklahoma, and
(00:22):
he called me the other night talking about getting a
club fitting from the Ping representative that happened to be
at his club and he was hitting shots with they
were fitting him for the Ping four forty irons, and
so he's hitting shots and I believe he had a
pretty much a senior graphite shaft that was maybe seventy
(00:44):
grams or somewhere in that range seventy five, and he
was hitting him good, and he was like, I like these,
I think I'm ready to get them. And the Ping said,
let's try something before we settle on this shaft. And
the first thing he did was put him in a
from graph height seventy five to steal ninety five. The
ball went higher, the ball went further by five to
(01:05):
seven yards. Spin rate went from I think twelve hundred
to eighteen something like that, positive spin factor and the
dispersion pattern was way better. So he was concerned that
as and he's two years older than me, so he
was concerned that because he's aging that graphite and light
(01:26):
that's where he needed to be. And yet he has
good tempo and he's a good player. He's still a
three handicapped or somewhere in that range. And he the
ping guy explained to him that you're still strong enough
to swing a steel shaft that's a little bit heavier
and it's going to go further and it's going to
go higher and it's going to give you less dispersion.
(01:49):
So that didn't make sense to him from a physical standpoint.
So explain why light is not always right?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Well, from what you told me, the fitter was doing
his job, and we get caught up a lot of
times with age and graphite. You don't and I've always
told people just because you're old doesn't mean you have
to go graphite because of this conception that that's where
you need to head. Because but wait is the first
factor period the end with we're fitting a club, wait
(02:18):
in the shaft, And that fitter was right, because it's
a good thing. You tried him in the steel because
his age has no has no bearing on whether you
should play graph I or not. We go graphie if
somebody maybe has arthriticissues or joint issues of some sort,
or they just have aches and pains, so you don't
(02:39):
get the reverberation from graphie that you do steel. So
if I were fitting him, I would have done the
same thing. I would have wanted to try steal. I
go steal first, you know. And and there's seventy five
gram steel shafts or eighty five steel shafts, there's ninety
five steel gram shafts. I mean, there's all different weight
categories now that there used to not be. So he
(03:01):
did the right thing. That's what I would have done.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Another thing to consider, so ten twenty grams, I mean,
that's less than the weight of a golf ball. And
where is that weight in terms of is it all
in the head or is it in the handle? Where
is it distributed across the call it thirty seven inches
of the golf club. So we're talking very very small
(03:27):
amounts of weight. Where is it distributed in terms of
swing weight? Another thing to consider and why heavier is
sometimes better? We get a lot of golfers that have
sort of a casting motion, very very common to see
sort of an out to end path casting it from
the top and sort of a wipe y sort of
(03:47):
glancing blow. So sometimes going heavier with a golf shaft
makes the total weight of the club heavier, which will
promote the club kind of dropping more call it into
the slot and we actually see better contact, which is
is what we're trying to do. We're trying to get
that path number better, We're trying to get the face
to the path much better, and so sometimes heavier is better.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
He told me one of his favorite clubs in his
bag is his fifty and fifty six degree Volky wedges,
which are the heaviest clubs in the back. And he says,
I've got those dialed in perfectly with my numbers. And
I said, yeah, because you're consistent with them, because the
club isn't whipping around, you're controlling it better because it's
a little bit heavier.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, Car, part of the physical part is is lightweight
in that person's anatomy and strength categories, strength ability or whatever.
Lightweight shat probably allowed him to cast a little bit more,
like you were saying, Keith and the heavier club allows
his body to interact more with a kinetic part of
(04:51):
the swing where you're all moving synchronously through the shot.
And when you have something like a feather, his think
of it a feather. I'm going to catch a sw
a swim feather. Then now I'm going to swing an anvil.
It takes more effort to do one in the other.
And so you have to have the right weight for
the person that you're fitting number one. Let's let he
(05:13):
was not he was not being fitted for a driver.
I think he already has the one he wants there.
But you have some pros on tour have a seventy
five maybe eighty gram shaft, and some seniors have a
forty five or fifty gram shaft. Where do you dial
in the shaft on the driver as compared to dialing
in the weight of the shaft on the irons. Well,
that goes back to what Keith was just saying about
(05:34):
distributing in a weight across the whole club, you know,
And now you have a driver that's forty five forty
five and a half forty six inches long, and now
you have something to headways two hundred and ten grams
two hundred and four grams, the shaft ways fifty and
the grip ways fifty and you add all that up
and it's X, you know. And so whether you add
another twenty or thirty grands with the shaft, that has
(05:55):
to do with the physicality of the person. You got Jeremy,
which is a fitter in the shop. You can't even
get through a doorway, but he's standing in it together.
He had to move out of the way before another
person go through the doors. He get his size, he's
got to have weight. I have to have less weight,
so to copy the same goal.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Yeah, you've also got to consider the golfer swing. So
what is their transition from the top look like? Do
they have an aggressive transition you brought up Jeremy. Jeremy's
got an aggressive transition from the top, so he plays,
you know, he's kind of more of a project X
something that's going to have a really really stiff profile
throughout the shaft. Someone like me, I have a little
(06:35):
bit more of a smoother transition. So you've got to
consider all of those dynamics when you're thinking about, Hey,
what shaft are we going with? So weight is always
the most important, and then what does that shaft profile
look like and is it a good shaft for that
specific person that we're fitting.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Well talked about graphite and steal, but there's also the
microfiber shafts. I think Fred Couples has been playing with
that is irons for a long time. I found them
a little bit i'll use the word boardie, a little
bit too stiff and the way I couldn't feel the
contact with the club as much. So how do you, uh,
how how do you fit players? And Fred's got this smooth,
(07:13):
you know, silky swing that he's always had. Why does
that shaft work for him as opposed to somebody that
would it would not work.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
For again again going back to that that person's swing, Fred,
even now, which I don't know if I'm sure everyone
was watching yesterday, was really entertaining and I felt so
bad for him and for Bernhard just right there almost
made the cut most and so, but going back to Fred,
(07:40):
He's always been one of the fastest swingers of the
golf club. When he came out in the in the eighties,
he was one hundred and twenty plus miles an hour
with the driver into this day, even with all his
back issues, he's got a lot of speed. So speed
is one thing, but how is it generated is it
is it smooth speed or is it in aggressive speed?
(08:01):
And so going going back to that transition from the top,
we have to consider all of those factors when we're
fitting somebody and finding the right shaft. So Fred versus you,
you may swing at the exact same speed, but how
did you generate it? And if he's real smooth and
you're a little bit more aggressive from the top, you
may not like the same shaft that he likes.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, it's it's the wristcock, the lag, you know, the
release point. And uh, I kind of look at it
as a quarter mile race. You know, you got the
guy at the beginning, you know that he jumps off
the start line and he's ahead of the guy you
know this in the other lane. But at the end
of the race, the guy at the at the end
of the day of the other lane, he wins, right
(08:44):
because he's got more in the tank. Yeah, I thought
it was Uh.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
I think we did that with me years ago because
a lot of times when he's been on the driving
range with me and hit my clubs, he says they're
too heavy. Now I think minor one fifteen with the Irons.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
I have what the chefs I.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Have, and they probably weren't for him, but I thought
I always thought his were too light. And I think
we'll see. He's going to Scotland with me in six weeks,
so I'll have a report on how well those clubs perform.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
The other part is where the light is. Yeah, is
it in the handle or is it in the head?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Where should it be?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Well, they should be a distribute, distribution and there should
be a balance point. It's all about physics. I mean,
there's a balanced part for every club and the heads
it is supposed to be so much, the shafts are
supposed to be so much, and then the grits supposed
to so much, and there's got to be a balance point.
So your light and my light are different.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
And a couple of last points on that topic. You know,
if we're talking ten twenty grams and we've got a
three hundred plus gram club, you know we're talking fractions
of additional weight in terms of how much are we
adding relative to the to the entire weight of the
golf club. And then again, where is it distributed in
that golf club? All of that that plays a big factor.
(09:57):
But again going back to it, there's a lot of
a lot of science in it, a lot of physics,
So we know kind of where that golfer is going
to be a general range of So you make three
or four swings in a fitting right away, we know
kind of where we're going to go. But there's also
kind of an art to it as well. Sometimes you're like, oh,
I think it's going to be It's going to be
this shafter this shaft. And sometimes we get into a
(10:19):
fitting and we say, you know what, let's try this,
and and sometimes it works out that it's exactly what
she thought it was going to be. And sometimes hey,
we tried something a little bit different and it actually
worked out better.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah. One of my favorite stories on a first shot
into club fitting. I started doing work for Tim Hobby
local pro here and I had had me redo his
new wedges that he got from tailor made, so I
did them just like he had him. Again, him to me,
he's swinging it in the shop and he goes, this
is too light, So I put on the swing away scale.
The difference in the way that he was talking about
(10:53):
was a third of a penny, but he had that feel. Yeah, well,
Tigers always talking about that. He said, this needs to
be one ger or one half of a gram lighter.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Uh and and and for THEO and I play, I
like to play golf by feel too. I need to
feel the shot. I need to especially pitching and shipping
around the greens and stuff like that. It's why I
always recommend that you play with the same golf ball
because you have to have you have to know what
that ball is going to do and feel that contact
with it. But just remember that if you get a
(11:22):
fitting and somebody puts you in a senior shaft and
you don't think you should be there, you probably should
not be. And that's why you should go to MK
because they're not going to do it that way. All
right now, we're going to talk about Phil Michelson, Gary Player,
Bernhard Longer, and a couple of other things that went
on at the Masters this week. As we roll on,
it's the Golf Show on the Ticket
All right, age sixteen, It's the Golf Show on the
Ticket joined by Mark Valier and Keith Becker today from
MK Golf Tech. And of course they're the premier club
fitters in South Texas. And I had a scenario this week.
I have a friend that I've known for almost forty
five years thereabouts, and he lives up in Oklahoma, and
(00:22):
he called me the other night talking about getting a
club fitting from the Ping representative that happened to be
at his club and he was hitting shots with they
were fitting him for the Ping four forty irons, and
so he's hitting shots and I believe he had a
pretty much a senior graphite shaft that was maybe seventy
(00:44):
grams or somewhere in that range seventy five, and he
was hitting him good, and he was like, I like these,
I think I'm ready to get them. And the Ping said,
let's try something before we settle on this shaft. And
the first thing he did was put him in a
from graph height seventy five to steal ninety five. The
ball went higher, the ball went further by five to
(01:05):
seven yards. Spin rate went from I think twelve hundred
to eighteen something like that, positive spin factor and the
dispersion pattern was way better. So he was concerned that
as and he's two years older than me, so he
was concerned that because he's aging that graphite and light
(01:26):
that's where he needed to be. And yet he has
good tempo and he's a good player. He's still a
three handicapped or somewhere in that range. And he the
ping guy explained to him that you're still strong enough
to swing a steel shaft that's a little bit heavier
and it's going to go further and it's going to
go higher and it's going to give you less dispersion.
(01:49):
So that didn't make sense to him from a physical standpoint.
So explain why light is not always right?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Well, from what you told me, the fitter was doing
his job, and we get caught up a lot of
times with age and graphite. You don't and I've always
told people just because you're old doesn't mean you have
to go graphite because of this conception that that's where
you need to head. Because but wait is the first
factor period the end with we're fitting a club, wait
(02:18):
in the shaft, And that fitter was right, because it's
a good thing. You tried him in the steel because
his age has no has no bearing on whether you
should play graph I or not. We go graphie if
somebody maybe has arthriticissues or joint issues of some sort,
or they just have aches and pains, so you don't
(02:39):
get the reverberation from graphie that you do steel. So
if I were fitting him, I would have done the
same thing. I would have wanted to try steal. I
go steal first, you know. And and there's seventy five
gram steel shafts or eighty five steel shafts, there's ninety
five steel gram shafts. I mean, there's all different weight
categories now that there used to not be. So he
(03:01):
did the right thing. That's what I would have done.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Another thing to consider, so ten twenty grams, I mean,
that's less than the weight of a golf ball. And
where is that weight in terms of is it all
in the head or is it in the handle? Where
is it distributed across the call it thirty seven inches
of the golf club. So we're talking very very small
(03:27):
amounts of weight. Where is it distributed in terms of
swing weight? Another thing to consider and why heavier is
sometimes better? We get a lot of golfers that have
sort of a casting motion, very very common to see
sort of an out to end path casting it from
the top and sort of a wipe y sort of
(03:47):
glancing blow. So sometimes going heavier with a golf shaft
makes the total weight of the club heavier, which will
promote the club kind of dropping more call it into
the slot and we actually see better contact, which is
is what we're trying to do. We're trying to get
that path number better, We're trying to get the face
to the path much better, and so sometimes heavier is better.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
He told me one of his favorite clubs in his
bag is his fifty and fifty six degree Volky wedges,
which are the heaviest clubs in the back. And he says,
I've got those dialed in perfectly with my numbers. And
I said, yeah, because you're consistent with them, because the
club isn't whipping around, you're controlling it better because it's
a little bit heavier.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, Car, part of the physical part is is lightweight
in that person's anatomy and strength categories, strength ability or whatever.
Lightweight shat probably allowed him to cast a little bit more,
like you were saying, Keith and the heavier club allows
his body to interact more with a kinetic part of
(04:51):
the swing where you're all moving synchronously through the shot.
And when you have something like a feather, his think
of it a feather. I'm going to catch a sw
a swim feather. Then now I'm going to swing an anvil.
It takes more effort to do one in the other.
And so you have to have the right weight for
the person that you're fitting number one. Let's let he
(05:13):
was not he was not being fitted for a driver.
I think he already has the one he wants there.
But you have some pros on tour have a seventy
five maybe eighty gram shaft, and some seniors have a
forty five or fifty gram shaft. Where do you dial
in the shaft on the driver as compared to dialing
in the weight of the shaft on the irons. Well,
that goes back to what Keith was just saying about
(05:34):
distributing in a weight across the whole club, you know,
And now you have a driver that's forty five forty
five and a half forty six inches long, and now
you have something to headways two hundred and ten grams
two hundred and four grams, the shaft ways fifty and
the grip ways fifty and you add all that up
and it's X, you know. And so whether you add
another twenty or thirty grands with the shaft, that has
(05:55):
to do with the physicality of the person. You got Jeremy,
which is a fitter in the shop. You can't even
get through a doorway, but he's standing in it together.
He had to move out of the way before another
person go through the doors. He get his size, he's
got to have weight. I have to have less weight,
so to copy the same goal.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Yeah, you've also got to consider the golfer swing. So
what is their transition from the top look like? Do
they have an aggressive transition you brought up Jeremy. Jeremy's
got an aggressive transition from the top, so he plays,
you know, he's kind of more of a project X
something that's going to have a really really stiff profile
throughout the shaft. Someone like me, I have a little
(06:35):
bit more of a smoother transition. So you've got to
consider all of those dynamics when you're thinking about, Hey,
what shaft are we going with? So weight is always
the most important, and then what does that shaft profile
look like and is it a good shaft for that
specific person that we're fitting.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Well talked about graphite and steal, but there's also the
microfiber shafts. I think Fred Couples has been playing with
that is irons for a long time. I found them
a little bit i'll use the word boardie, a little
bit too stiff and the way I couldn't feel the
contact with the club as much. So how do you, uh,
how how do you fit players? And Fred's got this smooth,
(07:13):
you know, silky swing that he's always had. Why does
that shaft work for him as opposed to somebody that
would it would not work.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
For again again going back to that that person's swing, Fred,
even now, which I don't know if I'm sure everyone
was watching yesterday, was really entertaining and I felt so
bad for him and for Bernhard just right there almost
made the cut most and so, but going back to Fred,
(07:40):
He's always been one of the fastest swingers of the
golf club. When he came out in the in the eighties,
he was one hundred and twenty plus miles an hour
with the driver into this day, even with all his
back issues, he's got a lot of speed. So speed
is one thing, but how is it generated is it
is it smooth speed or is it in aggressive speed?
(08:01):
And so going going back to that transition from the top,
we have to consider all of those factors when we're
fitting somebody and finding the right shaft. So Fred versus you,
you may swing at the exact same speed, but how
did you generate it? And if he's real smooth and
you're a little bit more aggressive from the top, you
may not like the same shaft that he likes.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, it's it's the wristcock, the lag, you know, the
release point. And uh, I kind of look at it
as a quarter mile race. You know, you got the
guy at the beginning, you know that he jumps off
the start line and he's ahead of the guy you
know this in the other lane. But at the end
of the race, the guy at the at the end
of the day of the other lane, he wins, right
(08:44):
because he's got more in the tank. Yeah, I thought
it was Uh.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
I think we did that with me years ago because
a lot of times when he's been on the driving
range with me and hit my clubs, he says they're
too heavy. Now I think minor one fifteen with the Irons.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
I have what the chefs I.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Have, and they probably weren't for him, but I thought
I always thought his were too light. And I think
we'll see. He's going to Scotland with me in six weeks,
so I'll have a report on how well those clubs perform.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
The other part is where the light is. Yeah, is
it in the handle or is it in the head?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Where should it be?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Well, they should be a distribute, distribution and there should
be a balance point. It's all about physics. I mean,
there's a balanced part for every club and the heads
it is supposed to be so much, the shafts are
supposed to be so much, and then the grits supposed
to so much, and there's got to be a balance point.
So your light and my light are different.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
And a couple of last points on that topic. You know,
if we're talking ten twenty grams and we've got a
three hundred plus gram club, you know we're talking fractions
of additional weight in terms of how much are we
adding relative to the to the entire weight of the
golf club. And then again, where is it distributed in
that golf club? All of that that plays a big factor.
(09:57):
But again going back to it, there's a lot of
a lot of science in it, a lot of physics,
So we know kind of where that golfer is going
to be a general range of So you make three
or four swings in a fitting right away, we know
kind of where we're going to go. But there's also
kind of an art to it as well. Sometimes you're like, oh,
I think it's going to be It's going to be
this shafter this shaft. And sometimes we get into a
(10:19):
fitting and we say, you know what, let's try this,
and and sometimes it works out that it's exactly what
she thought it was going to be. And sometimes hey,
we tried something a little bit different and it actually
worked out better.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah. One of my favorite stories on a first shot
into club fitting. I started doing work for Tim Hobby
local pro here and I had had me redo his
new wedges that he got from tailor made, so I
did them just like he had him. Again, him to me,
he's swinging it in the shop and he goes, this
is too light, So I put on the swing away scale.
The difference in the way that he was talking about
(10:53):
was a third of a penny, but he had that feel. Yeah, well,
Tigers always talking about that. He said, this needs to
be one ger or one half of a gram lighter.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Uh and and and for THEO and I play, I
like to play golf by feel too. I need to
feel the shot. I need to especially pitching and shipping
around the greens and stuff like that. It's why I
always recommend that you play with the same golf ball
because you have to have you have to know what
that ball is going to do and feel that contact
with it. But just remember that if you get a
(11:22):
fitting and somebody puts you in a senior shaft and
you don't think you should be there, you probably should
not be. And that's why you should go to MK
because they're not going to do it that way. All
right now, we're going to talk about Phil Michelson, Gary Player,
Bernhard Longer, and a couple of other things that went
on at the Masters this week. As we roll on,
it's the Golf Show on the Ticket
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!