One of the perks of playing professional golf is access to more gear than you can imagine. If you’re a gear nerd like our Johnny Wunder or longtime pro Charles Howell III, it can truly make your head spin.
On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, Wunder and Howell sat down to talk about how a tour pro tests gear. Howell said it comes down to simply hitting, guessing and then trying things to see if they work.
Howell said club fitting has improved greatly in the years he’s played professionally, but also that he’s used the same True Temper Dynamic Golf X100 iron shaft for pretty much his whole career. He can’t exactly point to the reason why.
“Partly is because it’s True Temper, right?” Howell said. “Another reason has been Tiger Woods used it, and he beat all of our tails with it. OK, that’s partially true, too.
“But then, but why are you using it? Like, what did you go through to say that this beat out a KBS, beat out a Project X, beat out a Nippon, or anything else you want to throw into it? We really don’t know.”
That’s where guessing comes into play, because it’s tough to know exactly how a player loads a club or even if they are swinging the same way they normally do on the day they’re testing gear.
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ALSO AVAILABLE AT: PGA Tour Superstore, True Temper
By making educated guesses, building up a club and then trying it out and really putting it through its paces, that’s how you develop comfort and trust in your gamers.
“The hard part in golf for everybody is you don’t really know until you get on a golf course in a tournament or pressure-ish type situation to see does it perform,” Howell said. “Because everyone listening to this podcast knows there’s a difference between the driving range and the golf course and then the golf course under pressure.”
Wunder, who during his tenure at Callaway used to fit Howell, agreed.
