Speaker 1: Golf Smarter number three hundred and sixty seven, published on
January twenty two, twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our
interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 3: Golf Channel picked up a point in January of seven,
and you know, I told my wife in December of six,
I said, if they don't pick us up, I'm done.
Speaker 4: I'm out.
Speaker 3: Because I had already kind of been through CBS and
NBC and they were really the last network. The proma
TVs was only really three people to choose from me. You
have three customers, and if they all say no, then
you're not You're that business. And I was literally within
days of just giving up and moving on.
Speaker 1: Could you have really walked away from it at that point?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, at that point, I mean I loved it,
but if there's no business for it, you know, started
that if I couldn't prove a legitimate business, it was
time to move on.
Speaker 4: Like it or not.
Speaker 3: Came down to really really a couple of days and
around Christmas of six and Golf Channel did say, hey, great,
we'll do this three year deal.
Speaker 4: They said, we'll do it one tournament, Part.
Speaker 1: One of the aime Point putting system with creator Mark Sweeney.
Speaker 2: This is Golf Smarter sharing tips and insights from golfers
and golf professionals to help lower your score.
Speaker 1: It's worked for your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the
Golf Smarter podcast.
Speaker 4: Mark. Thanks, hey, Fred.
Speaker 1: It's so good to hear you your voice son on
the other end of the line here. Because so many
Golf Smarter listeners have said, have you talked to Mark
Sweeney at main Point Golf yet? Why haven't you got
him on? Even Nick Chirtak, who introduced us as a listener,
longtime listener and a golf friend of mine, says, this
is what golf Smarter is all about.
Speaker 4: Is where I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what is it tell me about aim point
A point?
Speaker 3: Well, any point started off as a basically a TV product.
So what I did is I wrote a piece of
software that could figure out how to put from any
point on a real green to any other point. So
There have been some research done on this before, but
it was always done by you know, professors, and on
some very kind of sterile environments, not real golf greens.
So I basically just attacked the problem and got it
working and got it on the Golf Channel in two
thousand and seven and we've been on there with them
for about six years now. And what that led to
is a teaching curriculum. So what I learned by simulating
thousands and thousands and thousands of putts was that there's
some actually very predictable patterns and that we, as normal golfers,
can can use some very simple rules and predict very accurately.
Speaker 4: What break is.
Speaker 1: What were you doing that you were considering writing software
program for television?
Speaker 4: Well, I was bored.
Speaker 3: Basically, I was in the Uh That's the flattering version
of the story was I was bored. I'd been working
in finance and in high tech and I just kind
of had some free time and I was I was
playing tons of golf. I loved golf, and I had
a background in software development, so I it was something
I kind of knew how to do, and it was
a sport that I really enjoyed, and I thought, you know,
why is nobody really attacked or solved this problem? And
so I just kind of put my mind to it
on the side, you know, on on weekends and the nighttime,
and just sat down and started chipping away at the problem.
And surprisingly it came together pretty quickly. And when I
started testing the software, it worked much better than I
thought it should. So I thought it would be you know, okay,
or be interesting, but it actually really worked well and
that got me thinking, okay, well what can I do
with this? And my pro at the time said you
should really take this to the networks because they would
love this for TV, and you know, took it took
a year and a half two years for it to
actually get on TV. But that's genesis of the idea.
Speaker 1: And were you an entrepreneur or had this entrepreneurial spirit
about you in your career previously or it is like
all of a sudden this started happening and you're telling
your wife and seventeen children. So I got this idea
that I'm going to be leaving my job and I'm
going to go do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess I had the entrepreneurial spirit, but I
was working at big companies. I worked at Hewlett Packard
for about five or six years. I worked at Cable
Vision up in New York, and I think I had
it in me, and this kind of put me over
the edge to kind of stop doing the big corporate
you know, working in a cube everyday thing, and branch
out by myself.
Speaker 4: So it was just fun, you know. The biggest thing
about it is.
Speaker 3: You know, it was just something I had a real
passion for and I had enough skills to figure out
how to make it work.
Speaker 4: And then it kept me on the golf course too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so sitting inside all day, it could actually be
outside in the sun on the golf course, screwing around
trying to get things working.
Speaker 1: And taking a year and a half to get the
networks to I guess signed the deal. I guess they
were listening. How long did you get them to take
to listen?
Speaker 3: It took a while. I showed it to track record. Yeah,
well that was the hardest. I had two difficult things.
The first was I wasn't in the TV business or
in the golf business, so I was kind of a nobody.
So I did get in and saw some producers at
CBS who thought it was great, and we did some demos,
but the biggest obstacle was actually convincing people that it
was doable. So when I went to the networks, a
lot of people say, well, that's cool, but I don't
believe you can actually predict what a putt will do
before you hit it. And it took a lot of
demonstrations and a lot of time in front of all
the networks, in front of the PGA tour, in front
of golf instructors, in front of the talent to say,
you know, this actually does work. And even after I
was on TV for a year and a half, two years,
we still had people saying, yeah, but conceptually it really
shouldn't work that well because of wind and grain and
footprints and you know, you know, all these things that
pop up on the golf green that you can't predict.
And there was a big resistance to it, a big resistance.
And then so luckily, after you know, years and years
of showing this, when I say that, I mean, you know,
two or three years, people realize, yeah, you know, it's
not one hundred percent accurate, but it's ninety seven percent accurate,
which is good enough.
Speaker 1: It's better than the networks.
Speaker 3: And It's better than not knowing anything. It's better than
getting up to putt and going, well, I thought it
was going to go left and went right. How weird,
you know, and then move on to the next the
next shot. It actually gave you a really accurate prediction.
Speaker 1: Okay, I want to get into the depth of that.
But before I go there, we're recording this in the
beginning of January and coming up, breathing down. Our next
is the annual PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, the big
daddy of them all. And you've been there, now how
many TIMESGA show?
Speaker 4: Three times?
Speaker 1: Three times?
Speaker 3: I've exhibited three times. I've been there probably five or
six times.
Speaker 1: Okay, and right because as you were developing this, you
were probably scoping it out and seeing what's out there
and what your competition is, right right, yeah, okay, So
I've not been to the Orlando show. I went to
the Las Vegas show a couple of times. And the
one thing that really, what's the word I want to
use here, depressed me. The one thing that I thought
was sad were all these guys And this is what
I want to throw out this warning right now. All
these guys who are have an idea that they have
the greatest tea ever made, and they just think, I'm
giving up my Hewlett Packard insurance salesman job because I've
got this great tea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's that was the very first thing
that struck me, too, is how much stuff there was.
And when I say stuff, I mean just cras garbage.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you, But.
Speaker 3: There was so much garbage. I mean, there were so
many variations of very simple things. And I remember thinking,
how in the world to these companies say in business?
I mean, I just I just don't get it. And
a lot of them don't. I mean a lot of
them you see one year at the show and then
you never see them again. But there was just thousands
of these sorts of products that people put out there
and spend money on and they never really get a
foothold anywhere, right.
Speaker 1: Right, And they have and I've you know, I've been
self employed for decades now and have come up with
a couple of goofy ideas and they've allowed me to
make a living. But I get people going, oh, I
got this idea, I got it to do this, I'm
going to be an entrepreneur. If you don't have the
support system at home. Yeah, if you can hear the
fingers tapping on the table or the toe tapping going Okay,
you done yet?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Do you get all right? Yeah?
Speaker 4: That's going right.
Speaker 1: And it took you a year and a half to
get a signed deal. At what point did.
Speaker 4: You should take more than that?
Speaker 3: Actually took more than that because I started this in
the fall of two thousand and three, CBS used it
on air one time in five and I didn't get
a deal with contract with Golf Channel till January of seven.
So we're talking more like, you know, three almost for
well really three years?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 1: And you know, so you're doing stuff in the middle
of the night or did you quit your job? I
mean where I was.
Speaker 3: I was doing some other stuff also, but I was
getting more and more well, yes, I was doing other things,
but I was spending more and more time and spending
more and more money on trying to get this on TV.
Speaker 4: And and as any.
Speaker 3: Entrepreneur and entrepreneur knows, you wake up a lot of
mornings in a cold sweat, wondering why you're wasting your time.
Speaker 1: Oh you mean you get to that means you get
to sleep. Yeah, most entrepreneurs are like freaked out, they
can't even fall asleep.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean there's a lot of late nights
and then you wake up, you finally go to sleep,
you wake up in the morning and go, what am
I doing?
Speaker 4: Like? What am I?
Speaker 3: Absolutely out of my mind? And I had that many
a mornings. I woke up and just said, I'm an idiot.
I don't know why wasting time and money on this
because it's.
Speaker 1: Right, But you don't admit that on right, You don't
admit that to your you know, like it's going on
in your head, but you don't tell anybody. But you've
got the other people in your life are going, what
are you doing?
Speaker 4: Get on with it exactly?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, And I was there, and I mean most
people don't know the story, but you know, Golf Channel
picked up ame point in January of seven, and you know,
I told my wife in December of six, I said,
if they don't pick this up, I'm done. I'm out
because I had already kind of been through CBS and
NBC and they were really the last network. You know,
the problem with TV is there's only there's only really
three people to choose from. You have three customers, and
if they all say no, then you're done, you're in business. Yeah,
And I was literally within days of just giving up
and moving on.
Speaker 1: Were you did you? Could you have really walked away
from it? Uh?
Speaker 4: At that point? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well at that point, I mean I loved it, but
if there's no business for it, you know, you're starving death.
I had, I had children, and it was just there
was if I couldn't prove a legitimate business, it was
time to move on like it or not. Whow So
it was came down to really really a couple of
days and around Christmas of six where and Golf Channel
didn't say, hey, great, we know, we'll do this three
year deal. They said, we'll do it one tournament and
if it works, then we'll talk about moving on. So
you know, that first Mercedes Tournament oh seven was extremely stressful.
Speaker 4: Went off.
Speaker 3: You know, we got everything working. Then they did one
more than they didn't one more. There was never a
floodgate where they said, oh, okay, it's great, we'll sign you
for three years. It was just one after another chipping
away and then eventually you know, you wake up one
day and you've been on for six years.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: So you never got a full deal out of it.
Speaker 3: Well, I eventually did, but not after the first year.
So the first year, I think we did seven tournaments,
and then the second year we did twelve, and the
third year we did twenty, And eventually I did get
a deal. But they only run year to year sure,
so at the end of every year they can renew
or not renew. But in the beginning, in the first year,
they had the sign a sponsor, they had to prove
it worked, they had to get buy in, they had
to do all these things, and that's just you know,
that's not easy to do with a new technology, especially
one that people, you know, a lot of people don't
believe it could possibly work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I was. I actually I actually had the
same experience that an idea that I had developed. Budweiser
ended up sponsoring this idea and distributing it out. But
every January first, I had no idea if it was
going to happen again, and I got and I was,
and I was hoping to get three years out of
the Budwiser thing. It ended up getting eleven, which was amazing,
but you just you just every year, I think, and
then it progressed into other venues and I started working
with the NFL and things like that, and every January
first I had no idea how much money I was
going to make that year.
Speaker 4: Oh I know.
Speaker 3: That's that's the downside of being running your own businesses.
Of course, all the freedom in the world, but you
have very little security, right.
Speaker 1: And people think you get to work for yourself. Ha
ha ha.
Speaker 3: You're always working for somebody probably right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, You're always working for some.
Speaker 4: Somebody else is always writ in the check at the
end of the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's right. Bob Dylan said, you got to serve somebody,
and it's right. Oh man. So were they with each
each tournament they were doing. Are they paying a rights fee?
They paying licensing?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: How are they?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And are you getting money that's going? Okay, this could work?
Ors like, here's a buck fifty, Thank you very much,
see you later.
Speaker 3: The amount of time and money that I put into
it in the first two or three years, I think
I did six on site demos for the networks, and
every time I showed up on site. You know, I'm
paying my own expenses, my own travel, it's operational expenses involved,
you know, none of that.
Speaker 4: They don't reimburse you. For any of that.
Speaker 3: So they you know, they started to pay on a
per tournament basis the first year, but I mean I
didn't break even until probably into the third year. Wow,
you know, I mean, I mean, you know, the first
couple of years I definitely operated a loss and just
trying to recoop that.
Speaker 4: You know, what I had put into it.
Speaker 3: Between patents and legal fees and operational expenses. I mean
all those things. You know, if you until you have
a revenue coming in, those are just stacking up on
top of each other.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and your wife was being supportive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she was shockingly supportive. She was probably more supportive
back then because I was I was at home a
lot more than I am now, and now I travel
so much it gets a little more difficult.
Speaker 1: Oh so all right, Well, since you're home, go pick
up the kids and while you're there, go to the
market where you have to do a lot of like no, no,
I'm working today, Yeah, no, No, you gotta go run
some chores.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean it's great working at home, but
you have to learn that. You have to learn little
keys like when the office door shut, nobody comes through it.
Speaker 4: Period.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you still have to go put the wash
on the dryer. Yes, yes, okay, I've been there.
Speaker 4: What in there?
Speaker 1: So the whole thought for you was this is going
to be great on TV.
Speaker 3: Well that was my second thought. Actually, really my first
thought was that.
Speaker 1: Was your marketing thought. That was the thought that's like, okay, oh,
now I can sell it to somebody.
Speaker 3: Well that was that was actually the rich The original
thought was I was going to create the software and
put it on a handheld. Now, the problem was, in
two thousand and three, handhelds were Palm pilots with no
Internet connectivity, no cell connectivity.
Speaker 4: This was a standalone unit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was well the mobile yeah, the mobile world.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So I so I actually didn't appen three and put
it on a Palm pilot and went out and tested it.
And the problem was you couldn't see the screen in
the daylight. They weren't these sunlight you know, sunlight readable
TFT screens. You'd take it on the bright sun and
it just blanked out on you. And so it was
just the equipment wasn't ready for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you were ahead of that. Technology was way.
Speaker 3: Ahead of the curve on that. And so I said, well,
that's not gonna that's not gonna work right now? What
could I do? And I was talking to again my
head pro at the time, and he goes, oh, you
should just take it to TV. And at the time
I was like, yeah, maybe, you know, we'll give it
a shot.
Speaker 4: Why not.
Speaker 3: And TV showed a lot of interest, CBS showed a
lot of interest very early on, which you know, kind
of got me excited about it. But then to actually
make it happen just seemed like it took forever.
Speaker 4: Mm hmmmm hm.
Speaker 1: And and with a palm pilot, plus there's no camera
on that or do you need that? I mean, what
is it? So what is the software that that you wrote?
What does it do?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: That original one, what it did is it would actually
load the laser scans of the grip of the course
you were playing, So we would go out and laser
scan the golf greens and get three D maps of it.
And all you do is say, here's my ball and
here's the hole, and it would tell you what the
break was. So that was the original idea. There's a
lot of operational difficulties with that as simple as there's
the whole and the problem is you can take a
pin and move it three feet and get a totally
different break good efficient way to know exactly where the
pin was.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of things that just made it difficult.
So I just shelved it basically. I mean I had
it built. I still have it built. I submitted to
the USGA actually for a decision, and I just put
on the shelf and moved on.
Speaker 1: And did you get to talk to the USGA about this?
Were they receptive they cheating?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: No, that well, they didn't say cheating. The decision was
interesting because they weren't really prepared for it. But what
they said was they called it an outside advice, basically
asked for outside advice. And it was interesting because they said,
you know, we don't really know how to classify it,
but we're not comfortable with a computer helping you with
your game. And so they basically just threw a blanket
rule at it and say it's you know, it would
not be conforming equipment. And it didn't surprise me at
all that they said that, But they didn't really know
how to address it. You know, it's kind of outside
their their thinking process at the time.
Speaker 1: Oh I bet even today, even today, I would think
that's a little bit outside of their thinking process. So
why were you not completely discouraged at that point, going, well, listen,
if I can't get back past this group, why do
I keep going?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's a good question, I think because probably because the networks,
the producer at CBS I showed it to, got very excited,
very quickly, and I think that helped a lot. If
I had if it had taken months and months to
get anybody that from the networks to listen to me,
I think I would have.
Speaker 4: Probably been a little discouraged.
Speaker 3: I think at that point I would have said, Okay,
well I don't really know what to do with this now, Oh,
just have fun with it.
Speaker 1: When you brought it to the networks, did they you?
I got to imagine that they wanted to make it
pretty for television. You brought them a concept, You brought
them a pro type of a palm pilot. I mean, well,
you know, what was your experience with television graphics and
how to make something work on that.
Speaker 3: I had no experience with television television graphics. Basically, I
went to them and said, here's what I can do.
I can show you what the Putt looks like before
you hit it. And what they said at the time,
CBS worked with the virtual graphics company called pv I,
and pv I did one of the first down lines
for football the first time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Isn't that the
group that did the which was phenomenal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so they said, well, we work with them,
Go work with pv I and give us a demonstration.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of scary because you don't know. You
go to pv I and they go, yeah, we can
do that, we don't need you, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Uh, trust me. That's exactly what sometimes happened. Didn't happen
with pv I, but that that can happen. Yes, So
oh yeah, it's dangerous because you know, as a single person,
as a small operator, I'm you know, I don't have
any employees. When you go to big companies, you really
have to protect yourself and it's very hard in the
beginning because you kind of you work with who you
have to work with. No, that's not necessarily who you
choose to work with. And you get in with some
big companies so they don't really care much about your business.
You know, you don't have a personal relationship, and they
look at it and go, oh, I could reproduce this.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow, and they really don't care about you.
Speaker 4: And they really really don't care about you.
Speaker 3: So you really have to protect yourself and then unfortunately,
just try to work with good people and and just.
Speaker 4: Take a risk and go for it.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So yeah, and so we got a good demonstration working
for CBS and they basically they showed it once on air,
but at the time they said they couldn't find a
sponsor for it, so they just shelved it. Also, they said,
we need somebody to sponsor this because most graphics on
TV are sponsored by a company.
Speaker 1: Basically, what they're saying is we ain't gonna pay for it.
Speaker 4: Well, no, that's exactly that's exactly what they said.
Speaker 1: They said, it's we're not going to pay It's great,
we're not gonna pay for it. We'll get someone else
to pay for it. But they don't know if it
is either oh man.
Speaker 3: And they were really supportive, I mean, they really liked it,
but they just said, like any graphic, it's got to
be sponsored or it's not going to be on there.
So so that kind of went cold. But then luckily,
you know, Golf Channel got the PGA Tour deal in
o six. They had never showed PGA Tour events and
they were starting in seven with this big splash, and
they wanted some new graphics and they wanted to really come.
Speaker 4: Out and look good. O, your timing is perfect.
Speaker 3: So the timing was worked out very well, and luckily
Golf Channel took a risk on it because my understanding
was there are a number of people who said, listen,
I don't I don't think this is possible. Do we
really want to take a chance, And luckily the producer
I was working with said, yeah, let's go for it,
and they did it, and we won an Emmy for
it for that first year too. The seven year we
got a Sports Emi for it.
Speaker 1: And did you get an Emmy for it or did
they're like, hey, look we got an Emmy.
Speaker 3: Well, the nice thing about this award is that it
is a Golf Channel Emmy, but they can name what
do they call them contributors or something, So so yes,
I did get an Emmy, and there were a number
of on the team who did it who got an
Emmy for it also, wow, But it was Golf Channel's
only Emmy I believe today still.
Speaker 1: Oh is that right? Wow? Very cool? Very cool. So
now we have the idea. Basically, what it does is
it it puts a line on the green television wise,
So we're watching TV. Why don't you explain that? So
as we're watching TV, what do we see and what
is it? And how did you make that work?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yes, essentially after the green's ahead of time with a
high definition laser scanner, so we know exactly what the
surface of the green looks like down to footprints. Literally
the scanner is accurate to like two millimeters I think,
So we know what the green looks like. The software
knows how to get the ball from point A to
point B over that surface. So when the ball hits
the ground, we say, here's the ball, there's a whole
here's the green. Speed show me how to make the
putt okay, so my figures out how and then they
just insert the just like the first down mark, or
they put what's called a virtual graphic on which basically
the computer knows how to keep the graphic still even
though the camera's moving around, so it looks like it's
paintsed on the green.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very so.
Speaker 3: And it's cool because it only takes you know, three
or four seconds to solve pretty much any put out there.
And it's shockingly accurate. I mean really really. The thing
that surprised me from day one is it worked better
than I expected it to work. Just the physics of
it is so is so good.
Speaker 1: And how what about your prep time? I mean you
you're saying you have to do a laser scan of
every green before it starts, so you can't do every
golf course in the in the country to to put
what kind of how much prep time does it take
before they will broadcast?
Speaker 3: Well, they only scan, uh, they use on two greens
per tournament, so we only have to sprant stanch.
Speaker 4: And so there's a guy who goes.
Speaker 3: Out, takes them a couple hours, he scans it, and
then I just show up. I just show up and
basically push the buttons, so I don't even have to
go stand on the golf green. Literally, all I have
to do is get the green speed correct and if
there's any wind, plug in some wind and then the
computer just does the whole thing from there.
Speaker 1: Oh that's really interesting is now that that kind of
answers a big question for me is how come we
don't see it all the time. It's so cool. Why
is it only you know, like they only do two greens, Perer.
Speaker 4: They only do two green.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just it's usually only use it, you know,
a couple times, three times an hour, and it's just
not feasible to happen on eighteen greens. And we also
need a fixed camera on a tower, and they don't
have towers on every green. They typically have them kind
of fifteen through eighteen, maybe nine also, So just operationally,
it's just very difficult to do more than two or
three greens.
Speaker 1: Well, the reason I've been hearing from listeners about this
is because you've been able to migrate it over from
a television product to a product that can help the
average golfer.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, And that's actually been one of the funnest
parts about this is learning during this process of showing
it on TV that you can actually use it as
an average golfer with no technology. So it was always
kind of my goal because I'm your typical golfer, you know,
I never I don't play as much as I would
like to play. I'm not from the golf industry, and
I'm thinking to myself. Well, you know, I've learned a
lot about putting and green reading from all these simulations
that I know nobody knows. I said that, you know,
I've taken lots of golf lessons in my life, and
I've never heard or read any of these concepts that
I was seeing by virtue of the simulation. And I said, well, wow,
it would be really great to kind of get these
out there and teach people how to understand greens because
it's really not as difficult as you think, but it's
just not out there. It's something you can never figure
out without a computer. And now we obviously have the
technology and via the simulations to show us exactly why
the ball does what it does.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to ask you a lot more questions
about how how we can take advantage of this and
how we can learn from using your system, but we've
run out of time for this episode, and I would
really love it if you could give us some more
time on our members only episode for next episode? Could
you stick around for some more Yeah, absolutely, that would
be great. Well, thank you very much. So, if you've
heard about Aimpoint and you want to know more on
how you can become a better putter by using this system.
And I've received feedback from a lot of listeners saying
that they have become better putters by using the aim
point system. First thing you want to do is check
out the website and that is where Mark.
Speaker 3: That's gamepointgolf dot com, aampoint goolf dot com.
Speaker 1: Go there, find yourself an instructor and we'll get more
information on that.
Speaker 5: Mark.
Speaker 1: Stick around and we will come back for members only.
Thank you so much for forgiving us the stories.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Thanks.
Speaker 1: It's time once again for our score Zone Short Game
Academy with Terry Kaylor, the Wedge Guy.
Speaker 5: Hi, Terry, how you doing Fred?
Speaker 1: I'm doing well. I'm getting excited for you to go
to the PGA Merchandise Show so we can get a
review when you come back.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're looking forward to this busy week for us.
Speaker 1: Very busy week indeed. And the question we're going to
go to today is from Stephen Davis of Colorado Springs, Colorado,
and he said that, and I love the opening of
a question already. When I was fitted for irons, thank you,
he said, they made a big deal about getting the
right flex. However, when he purchased wedges, it seemed like
all the flexes were the same. So he asked two questions.
The second question is why, But the first one is
is there really a need for different flexes on wedges?
Speaker 5: Well, I think think you got to go further than that, Steven,
and there is a need for not just different flexes,
but different shaft materials and weights in wedges. And let
me so you ask why. So here I go what
you're looking for in your set of golf clubs, and
you have a transition from your irons to your wedges.
But this happens right in the middle of what I
call money range. And you're going to really beat the
golf course with your scoring clubs, your high loft golf clubs.
You know, whether that starts at the eight or the
nine iron and down through your wedges. And what we
golfers have always been saddled with is that we have
a set of irons and they have this shaft and
this flex in them, and that typically goes up through
the pitch the pea club as I call it, and
then we have a match or a mismatch of wedges,
these things called wedges that we bought off the rack
at the store and the major brands have always offered
wedge just as a commodity off the rack item, and
they use a commodity grade steel shaft with the stiff
flex and it's standard weight steel, and it fits reasonably
well two people who are playing standard weight steel stiff
flex irons. But most of the golfers today are migrating
to lightweight steel. They're migrating to graphite in their irons.
More and more and more golfers playing regular flex. And
so what happens is when you walk out, if you're
riding in a card or if you're pulling your bag
or you're carrying your bag, and you get to the
shot and it's right on the line, it could be
a pitching wedge, it could be your gap wedge, or
you're fifty four, whatever your first wedge is. If you
are carrying off the rack wedges with a heavy stiff
steel shaft and you were playing irons with a lightweight steel,
regular flex or a graphite even in a senior flex
or regular flex or firm flex, you have in your
hand a choice of two clubs that have what I
call a disconnect. The wedge weighs and feels like one thing.
The peak club ways and feels like another thing and
your full swing shots need you need to have your
clubs feel and perform the same way. So the first
part of that is the best thing to do in
your wedges is to put shafts in them. And this
means getting them refitted or buying them from a company
like Score, But that will build your wedges to the
specifications to give you this what I call a seamless transition,
to avoid this disconnect. And you can retrofit your wedge shafts.
Any good club maker can do that. But what you're
looking for is to get the weight about the same
and the shaft get the flex about the same the materials. Certainly,
if you're playing graphite shaft in your irons, get graphite
in your wedges. It's going to give you that similarity,
that seamless transition as.
Speaker 4: We call it.
Speaker 5: And I would tell you there are few things you
can do to improve your short range performance quicker if
short of buying a whole new set of scoring clubs.
It really did again shameless plug, sorry guys, But is
to get the shafts in your wedges to blend to
those shafts that are in your irons, to performance improve immediately.
Speaker 1: Terry, did you just make a very controversial statement. I've
heard a lot of people say that you really, uh,
wedges and graphite don't really go well together.
Speaker 5: Well, I think that's conventional wisdom.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: But and if you go back to the history of
iron shafts, when people first started putting graphite in irons,
most of the companies were using a pretty low grade
graph it. I'm sorry, guys, I'm going to pick on
them because to use a really nice, high grade graphight
that set of graphite irons was going to cost thirty
dollars a club, more than the steel shaft. At times
eight clubs, it's two hundred and fifty dollars. They didn't
the companies didn't think golfers would go over that. The
quality of graphight has improved dramatically over the years, and
even in the lower pricing, you know, you don't have
to spend fifty or sixty or eighty dollars to get
a good quality graphight iron shaft graphite. To me, I
haven't played a steel shaft golf club from a nutter
to a driver in eight years, and I'll never go
back to steel and I'm not going to go back
to Buya supply tires on my car either. So but
technology works. I mean what we can do with graphite
And at Score Golf we developed two new graphite shafts
designed specifically for the scoring clubs, and we can build
them with a firmer tip and a softer upper section
and exactly the weight we want, exactly the frequency we want.
The things you can do with graph fight you can
control these things interdependently of the basic diameter of the shaft.
I'm a huge fan of graphight. Graphite has fuel transmission
qualities that steel can't approach. Again, that may be controversial,
but I'm a fisherman. If any of your guys are
fishermen's there's not a tubular steel fishing rod on the
market because tubular steel is not noted for its field
transmission qualities. Graphight fiber carbon fiber is noted for its
field transmission qualities. And I would challenge any of you
guys to go out find a wedge demo with a
really good quality graph height. And that's the key. It's
got to be a good quality graph fight. To find
a wedges with really good quality graphight, you'll be surprised.
The sensation of impact, the feel the clubhead, where you
can feel that club in the swing. It's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Wow. Well, thank you. I appreciate once again, I appreciate
the education, and Steven, I'm sure appreciates the answer and
the fact that he's getting a brand new wedge. And
I'm telling you the.
Speaker 5: Shaft if that's what you play, Steven.
Speaker 1: And there you go, Steven, if that's what you want,
you tell.
Speaker 5: Us the shaft that's in your irons, and we're going
to build you a score forty one sixty one club
that blends perfectly to that. And I'm going to warn
you're gonna want to fill in your set. That's what
we only hear from everybody, So that's why I know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and listen, I don't mind your shameless plug, but
please explain once again. The forty one sixty one.
Speaker 5: Forty one sixty one was the name we gave to
this series of golf clubs because we're the first company
to ever build the scoring clubs in every loft from
forty one to sixty one degrees, so other companies could
hit a fifty one degree wedge or a forty seven
degree pitch or a fifty three degree mid wedge or
a fifty seven degree sand, but they have to bend
one to something it's not. And I'm kind of goofy
for this because I think these are the most precise
clubs in your bag. These are the money clubs, and
if you need a fifty one degree wedge to get
your gapping just right, I wanted you to have a
fifty one degree wedge, not a fifty or a fifty
two that we've been around on and so we made
the decision to tool up every single with btge loft
from forty one to sixty one degrees, which some people
might say that's not really wedges. That goes down all
the way to nine iron replacement philosophy there is that
your nine earn is really more like a wedge than
a six ron. So it should be built and it
should feel, it should perform like your scoring clubs.
Speaker 1: And Steven, once you get the wedge of your choice,
he's right, you're going to want to fill out the
fill out the entire set. And there's a set of
five that you can get of these score forty one
sixty one wedges, and as a golf smarter listener, all
you have to do when you're checking out is use
the checkout code golf Smarter and you'll get an immediate
ten percent discount and that automatically goes with your your
one hundred percent money back guarantee. Any Golf Smarter listener
who wants to check out the Wedges these scoring clubs
from score Golf, you can click on their banner ad
at golfsmarter dot com. But remember, if you're a golf
Smarter listener, you do get a ten percent discount by
using the checkout code golf Smarter. Now, if you're a
golf Smarter member, you'll get an additional five percent discount.
That's a fifteen percent discount. And I'm telling you, if
you're not a Golf Smarter member yet and you're really
considering getting these clubs, you've got to join Golf Smarter
because the first club it's going to pay your membership
for a year, if not more. Okay, So become a
member of golf Smarter and not only take advantage of
these great discounts, but you'll also get to take advantage
of getting a new episode every week, including part two
of episodes like the one you're about to hear on
our next members only episode. Terry, thanks so much, and again,
best of luck at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando.
I know you guys are going to be a bigger
hit you were last year, and I want a full
report when we get the chance to do that. And
I don't know it's going to be on our next show,
but maybe after that, we're going to want to hear
everything about the show, Okay,