Speaker 1: Hi, This is Troy Kara from Omaha, Nebraska. I play
at Westwood Heights. This is episode number one thousand and three.
Speaker 2: Both my dad and Tony were obsessed with putters, and
my dad until the end. He ended up designing putters
the end of his life for like the last seven
years for a company called sax Parenti and they're kind
of high end putters. My dad with Callaway when they
finally moved to Carlsbad kind of developed the first production
milled putters in the industry. But he and Tony just
loved putters. And what was interesting about Tony and my
dad is they were both historians of the game and
so what they were always doing, and this is kind
of the reason for Hickory Stick is all their designs
honored the past with the latest technology of the present.
Speaker 1: Tony Manzoni and Jean Parente's father grew up playing golf
together then started Callaway. This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories,
tips and insights from great golf minds to help you
lower your score and raise your golf IQ. Here's your host,
Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast.
Speaker 2: Gene Fred, it's pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: It's great to hear from you. This is so outrageous.
Now you've made a career in golf, even with your dad, right,
you have a very interesting, fascinating and now important career
in golf. And we'll get to that, I promise, right,
But where I want to start. You did an episode
of one of your podcasts or a video recently and
you mentioned Tony Manzoni. We here on Golf Smarter are
obsessed with Okay, I'm obsessed with Tony manze Tony was
on the show a dozen times until he passed away,
and each year to start the golf season, I get
such great response from the audience every time he's on
that Each year since he passed away, I'll run all
of his episodes in a row every Friday, and we're
in the midst of that now to start off the
golf season. Because his instruction, his method of the loss fundamental,
has been so effective for so many people. His book
we got it back in print, his video I distribute
from here, and really the only places you can find
the only place you can find anything on Tony Manzoni
is on our website. He just didn't care about that stuff.
It was you know, after his time, and you mentioned
him that your dad knew him and I knew him and.
Speaker 2: You knew it. Oh yeah, yeah, very very close with Tony.
I mean it, Tony is part of my origin story
in the golf in history and so so if you
have a few minutes, I'll go like way back. It's
it's very interesting.
Speaker 1: I've got forty five easily, so I just anything.
Speaker 2: You got this. This this story is really fascinating. So
my father, who just passed away in January, I'm sorry,
it was eighty five, lived a full life. He and
Tony were junior golfers together in San Jose and they
grew up together. And but they both were I don't
want to say kids from the wrong side of the tracks,
but they were both working class kids who found golf
and my dad when he graduated. So to back up,
my brother and I the last six years of my
dad's life, we took him up to the at and
t at Pebble every year because my dad, when he
was an assistant pro up at Los Altos, his job
on Mondays was to take the members down and play
either Pebble or Cyprus or Spanish Bay. And that literally
was his job as an assistant pro. So we're sitting
there one day and he goes, do you know how
you got in the golf industry the reason we're sitting here?
And I said no, and he said Wino George. And
I said, who the hell's Whino George. So he starts
telling me the story. My grandfather, who was an immigrant
from Italy. His family moved to San Jose, he grew up.
He worked in the cannery his entire life, and that's
just what she did as an Italian. That came over
my dad in the fifties. After graduating from high school,
he played against Tony high school golf with Tony. He
starts working the cannery and hates it. It's gonna quit,
gonna go somewhere else. And one day there's this guy
standing next to him, this older guy on the line,
and his name's Wino George. And he was a caddie
at Los Altos and during the winter months he would
when when the course was closed down or no one
was playing, he'd work at the cannery. And he turns
to my dad and says, you're a golfer, right, never
said a word to my dad previously. My dad said yes,
and he goes, get your best pair of slacks. I've
got you an interview for an assistant pro job. This
is like nineteen fifty six, fifty seven. My dad shows up,
gets the job, and starts off in the golf industry.
He and Tony are running parallel by the way, They're
both underage at the age of like seventeen or eighteen,
drinking at a bar called Parenas in downtown San Jose. Together,
Tony becomes an assistant pro. Tony gets hired by Ken
van Turrey. Just just show you the difference in the
world at this time. Ken Venturry US Open Winter nineteen
sixty four, and I think Tony moved down to the desert.
In nineteen sixty nine nineteen seventy, Ken Venturrey was managing
the pro shop at Mission Hills. You needed like a second,
you know, career, even though you were a US Open Winter.
So Venturrey hires Tony. Tony comes down starts working at
Mission Hills for Venturrey. Tony calls my dad and goes,
you have to get down here. This is golf heaven,
and so my dad comes down, falls in love with
the place. Tony starts working with Venturrey finds out there's
an opening at this course called Whitewater Country Club. Ventury
recommends my dad for the job. My dad becomes a
head pro there and they renew their like childhood friendship
down in the desert in the seventies when they were
just running a buck. I mean, you know, Tony was
like the number two golf pro to Sinatra. They just
and as wacky as this is. Larry Parina ends up
moving down to Palm Springs and opening up an Italian
restaurant called Parinas that my dad and Tony would frequent
like two to three times a week.
Speaker 1: Wait, and that knows something. Larry Parino was.
Speaker 2: Larry Parina was the guy who wonned the bar in
San Jose that they used to drink underage at in
the whole crew ends up down in Palm Springs, and
so my dad and Tony are just thickest thieves. In
the seventies, my dad ends up Whitewater Country Club ends up.
It turns out owned by a holding company out of
Chicago that's backed by the Mob, and like Mayor Daily
would come a couple times a year, and my dad
became golf pro to the Mob and Tony he knew
the mob, and everybody had all these connections. I mean
the seventies and Palm Springs was wild wild.
Speaker 1: Tony has alluded. Tony did allude to stories about the
craziness and the rat pack.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, did you mention the mob?
Speaker 1: He did talk about Sinatra a bunch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So he and Sinatra were close, Like my
dad would tell me stories about he'd be over Tony's
watching a Super Bowl and Sinatra would just pop in,
sit on the couch, have a beer with the rest
of the guys. I mean, you got to remember, Palm
Springs was a small town. It was only twenty thousand people,
and it was only twenty thousand people during the height
of the season, you know, for Memorial Day until Halloween.
The place was a ghost town. And so there were
only a few places to go in a few places
people that you knew, and so it was really common
to run into at the time, aless celebrities and what
do they all want to do? They all wanted to golf.
And my dad was a really good teaching pro and
Tony was a really good teaching pro, and so both
of them had contacts and connections into just a world
I tell people all the time, growing up in the
desert was like nothing else you could ever imagine, because
it was the playground to the stars. It was almost
it was almost like a fantasy land in so many aspects.
So through the seventies, Tony and my dad are super close,
and then they both decide that they want to be
entrepreneurs and that they want to create a golf club company.
And so there was another golf pro named Dave Reardon,
and the three of them decided to create this company
called Hickory Stick USA. And what it was was it
was a dowl of hickory that they were going to
drill a hole in and put a steel shaft in.
It looked like an old hickory stick, but it had
this stability. They started this business in my parents' garage
and they had these giant vats that they would pressurize
the wood. And I remember this as a kid. It
was just insane.
Speaker 1: Howld me.
Speaker 2: I'm like eight ten and and they're in there with
chemicals mixing, and looking back on it, they had no
idea what they were doing, but they were. They were
very persistent and to make they both stopped being golf
pros at this time. They were full on entrepreneurs and
to make ends meet, they would go up to Idlewild
and chop Wood for like two to three miles in
the winter time, and Tony and my dad would come
back with these giant beards. So, I mean, we're talking
shoestring budget on this thing. So they eventually got a
guy who really had a lot of technical experts tise
and manufacturing and doing things, named Dick Dela Cruz, and
they brought him on board, and the four of them
moved the operation to Temecula and they started selling clubs
to Neiman Marcus, and they had a putter line and
a wedge line, and they had some irons. And one
day there's only the four of them. I mean, this
is a tiny, tiny, little incubator business, but they're they're
selling things and things are working. One day, my dad's
manning the phone and gets a cold call from this
guy named Elie Callaway who's just sold his winery and
wants to invest in a golf club company. And he
becomes a primary investor and the name of the company
becomes Calloway Hickory Stick. They move it back to Cathedral
City because eli was out of the desert at the time.
That's where he played out of and then the company
became Calloway Golf and so you know, my my father
and Tony were directly responsible for, you know, launching one
of the biggest names in golf.
Speaker 1: If I remember, Tony told the story of and he
didn't he mentioned your dad, but he talked about how
Eli Callaway made the call and when he first pitched Callaway,
Tony said he was like, yeah, not interested. He didn't
want to do it. And then and we just had
this episode like a week or so ago, I think,
and then a call came back or Tony called him
back weeks later, months later, whatever it was, and he said,
you sure you don't want to be part of this,
and he goes, I'm glad you called. I've been thinking
about it. Yeah, I do want to get in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is that I think? You know, the actual details,
I'll be honest have kind of been lost to time,
but you know, and maybe and maybe that was the case.
What I do know is they were in two Macula
at the time. Eliott just sold his winery and was interested.
You know, whether they accepted it the first time or not,
I'm not I'm not sure certain of the details, but
they eventually accepted it and eventually moved it down to
Cathedral City and started and it stayed as Hickory Stick
because I actually worked there for about two years in
high school. And then it kind of evolved from there
into a kind of a full, full blown golf club company.
My dad and Tony were responsible for the S two
h two, which was a short hozzle and a transfer
of weight and uh just milled putters together. And yeah,
they you know, they went from two kind of haywire
junior golfers in San Jose to starting, ah, you know,
a company that would end up becoming the biggest company
in golf.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable. What do you remember about your household? Your mom
and dad were together through.
Speaker 2: All of us.
Speaker 1: Okay, what do you remember about your mom and her
acceptance of you're gonna do what in the garage was?
Is there a lot of toe tapping going on, going Okay,
you're down and you're ready to get back to work now?
Speaker 2: It It was. It was a little stressful at times,
I mean, you know, and it was so Both Tony
and my dad were dreamers. They were just total dreamers.
But I don't think either of them necessarily was a
good blocker or tackler. So they had this giant vision,
but you know, how to enact it was a challenge,
and that's why they ended up bringing Dick Della Cruz
in who Dick ended up going to Founders and Olamar
and he's kind of an industry legend as well. And
and then when Eli came in, what Eli brought was
kind of, you know, a business structure he had He
had been a CEO at I think it was Burlington
Northern or some textile you know, giant, and so he
brought in, you know, kind of a corporate structure in
which Tony and my dad could work within and allowed
them to you know, kind of design without having to
worry so much about the blocking and you know, aspects.
Speaker 1: Of yes, creating the business itself.
Speaker 2: Yep, exactly.
Speaker 1: And so at what point did Tony Never gave us
the full story, but he did say, yeah, maybe I
partied a little too hard during those years and my
game kind of fell apart. You know, maybe it was
just dreams of playing professionally on the tour and got
railroaded by the party happening in Palm Springs with your dad.
Speaker 2: I can tell you there was some excess going on
in the desert in the seventies without a doubt, and
didn't quite learn about that until I was older.
Speaker 1: But really, how did you hear stories about that?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, you grow up and you start having
more frank conversations with your parents about you know, things,
and like I said, it was a really really weird
place to grow because on the weekends sometimes it could
be Sodom and Gomorrah, and during the week it was
like small town USA, you know, there was nothing going on.
And then on the weekends everybody would come down and
it would be their playground. So you just you saw
a lot of interesting stuff. And yet it was a
small town as well, I mean a very very small town.
So it just it was a yeah, it was those guys,
my dad and Tony, they were they had access to
everything because they were golf pros and they and they
were in that you know, that world, and so yeah,
I could I could definitely see a loss of focus
because you know, and it was like my father tried
to make it, you know, on the Canadian tour, and
I remember he made a fatal mistake. He decided to
combine trying to make it once i'mer on the Canadian
tour with a family vacation, and so he put us
all at my brother and I and my mom in
a van and we drove across Canada and he'd be
trying to do Monday morning qualifiers, you know, with the
family in tow and you know, I mean, it was.
Speaker 1: Just how old were you at the time.
Speaker 2: I was like seven or eight and.
Speaker 1: Those years are we talking about?
Speaker 2: Ooh, this is like nineteen seventy four, seventy five. This
is a really funny story.
Speaker 1: Please.
Speaker 2: So so about twenty years later, maybe thirty years later, yeah,
maybe thirty years later, I was talking to him and
I said, I said, hey, Dad, did you ever meet
Moe Norman? You know, you know when you when you know,
because you know, because my dad with Callaway and then
my dad was with all these other companies. You know,
he had access to everybody. And he goes, yeah, you
met him too, And I said what he said? Yeah?
He said, he said every hotel we stay at when
we were trying to qualify, he said, all the young
tour pros would go out partying and the strip clubs
and everything else. And he goes here, I am stuck
with the family, so I can't go out, and he goes.
Our door was always open, and he goes. Mo would
always be walking down the halls and see the door open,
and he'd come and sit down on the bed and
watch television. Oh my gosh, something that I have zero
memory of. And I'm like, that's kind of fascinating and
disturbing at the scene time. But yeah, it just golf
was a it was a different animal back then. It
was you know, I often say, like when I got
started in the business, and this is after Tony and
my dad had left Callaway. Calloway was a four million
dollars a year company when I started in the business.
Cobra was bigger at six million dollars a year. They
were tiny, little cottage industry companies here in Carlsbad or
in San Diego. It wasn't until kind of the early
nineties when the big Bertha took off and then all
of a sudden there was this infusion of technology that
golf really exploded. But for the most part, and you know,
the interesting thing is kind of during this heyday that
my dad and Tony got started, you know, the big
companies in the industry were Wilson, Spaulding In, McGregor, and Titleist.
Titleist has still been around, but Wilson is kind of around,
you know, they're still holding. But Spaulding and McGregor, you know,
long gone. So completely different landscape than what it is today.
Speaker 1: It's crazy that you talk about, you know, the different
companies in which were the big ones. Interestingly, one of
my golf buddies who's also the club fitter at the
golf mart here in northern California, Nick man Manzano, he
has Barry Bonds, comes into the store and needs a fitting,
but he's only allowed to play Wilson clubs. Yeah, and
so Tony has to like doctor these clubs up. So
the heads are right right because they were so bigcause
and he's like, Knick's like, you can't move on to
a different club, No gotta play Wilson. Okay, fine, we'll
take care of it.
Speaker 2: We'll make it look good. Wilson. Actually, Wilson actually makes
some good products. They just they've never had the marketing
that the majors have had, so it's always very difficult
for them to compete. You know, first, they have all
the ways and the tailor maids and the titleists.
Speaker 1: And Wilson doesn't just focus on golf, for Callaway is
not making baseballs gloves.
Speaker 2: Wilson is a sporting goods bring exactly, not necessarily specifically a.
Speaker 1: Golf So I apologize to the golf smarter community who
are listening on the audio right now, but I'm going
to bring something into the picture here that I found.
I think I found it at a garage sale locally,
because I lived near a course that open in the
mid fifties in Marin County, the Marine Country Club, And
so it's an older community here that's aging out and
so there are you know, garage sales. And I pulled
this out and on it and is it backwards of course?
So club and I don't know if you can read
this close, but it says handmade hickory stick Richard Parente ye,
and then you cake down to the bottom. It's a putter.
You can see this, yep. And on the bottom Callaway
the Purest by Tony Manzoni.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember. And it's in primo condition. It's gorgeous. Ye
tell me about this club. I don't know anything about
it other than Tony's name and when I saw his name, like, okay,
I have.
Speaker 2: To have that. So so both my dad and Tony
were obsessed with putters, and my dad until the end.
He ended up designing putters the end of his life
for like the last seven years for a company called
Saxe Parenti and they're kind of high end putters. My dad,
my dad with Callaway when they finally moved to Carlsbad
kind of developed the first production milled putters in the industry.
But he and Tony just love putters. And what was
interesting about Tony and my dad is they were both
historians of the game, and so what they were always doing,
and this is kind of the reason for Hickory Stick
is all their designs honored the past with the latest
technology of the present. So they had a real fundamental
understanding of how the game had progressed from an equipment
evolution standpoint, and there were shapes that they really loved,
and then they would try to take modern manufacturing techniques
to improve upon those to create a higher MOI or
better balance point or kind of focusing the center of
gravity to maximize the performance characteristics while retaining the class
shapes that they had both grown up with and had
both been influenced by you know, looking back, you know,
prior to their time in the golf industry.
Speaker 1: Interesting, So is this club like, is this rare? Fine,
It's not like you looked at it and went, whoa,
you didn't see all that?
Speaker 2: Well club, I've seen, I've seen. I've seen every single
one of those. But it's I mean, there's not many
out there, to be honest with you, and it is.
What's interesting about it is, you know a lot of people,
a lot of people know Callaway Golf, a lot of
people most people do not know the Callaway origin story.
And that's that's what makes the club unique. Is it was,
you know, part of the Callaway origin story prior to
Callaway It becoming Callaway Golf.
Speaker 1: Interesting what happened? I mean, how at what point? And
Tony went over to the College of the Desert and
started this golf management program and coaching the team and
led them to twenty nine regional championships and a national championship.
He had an amazing career as a coach. And again
every time he came on the show and just talked
about his method of the loss fundamental of you know,
being on your left side rotating from your left side
and doing a body swing instead of an arm swing.
At that point, where was your dad?
Speaker 2: So they kind of they kind of split past. My
dad stayed in San Diego and he started after he
left Callaway. He started working with Founders Club, which was
developed by Gary Adams, who started Tailor Made, and then
he started a company called Goldwyn Golf that was back
by the Shoe company out of and then he designed
for various companies. But he basically stayed in the golf industry,
whereas Tony decided that his passion was teaching and he
went out to cod But I can tell you, I
mean my dad talked to Tony like a week before
he passed, and you know, they stayed in touch. Tony
would send him kind of manuscripts of his of his books,
and my dad would share with me. Tony would reach out.
I didn't talk to Tony as frequently as my dad did,
but whenever Tony had somebody that was, you know, trying
to get into the industry or needed something to test,
he'd give me a call and say, hey, can you
help this guy out? You know, And I was always obliging,
and so both of us, my dad obviously had a
much closer relationship than I did. But you know, Tony
was someone that I knew from you know, four or five,
you know, just and uh and my dad always was
uh obsessed with the golf swing, and so he and
Tony would just go down rabbit holes. And to your
point about the body versus the arms swing, it's really interesting.
So my background. So I started my business thirty five
years ago, and it's robotic testing. I developed a robot
that the the robot at the time that I started
was the Iron Byron and I developed this machine the
Golf Laboratories robot it.
Speaker 1: And I must say, Iron Byron is probably one of
the most famous golfers in the world.
Speaker 2: Yes, to put names out there everyone which which which
by the way, it was a total misnomer. It wasn't.
It wasn't Byron Nelson's swing. It just it.
Speaker 1: Uh, how did the name happen?
Speaker 2: Someone came up with the name Iron Byron and it
was just too difficult to and and you know, Byron
Nelson's not gonna say anything because it looks good, but no,
it was. It was an air driven machine. It had
a linkage system. It just had one swing. It couldn't
you couldn't duplicate different types of swings. But it was
it was revolutionary at the time it was designed in
the sixties. I came along in the early nineties, and
I mean, but to give you an idea, I think
there were like twelve iron virons out there, you know,
used by the top companies I started. You know, I
was very fortunate when I started my business in nineteen ninety.
You know, drivers were made out of percimmon. Golf balls
were made out of you know, ballata material and wound.
There was no graphite. And in the five ten years
of the nineties, with the Cold War ending, all of
this new technology came into the game and they needed
to quantify it. And suddenly my little business became kind
of an avenue or a conduit to test this, and
I started in the industry. My dad found a robot.
It wasn't a robot. It was a machine the titleists
had that was powered by a garage door spring. This
garage door spring would pull back and a cam would
release a flywheel and the thing would spin around like
a death trap after it hit a golf ball. But
it worked and it was consistent, and believe it or not.
I tested the first big berth on it with Callaway.
They were a client of mine in Cobra, but I
would get criticism of my machine, both good and bad,
and so in like nineteen ninety two, I decided to
build my own robot, the Golf Laboratories Robot, which I
went with the total utilitarian name because you can't come
up to beat Iron Byron. But we ended up replacing
every Iron Byron and we've sold fifty five machines worldwide.
They're used by every major manufacturer, the USGA, the RNA.
We've developed testing standards for everyone in the industry, and
we you know now are producing media based information. I
am an ambassador and contributor to Golf Digest, so we
just released our first series just started with them. Kind
of comparing drivers, we don't compare just this last year's driver.
We compare against previous two models, so you know it,
should you upgrade if you're drivers three years old? Should
you upgrade if you if you bought your driver last year.
And we do a complete comparative analysis, and sometimes you
should upgrade, sometimes you shouldn't. But we are trying to
be honest and just data driven. These are the performance
characteristics that show the benefits. So that's been kind of
my focus. But to tie it back, the robot can
duplicate any golf swing from the number one player in
the world. For example, we test for Bryson D. Chambeau
and set up with his swing conditions and test his
driver so that he can see what the performance characteristics
of his driver are under controlled conditions, and we could
test with the beginning golfer. But what I've learned because
of that is I've done a deep dive over the
last fifteen years into biomechanics and absolutely what Tony taught
about the body and the big muscles driving the swing
is one hundred percent true, not only for power, but
also for consistency and hitting down on the ball with
an iron ball first before impact. That in my parlance,
is called angle of attack. And what angle of attack
does is angle of attack allows you to with irons,
lower your launch angle and increase your spin, and it
allows the ball to be more flighted as it goes
through the air as opposed to golf balls that go
up high and land. Interestingly enough, you end up with
very similar to scent angles, say with a five iron
or seven iron. But by hitting down on the ball
and having a negative angle of attack, you create more spin,
You cut through the wind better, so you can control
the ball more consistently, and then when the ball lands,
it has more stopping power because it has a higher
spin rate than using the actual loft of the club
to generate the same launch angle and similar peak trajectories.
So we've had the ability over the years. So I
use a foresight launch monitor with my robot, I could
duplicate your swing fred with your club, and then by
duplicating your swing, I could say, okay, what are your goals,
and you tell me your goals, and I could say
you're at seventy percent of your goal or you're at
ninety percent of your goal based upon your swing time.
Let's say your three degrees outside in with a two
degree open face and your two degrees down. That's kind
of a typical outside in slice. Right. I can take
the robot and then rotate it to three degrees inside
out and go positive to from negative to on the
attack angle with a slight closed face, and if you're
at ninety miles an hour, just by changing those two
two types of swing, I can gain you thirty yards
in distance without increasing your clubhead speed at all. And
it's just all everything in my world is angles. And
so you know, someone like Tony and writing this book,
I would listen to his explanations and then my brain
would take that and do math on that and say, okay,
this is what he's describing. Let's replicate that. And then
what in my world everything's quantifiable because of a launch monitor.
And if you if I know what your path is,
what your angle of attack is, what your impact point is,
and what your face angle is, I can absolutely tell
you where the golf ball's going and what the shot
shape is going to be at the golf ball. And
from there, I can tell you what your efficiency is
based on your kind of goals as a player. And
then I can adjust the robot to different types of
swings and say, okay, if you change x, Y and Z,
you can get an extra potentially eight yards or ten
yards in distance.
Speaker 1: Launch monitors changed your life, your business.
Speaker 2: Launch monitors changed everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you can I don't understand how you
can recreate my swing. Would you just take the numbers
off of a launch monitor?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's an app for that, right, I mean it,
there's a recording of it. Here's the thing you got
to remember. When you swing a golf club, you create
a set of numbers. Launch monitors can capture those set
of numbers. And once I get those set of numbers,
I know what your swing is. And then if you
give me your gamer, I know what your club is.
So now I put the club in the robot and
I reproduce your swing. Now what I'm doing is taking
an average. Right, nobody swings, No one's a robot that
they swing exactly the same. But let's say you swing
five swings and I go, Fred, what's your typical swing?
And you say number three. Number three is kind of
my sixty seventy percent swing. So I go, okay, I
put swing number three. I take the data from that,
and let's say you're plus two, attack, angle your square
and you hit the ball low on the face. Here's
a classic example. So, gentlemen of our age and above,
what did we learn when we put the peg in
the ground. We learned it with percimon right, So most
golfers put the peg in the ground over the age
of forty five point fifty to about half an inch.
The benefit of the modern driver is in the top
third of the club phase that has the highest launch
and lowest spin. If you tee it too low, you
can lose between fifteen and twenty yards in distance just
based on impact position. And you can try it. Anybody
listening to this can try it. Look where you normally
tee it and raise it a half inch and hit
a ball, hit him on the range, and you will
see more of a parabolic flight. What we're looking for
is the beginning of the arc looks like the end
of the arc, so it's not the ball goes out
and then flares at its peak and you don't want
the ball dropping. You want it so it's more parabolic
and equal. And the way to get that a lot
of times is simply raising the ball on the club
phase and hitting the upper third that increases launch and
decreases spin. And these are all things that I know.
The only reason I know is because I have an
amazing piece of test equipment that can replicate any type
of golf swing, and I have an amazing launch monitor
capture system from Foresight that I can reproduce based on
those numbers. And as I said, Bryson's a client of mine,
Bryson uses a Foresight GC quad. He hits these balls,
he comes to me, gives me his numbers. I put
them in the robot with his club, and then we
put different heads on to see which head has the
best performance characteristics. So if it works for the number,
you know, the most kind of technical mind in the business,
it can work for anybody. But what I'm excited about.
I love equipment, I love of testing, and I love performance.
But my passion for the last like I said five
or ten years, is looking at biomechanics and looking at
a swing flaw and a swing correction, and as I said,
showing you kind of where you're at currently and where
you could possibly be. Now here's where it gets interesting.
Let's say you have one hundred and twenty five miles
an hour clubhead speed, but you're wild, you know. Then
plus four attack angle with an eight degree lofty driver
that launches it at eleven and spins it at eighteen hundred.
While you will hit the ball a mile is not
necessarily your best option, so we're not in a pure
distance option. Then we start looking at okay, let's back
that attack angle back to maybe neutral or negative one,
and let's start playing the power fade because you have
enough power. Your main concern now is hitting fairways. And
by hitting fairways, we want to be slightly outside in
and slightly open on the face. So when that ball
goes out low and rises and falls to the right,
we're probably losing versus the optimal maybe twenty twenty five yards,
but you're going to hit a lot more fairways. You're
already swinging one hundred and twenty five miles an hour,
so you're probably out there at about three ten, three
twenty anyways, and it's better to be three twenty in
the fairway than three forty five, you know, in the
next in the woods. So those are kind of how
I look at the game. It's just really interesting. I
look at the game through data, but I also understand,
especially from a teaching standpoint, the game is taught verbally,
and the game is taught with concepts and ideas, And
what my goal is is to take those concepts and
ideas and put numbers behind them so that when you
have a launch monitor you can look and say, oh, okay,
that time I was five degrees outside and that was
too much. I want to be one degree. And then
you train yourself with muscle memory by looking at the
launch monitor understanding that these are the delivery conditions that
you need, and then once you can replicate that, now
you can build that swing and hopefully kind of maximize
your performance. Wow.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious to know your dad of Blessed Memory
and Tony Manzoni of Blessed Memory, who were obsessed with
clubs and putters. It clearly came you clearly picked up
on it and have run with it.
Speaker 2: Did you?
Speaker 1: Were you always a techie kind of kid growing up?
And were you fascinated with golf where you were like,
I cannot do this for my life too, and you
end up doing it? Where were you?
Speaker 2: Sometimes life is a sick joke. Uh?
Speaker 1: So it was the punchline.
Speaker 2: I grew up. I grew up in the seventies as
on the wrong side of the country club, you know,
in the cart barn and picking up balls on the
driving range, and I hated golf, just hated it. And
the reason I hated it was in the seventies, unless
you were really good golfer, the only people who played
golf were asthmatics or kids with heart conditions.
Speaker 1: Like it was like because you know, I was playing basketball, football, basketball.
Speaker 2: Football, baseball exactly. You know, or you were a country
club kid, and I wasn't a country club kid. I
was a son of golf pro and so I was
on the working side of the business. And it just
it didn't appeal to me in the physicality that I
had towards sports at the time. So and it was also,
to be perfectly frank, it was work. Every time I'd
go to the course, it was I didn't like I
would hit all kid. Yeah, I would hit balls with
my dad, but I didn't enjoy it because everything issociated
with was with work. So I go off to school.
I go off to UCLA. I want to be a diplomat.
That's my goal. So I study international relations and I
graduate from UCLA and I'm going to take a year
off to study for the grad school exams. And my dad,
at the time, I think was he left Callaway. He
was with Founders. I come down to San Diego and
he said, Hey, I've got this idea for this testing company.
And there's this robot, not even a robot, this machine
that we can buy for one hundred dollars. And he goes,
I think I can spruce it up for a couple
grand What do you think you want to give it
a shot? And I go, I'm thinking, sure, I'll do
that for six months, you know, until until I go.
And so we get this machine. He loans me a
couple thousand dollars. My first two clients, no joke, were
Callaway and Cobra because my dad had connection. And I
start and I quickly realize, I don't know anything about golf.
I thought I did, I didn't. I know nothing about
golf testing and I know zero about running a small business.
I mean, I am dumb as a box of rocks.
But what I learned was if you throw enough hours
at something, I worked seven days a week for the
first three or four years. I mean, it just non stop,
and I was like a sponge. Fortunately a lot of
other people in the industry didn't know a lot of
things either. It was a cottage industry, and it was
like people would go they'd design a golf club, and
they'd go to the rains the best players and they'd
hit it and go, yeah, that looks good. And then
they'd go to a foundry and they'd make it. I mean,
there wasn't a lot of scientific process and so because
I lucked out at the right time. The Cold War
was ending and there was this infusion of composites, titanium,
All of these materials needed to be tested. My machine
worked worked for the first couple of years, and they
I started developing a machine. I didn't accept my role
in the industry until I was about thirty five or so,
and then all of a sudden one day I went,
wait a minute, why are you bitching about being in
the golf You work in the golf industry. And I
suddenly realized that everyone, you know, all of my buddies,
they work all week just so they could go play golf.
And I realized I kind of had to give myself
a proverbial slap in the face and go, you should
really be thankful. And since then the game has just
provided we with some amazing experiences. So we developed a
mobile robot. It got the hole in one at the
Phoenix Waste Management Open. We've competed against Steph Curry on
Holy Moley, and competed against Sarey Pak and Korea. We've
done We've competed against Rory McElroy in this Rory versus
the Robot. I've been able to work with tour players
and top teachers in the business and currently with Golf Digest,
and I've had corridors of power within this industry open
to me, and I am very, very thankful and do
not take any of it for granted. But what's fascinating
when you reached out to me is I am fascinated
by origin stories and I'm a big history guy and decisions.
And Tony played a major part in the reason that
I'm here. Without his friendship to my dad and without
him encouraging my dad to move down to Palm Springs, like,
none of this would have ever happened. And it's just
it's and you know, I would run into Tony in
the two thousands, you know, maybe like once every few years,
because Palm Springs was a small place, and I'd be
at a bar in my you know, thirties or forties
and run into him and we'd have a drink together
and catch up. And I mean, I always love Tony
and he's just yeah, he's He's part of my origin
story and part of, you know, the reason that I'm
here doing what I do. So he and why no, George.
Speaker 1: And I have to think at some point in your
journey before you were thirty five, that your dad was going, yeah, yeah,
I kind of knew this was coming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was. He was always really proud of me.
I just I'm.
Speaker 1: Proud of you.
Speaker 2: I had I had I like I said, I just
had visions of doing something else. But I am very,
very thankful for the way that I'm thankful for the
way that it turned out because I made peace with
the fact that I'm not solving the world problems or
curing answer, but I'm able to help test a piece
of golf equipment that makes someone's life a little bit
more enjoyable or now looking at like, you know, we're
going to be doing a lot of stuff with golf
digests on the swing flaw and correction and hopefully, you know,
allowing teachers to provide a little bit more data driven
analysis to their teaching, and in doing so, the teachers essential.
The teacher is always essential, and the reason for that
is the number one job of a golf instructor, in
my opinion, is being an effective communicator. It's understanding the
problem that's before you, whether that be an athlete, whether
that be someone who's got a back problem, and then
understanding their goals and then effectively communicating a strategy that
allows them to play more enjoyable golf. What I can
do is regard regardless if it's an athlete or an
eighty year old, you know, man with arthritis. I can
look at their potential from what they're doing and show
where they can possibly go within the limits of their
biomechanics to play more enjoyable golf and more consistent golf.
And what Tony talked about with the body system one
hundred percent. I tell people that all the time, and
I say, it's real simple. I say, stand on a
t box, you know, in driving range, keep your arms rigid,
pull them back, and hit a shot and you'll hit
it about twenty yards. Then bend your elbow and let
it release and you'll hit it about forty fifty yards.
Then turn your back and you'll hit it about you know,
one hundred yards, and then turn your hips in combination
with your back, and suddenly you'll hit it two hundred yards.
And it's your big muscles that are driving your small muscle.
But most people, it's kind of like a fighter. If
you see a fighter when they're in the position they
maximize their velocity of the punch right at the impact position.
If you see someone in a bar fight, they throw
their shoulder as hard as they can and waste all
of this momentum and don't utilize their hips and their
legs to maximize the power. It's the same thing in
a golf swing, but a lot of people do not
teach the body, and by not teaching the body, instinctively,
your arms are attached to the club, so you think
you have to murder it like with an axe. And
what you're doing is you are minimizing what we call
centrifugal force, and that is you're not holding the angle
from your wrist to your arm that can be maximized
due to gravity as it accelerates. And here's the wild part.
We can prove that on the robot, so we can
the robot can change acceleration forces, so we can duplicate
your acceleration, so I can take x amount of power,
so we have power and ambridge, so I can take
twenty amps of power, which is eighty miles an hour,
and I can apply the power right at the beginning
of the swing and cast the club, and the club
will come through at like seventy six miles an hour,
and then I can hold that power, ramp up that
power so that I reach a maximum when that arm
is almost directly in line with the golf ball and
the wrist is still holding the ninety degree, and then
slow the arm down and allow the risk to accelerate,
and I can get up to about eighty three eighty
four miles an hour with the exact same power output.
So we're applying the power on the robot, but we're
wasting the power by casting it early and not maximizing
ancient trifical force versus holding. What is that in golf parlance,
that's cast versus lag. But we can wantify that and
show five to six mile an hour at a slower speed.
There's even higher results at higher speeds. But this is
the stuff that, as I've aged, I kind of geek
out about, is the how the biomechanics apply. And like
I said, what's really cool about technology and golf right now,
all the data is in numbers, and it's it's it's
just a matter of translating those numbers, and as you
translate those numbers, you really can evolve and become a
more effective player.
Speaker 1: Well, I am so happy for you that you found
peace in knowing that you have helped millions of people
and have come up with information and have the heritage,
have the genes. If I will to contribute in a
way that most people can only dream of. This has
been an amazing conversation. I truly appreciate at your time.
I really hope we get to do this again because
I want to go talk more about equipment, although it's
always going to come back to Tony at some point.
Speaker 2: Happy to talk about Tony, Happy to talk about equipment,
And if any of your listeners get a chance that
we have a video series on golf Digest where we
are comparing these last three models, and I'll be honest
with you, we kind of lay it all on the line.
Sometimes we recommend upgrading, sometimes we don't. And it's if
you're in the market and looking to purchase equipment, I
recommend checking it out. We try to do a fair job.
We understand how expensive equipment is and we try to
give you as much information as possible so that you
can make an educated choice.
Speaker 1: And we do that golf digest dot com.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, golf dies common. I've got a podcast, golf Iq.
If you're an equipment junkie, and I think some of
your listeners are because that's how you fine. When I
was telling my origin story, my partner took the week
off and unwisely let me go sideways on the on
the pod. But yeah, if you're if you're interested in equipment,
that's kind of our wheelhouse and that's what we focus on.
And you know, we're we're we understand how expensive golf
equipment is and we just want to try to educate
golfers as much as possible so that they make the
most informed decisions, you know, before they go out and purchase.
Speaker 1: Jane, it's been awesome.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Bud, thank you, thank you for having me on.
I really enjoyed it. And like I said, I love
origin stories. I'm a big history guy, so it's it's
really nice to honor Tony and my father and too,
I'm a big believer people continue to live on if
you tell their stories and remember their names. So I
appreciate you carrying the torch for Tony, and it's been
a lot of fun.