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A perfect fit Posted: Friday February 14, 2003 1:47 PM
Sports Illustrated senior writer John Garrity was a 42-year-old 8-handicapper when he suddenly lost his swing. Since December 1989 he has been looking for it -- a modern-day Odysseus adrift on the troubled waters of swing theory. As Garrity travels the world reporting on golf, he visits as many driving ranges as he can, avoiding the dreaded "mats only" ranges that prevent him from teeing it up. Tuesday, Feb. 11 LA JOLLA, Calif. -- Judging from the weather maps, it's going to be a wet week at the Buick Invitational. Forecasters are talking about a "plume" of rain that extends a thousand or so miles out into the ocean. Much of that rain is expected to fall directly on the South Course at Torrey Pines -- 200 or 300 inches by Sunday, if I read the crawl correctly on the Weather Channel. It's already raining. In the players' dining room at the Torrey Pines Lodge, a dozen or so of the pros were eating sandwiches and gabbing, when normally they would be playing practice rounds. I was surprised when SI.com's resident teaching pro, Rob Stanger, said he was going out to give a putting lesson to PGA Tour veteran Jay Williamson. "On the putting green?" I asked. "It's a lake." "No, on the course," Rob said. "Rain is a huge advantage because it puddles on the greens and you can see where the low spots are." I suppose I could have learned something about putting by following Rob and Jay out into the deluge. But as a golfer, I later explained to Rob, I've already visited most of the low spots. I walked down the hall instead and found a soft chair by the fire. Wednesday, Feb. 12 LA JOLLA, Calif. -- Driving up Interstate 5 in the rain this afternoon, I caught a glimpse of the Surf 'n' Turf Driving Range. It was mostly surf. Water covered the target field. The trampoline targets looked like abandoned rafts on a flood plain. Twenty minutes later, in Carlsbad, I checked in at the Richard C. Helmstetter Test Center. This is where the pros who play Callaway Golf equipment try out new technologies and get fitted for clubs. It's also where golf writers go for sticks, if they're lucky enough to be invited. Four years ago I walked into the Helmstetter facility with a pronounced stoop and walked out again, an hour later, standing tall -- thanks to a club technician who deduced that a 6-foot-7 male would benefit from irons that are 3 degrees more upright than a standard upright lie. Since then, however, my Steelhead X-12 irons have logged more air miles than a federal sky marshal. When a friend recently pointed out that the current line of Callaway irons is called the X-16 series, I was stunned. I did the math and reached the unavoidable conclusion: I'm giving away four X's every time I tee it up. My 10-degree Hawk Eye driver is similarly antiquated, relying as it does on 20th-century technology. I figure I can get back 20 or 30 of the yards I have lost to age simply by switching from a driver made of graphite and steel to one manufactured from ceramics and celery stalks, or whatever it is they're using these days. The club-fitting room was exactly as I remembered it, a modest chamber full of TV monitors, cameras and computers. A green-carpeted practice platform faced a dangling net. Behind the net wa a mural depicting the 18th hole at Pebble Beach, as seen from the tee. Every time you hit a ball, sensors and computers went into a paroxysm of calculation and display panels flashed a dozen swing parameters -- clubhead speed (in miles per hour), sidespin (in revolutions per minute), etc. A big-screen monitor showed the outcome of your virtual shot. Smack a good drive and the pixel-ball blows by the Monterey pine in the middle of the fairway. Spin the ball too much and it winds up on the rocks to the left or on the patio of one of those pricey houses to the right. A young golf pro named John Degen was my club tech -- or, to use Callaway lingo, my "Senior Club Performance Analyst." He gave me a standard-lie 6-iron to warm up with and took another 6-iron into the next room to be bent more upright. When he returned, we fiddled around for a few minutes and decided that I didn't really need the offset heads that were standard with the original X-12s. "A little offset helps the player who tends to slice the ball," he explained, "but if anything you're a bit shut down at impact." We decided I would sleep better at night if I went with the Pro Series X-12s and matched them to a Uniflex steel shaft with an extra inch of length and grips built up with two extra wraps of tape. Choosing a driver was more difficult. When I tried a deep-faced Great Big Bertha titanium with 10 degrees of loft, I hit a series of thin hooks that dove toward the virtual rocks like suicidal sea gulls. A pressure-sensitive sticker on the clubface showed that I was hitting the ball low and toward the heel. "Your launch angle was only 6.9 degrees," Degen said after one of these hedge-clippers. "Ideally, we like to see a launch angle of at least 12 degrees." He handed me an 11-degree driver and told me to try again. I gritted my teeth and lashed another low rope that would have carried no more than 200 yards on a real golf course, assuming it hadn't hit a squirrel first. Degen handed me a 12-degree driver. "Try to knock the rubber tee out from under the ball." I gave it my best effort, practically drop-kicking the sole of the club on the mat. That produced a visible spark, but another low drive. My launch angle was still only 7 degrees. If I had been practicing on a driving range, I would have put the driver aside and rubbed my temples for a few minutes. Instead, I stood calmly while Degen crunched the numbers spit out by the launch monitor. My swing path was great, he said, just like a pro's. My clubhead speed was between 100 and 104 mph, no problem there. "But look at your angle of attack." He pointed at a figure on the screen. "Four degrees down is too steep for a driver. You need to hit the ball a little more on the upswing." "Is it possible," I said, "that my spine could use a little more tilt away from the target?" I teed up another ball and addressed it, letting my right shoulder drop a little lower -- just as I did a couple of weeks ago in Scottsdale, when I was struggling with the driver on the range at Grayhawk. "That looks much better," Degen said. "Try it." I took a couple of waggles and then let fly ... and I could feel the difference at impact. The hit was solid. Square. Stimulating. "That had a whole different sound," he said. Turning to look at the monitor, I saw my virtual tee shot fly past the tree and over the target pole in the middle of the fairway, stopping at about 270 yards. My attack angle, according to the monitor, was zero degrees. My launch angle was 13 degrees. "Perfect," Degen said. I wound up ordering the 12-degree GBB II with the Malibu trim package and Dolby sound. But what I really wanted wasn't for sale: the launch monitor. "It's an incredible teaching tool," Degen agreed. "We've got one that we can set up anywhere, and the top players use it every chance they get." It was still raining when I left the building. Otherwise, I would have driven down to Surf 'n' Turf and hit a bucket of balls. Watch this space for another installment of Mats Only. To send John Garrity advice, share your experiences, or suggest a driving range, click here.
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