"Such heightened sensitivity naturally shows up in the elite player’s toolbox."
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For all of the talk about the average golfer aspirational golfer wanting to play the same equipment as the professional, we always assume the pros are getting stuff that's finely tuned and superior compared to what's on the shelves of Roger Dunn. As Michael Bamberger demonstrates in this look at feel players (with a focus on Bubba Watson), it's not just the manufacturers who can refine equipment to the tightest specs. Elite players see and demand things we could never comprehend.
You do not talk to Watson about tip points or butt width or any of that stuff. But if Matt Rollins, Ping’s Tour rep and the man in charge of fulfilling Watson’s idiosyncratic club requirements, slides on a grip that’s crooked by a hair, he’ll hear about it right away.
“Take his 60-degree wedge, which is actually bent to 63,” Rollins says. “He doesn’t want the center line on the grips pointing to a square face.” That would be conventional, and Bubba doesn’t do conventional. “He wants it pointing to an open face, so what he thinks is square is actually open, making the 63 more like 66. Then he plays it with an open face, and that makes it more like a 70.”
Rollins and his colleagues at Ping have developed a system that assures Watson’s grips will be centered to seriously open faces. At a gripping station, the Pingsters have marked up something that looks like a protractor to show Watson’s preferred open-face positions. From there the grip goes on straight, using a laser line to assure it is centered. It’s all very scientific. Naturally, Watson’s eye will occasionally override the instrumentation.
“See, I’m a feel player,” says Watson, who lost the PGA Championship to Martin Kaymer in a playoff last year. “I’m trying to trick my body and my mind into thinking my clubs are square when they’re actually open.”
