Have the large golf companies been "knocking off" Tom Wishon designs?

Who's cloning whom? - Or, Things I discovered while researching other things.
COLUMBUS, GA, June, 13, 2011
By: Roy Nix
Executive Director - Assoc. of Golf Clubfitting Professionals

Recently I was doing some research looking for interesting facts about custom fitting and custom clubs to put on my web site. I wanted to find information related to golf equipment to further educate golfers to help them improve their game. There are always great tidbits of information on my good friend Tom Wishon's web site http://www.wishongolf.com so it was there I started my journey looking for inspiration and ideas. Truth be told what I discovered in my visit to Tom's web site was not primarily the content I was searching for, but what I did discover seemed to be quite interesting and information most golfers really need to be aware of.

Those of us who work in relative anonymity as professional custom clubmakers are used to hearing golfers say that the golf clubs we build are not of the same quality or not as innovative as the golf clubs created by the big golf companies whose giant marketing programs have made to be household words among golfers. We custom clubmakers are often accused by golfers of making golf clubs which are "knock-offs" or "clones" of the heavily marketed golf clubs of the large companies.

Base on what I discovered at Tom Wishon's http://www.wishongolf.com web site, it appears this opinion of these golfers is 180 degrees backwards. It appears that quite a number of the big golf companies may have been "knocking-off" some of Wishon's innovations in golf club design over the years. A designer since 1986, Wishon has created innovative golf club designs for brands including Dynacraft, Golfsmith, Snake Eyes, Lynx, and Harvey Penick and now for his own company's Wishon Golf brand. As a golf club designer, Tom Wishon has not only designed more different models of golf clubheads than any other person in the game, but among those more than 300 different clubhead designs are more than 50 which stand as 'golf club technology firsts' - created and brought to market by Wishon before the big golf companies brought out their version of the same design technology.

Just for fun, I jotted down a few of the more interesting Wishon firsts listed on his web site for you. See the list below.

1. First Variable Thickness Face Driver - 1995, Golfsmith Ti 260 Driver
a. Callaway followed with their own version of a variable thickness face on a driver models in 1997, since then several other companies have done the same. Today it seems more golf companies offer drivers with a variable thickness face than with a uniform thickness face. Who Copied Who?

2. First Thin Face High COR Irons - 2000, Snake Eyes Fire Forged Irons
a. In 2004, Nike introduced their thin face Slingshot irons to follow Wishon's Snake Eyes design. Since then a few other large companies have brought out their versions as well. Who Copied Who?

3. First Thin Face High COR Fairway Woods - 2004, Wishon Golf 525GRT woods
a. Prior to the introduction of Wishon's 525GRT woods, most experts in the golf industry believed it was impossible to create fairway woods with the same high COR as a driver. Wishon's 515GRT woods proved the experts were wrong. Interestingly, Adams Golf claimed they were the first in this category with the introduction of their 2011 Speedline fairway woods but I'm told subsequently has retracted that statement in their ads.

4. First Driver Head made from a Part Graphite, Part Metal construction - 1995, Golfsmith Power Link Driver
a. When Callaway offered their part graphite/part metal ERC Driver in 1998, everyone thought they were the innovator for creating a unique part graphite/part metal driver head. Who would have thought this design technology was done 3 years before?

5. First Adjustable Hosel Metal Woods - 1996, Golfsmith AHT Metal Woods
a. A technology that is all the rage right now on drivers from companies like Taylor Made, Cobra, and Titleist, does anyone really know they were 'only 14 years behind' in releasing this technology to allow golfers to change the lie and face angles of their driver?

6. First Metal Driver Larger Than 350cc - 1997, Golfsmith Long Jon Driver
a. From 1993 through the end of the decade, the largest driver heads offered to golfers were made with a volume measurement below 300cc. Only when Callaway introduced the Great Big Bertha in 2000 did the big companies begin to crack a driver size barrier that few know had been breached by one of Tom Wishon's designs in 1997.

7. First Cup Face Construction Woodhead - 1997, Golfsmith BlackHawk Driver
a. A cup shaped face is now known as a good way to help increase distance from off center hits with any driver or wood head. Callaway was the first of the large golf companies to do that on one of their drivers in 2000, while once again, they came in second in releasing this interesting driver face technology to golfers.

8. First Draw Bias, Heel Weighted Metal Wood - 1995, Golfsmith AccuCore 50 Driver
a. Putting more weight into the heel side of a metal driver has been touted as a means to reduce the tendency of a shot to fade or slice since the mainstream market first saw this technology on drivers in 2000. Who knew that it had already been done 5 years before?

9. First Milled Face Irons and Wedges - 1992, Dynacraft CNC5000 Irons and Wedges
a. Now pretty much seen in a variety of different companies' wedge models, no golf company introduced a milled face iron or wedge until the late 1990s - a good while after Wishon did it. And not only that, he did it on a full set of irons as well and not simply on the wedges!

10. First Putters made with Interchangeable Faces for Changing Loft - 2005, Wishon Golf CLF Series Putters
a. Club repairmen have been asked to bend the hosel of putters as a means to change the loft of the face for a long time. Unfortunately when this is done, the putter no longer sits square to the target when allowed to rest on its sole on the green, so the golfer has to HOLD the face square to be able to putt accurately. No other company has yet figured out that it might be a better idea to have faces made with different loft angles to screw on to the putter body so the sole angle could remain intact.

11. First Woods or Hybrids Made with Softer Metal Hosel to Allow Custom Lie and Face Angle adjustment - 2011, Wishon Golf 929HS Woods and 775HS Hybrids
a. Experts all extol the accuracy benefits of fitting the lie angle of the irons to the golfer's swing. No one talks about doing this for the fairway woods or hybrids, yet they too are clubs intended to be hit off the fairway to greens because typical woods and hybrids are made from metals that are very difficult to perform such a lie adjustment. Here again, Tom Wishon figured out a solution before all the giant companies did.

12. First to match golf clubs in a set for identical swing feel by MOI Matching - 2003, Wishon Golf
a. Ask any mechanical engineer who knows a little about the performance of a golf club what might be the best way to make all the clubs in a set require the same exact effort to swing so that better swing consistency could result and you'll hear the answer to be, "to match the clubs all to the same Moment of Inertia." Where no other company has done this as an alternative to the 90 year old technology of swingweight matching, Wishon did.

And those are just a handful of the more than 50 golf club design technology firsts that have come from the component custom clubmaking side of the golf equipment industry. If you care to read about the others, take a moment to visit http://www.wishongolf.com and look for the link on the left hand side for DESIGN FIRSTS. And it would be nice if the next time you hear a golfer say that the component custom clubmakers offer nothing but knock-offs and clones, you could offer some of the facts.

Can a graphite shaft really be worth $400 or $500?

Last time I checked, the cost of graphite pre-preg ranged from about US$ 50 at the bottom end to about US$170 per KILO for ultra high-end aerospace grade, which works out at under ELEVEN dollars for a 60g shaft. What's a reasonable allowance for factory labour, overheads, shipping, etc? How do we get from there to $400, $500 or $600 for a graphite shaft, even allowing for generous profit margins for both the shaft manufacturer and the distributors they work through in the aftermarket? As the old saying goes, "there is a sucker born every minute."

What should a player think about when choosing what style of ironhead to play?

Fun question to answer and this actual question came up during a recent seminar Tom Wishon did for the British PGA.

There is no question the most important performance feature on an ironhead for all levels of players has to be its MOI, the head's ability to deliver as much distance as possible when the golfer hits the ball off center. If you look at the green design on most courses, far more trouble lies in the front areas and front side areas of the greens than over the greens. To be able to hit the ball off center and still have the ball fly far enough to get over a hazard, even if the ball only drops on the very front fringe or front side fringe of the green is far better than being short and in such a trouble area.

However, what can be a problem in putting MOI first in iron head model selection is that a high MOI may bring with it a head size and shape that simply is not pleasing to the golfer. So this brings in the second most important iron head model fitting requirement which is SHAPE AND STYLE AND THE OVERALL LOOK OF THE HEAD.

There is no question any average to serious player is not going to be able to hit the ball as consistently well with an iron he does not like the look of compared to an iron model that he really likes to look at when he sets the club down behind the ball. In other words, confidence born from the shape and style of the head is very important.

At the same time, having a significantly higher MOI is more important - so this leads to a statement Wishon came up with during this recent seminar that goes like this:

Among iron head models that you like the look of enough to be able to have confidence in setting down behind the ball, always choose the head model among those that has the highest possible MOI. ANd yes, sometimes the clubmaker might have to push the golfer into giving up some shape and style preferences to be able to do this.

For example, let's say the golfer loves the look of a pure blade muscleback iron. IMHO for any golfer with a handicap above 0, a pure blade is not a great choice because it has the absolute worst off center hit forgiveness. So in this case, you have to counsel the golfer about the importance of MOI and then hunt around to see if you can find an iron model that has some of the shape/style features of the blade but still has a good bit higher MOI. Maybe when you boil it down about the blade, more than likely the golfer likes the smaller than average blade size, the thin topline, the non offset hosel design the most.

In that case, getting him into a cavity back like the 555C would still give him most all these shape/style features but bring a far better MOI along with it. Or maybe you could even get him to agree to like the slightly larger head size of the 560MC so that the MOI and off center forgiveness could be even better. Compromise in the name of much better game improvement for the golfer, in other words.

For the less skilled golfer who does not have quite the list of "must haves" for the shape and style, here the sky is the limit for iron head selection. In this case, if the golfer has been losing distance lately from age, choosing either a high COR face iron or choosing a stronger loft iron design along with putting more hybrids into his set makeup can be a very wise decision for the iron model.


I don't really put center of gravity very high on the list for iron model selection. OK, for the less skilled golfer, sure, it won't hurt to choose a lower CG design, but not at the expense of choosing the highest MOI first and a high COR face after that. There just is not that much difference between vertical CG location among all the irons out there with a higher MOI.

Sole design can be a big one, especially if the golfer has a little more steep, downward angle of attack into the ball. In this case, a more rounded sole from face to back with a more blunt leading edge can help turn the slightly fat shot into one that is solid enough to get to the front of the green.

Bendability and the capability to add head weight can also play a role when the golfer's lie, length and shaft weight needs are a little more out of the ordinary.

Equipment secrets of the Pros.

The latest issue of 'Golf World' has an article about custom-fitting, but unlike the one that appeared in Golf Digest a month or so back, it doesn't say anything at all about independent clubmakers - I apparently do not exist!! It consists of five pages, the last two of which only give details of the custom fitting centres operated or franchised by Callaway, Cleveland, Cobra, Mizuno, Nike, Ping, Titleists, Taylor Made and Wilson.

However, there is an interesting article entitled 'Equipment Secrets of the Pros'. There are the usual howlers from the journalists who write this stuff - for example, Robert Karlsson's Lob Wedge is stated to be 37" long, which apparently means that it ".... close to the length of a regular #8 iron ...", but there are some interesting snippets:

- Both Garcia and Paul McGuinley use 43" drivers. McGinley is quoted as saying: "Most people will tell you that a longer shaft in your driver can add yards, but having been on the TrackMan launch monitor, I have found that my clubhead speed increases with a shorter club."

- The most common driver loft is 9.5º (46.4%), followed by 8.5º (29.7%), 10.5º ( 12.5%) and 9.0º (8.1%). However, these would appear to be NOMINAL lofts, because at least one player is stated to be using a driver picked to a different loft - Ping's Tour Manager is quoted as saying that Lee Westwood's G10 driver "... has 9º on it, but the loft is actually 10.5º". The article goes on to say that "All the driver heads are slightly different, so Ping select the ones with more loft to use for Lee".

- Jimenez's driver is 46" long, which is said to be longer than the Tour norm. This section of the article goes on to say that (as we all know) long drivers are much more prevalent in the consumer market than on Tour because of the falicy "... the longer the club, the longer the hit ...", but refreshingly there is an addendum, again attributed to Ping's Tour Manager: "Ah, there's a catch there. Miguel boasts that he can still hit it out on the middle of the clubface, but even with the Pros, the number of strikes dead centre goes down the longer the club gets."

- A lot of players have the face angles of their drivers & fwy woods cranked or set open by between 2º-4º. The exception - surprisingly - seems to be Garcia, who has his r11 set closed ".. to take the right side of the course out of play."

- Sergio Carcia's irons are apparently shorter than standard, but have counterweights installed.

- Most of the players interviewed have the soles of their wedges re-ground to reduce the bounce at the heel (which Tom Wishon has always done as standard).

Why are Tour Pros hitting a 5 iron 200+ yards?

For one thing, ALL the Tour Pros hit an iron the way it supposed to be....hands ahead of the ball at impact resulting in a descending blow which takes loft off the iron. It is also a fact that the AVERAGE tour player's clubhead speed is substantially higher than it was back in the Nicklaus/Miller era on tour. Back then the average driver speed was about 104-105 with avg 5-iron speed around 79-80 while today we're seeing that average be around +9 to +10 mph higher....because of stronger, more physically fit golfers.

Most of the tour players do not use irons based on a 24, 25, 26 deg 5-iron loft - they use iron lofts more in the area of a 27-28 deg 5-iron. Now granted, back in the Nicklaus/Miller era, irons were made more based on a 30*-32* 5-iron and it was more common to see the avg tour player hit 7 iron from 150, with big hitters using 8 iron from 150 - but still when you see the avg clubhead speed be that much higher today, this is a chief reason you see the 175 yd 7 iron and 200 yd 5-iron with a slight loft decrease contributing a little.

The Three Key Specifications of Driver Fitting (and a few more that will help as well).

What golfer doesn’t dream of owning that “magic driver” which enables them to hit the ball longer and straighter?

Tip number one: the very best driver for every golfer is never selected by its brand or model name or model number. It is chosen by its fitting specifications and how those individual factors are matched to the golfer’s size, strength, athletic ability and most of all, to their swing characteristics.

Driver Length:
I’m going to be blunt. The standard driver lengths of 45.5 to 46.5 inches offered by the standard made golf club companies are too long and are preventing at least 75%of all golfers from achieving their maximum potential for distance and accuracy. For men with an average to fast tempo with an outside/in swing path, 44” is the maximum length; women, 42.5” to 43” should be the limit. There’s a very good reason the average driver length on the US PGA Tour from 2004-2010 has been 44.5” and not 45.5” to 46.5”

Driver Loft:
Driver loft must be matched to the golfer’s swing speed and their angle of attack into the ball. The slower the swing speed and the more downward the angle of attack, the higher the loft of the driver has to be for maximum distance. While each golfer has to be individually analyzed to know which loft brings the most distance, here is a basic chart to use as a guideline. The first column of numbers is driver swing speed, the second column is best driver loft in wet conditions, and the third column is best driver loft in dry conditions for more roll-out.

50 21 20
60 18 17
70 16 15
80 14 13
90 12 11
100 11 10
110 9.5 8.5


Based on Level Angle of Attack and Average Release. For golfer' who make contact on the upswing, a lower loft may be better and vice versa - golfer's who make contact on the downswing definately need more loft.
Best Loft for Carry for Wet Fairways.
Best Loft for Roll Out for Hard, Firm Fairways.


Driver Face Angle:
Few drivers sold off the shelf offer options in the face angle to reduce the golfer’s tendency to slice or hook the ball. There is no better way to reduce a slice than to fit the golfer with a more closed face angle in the driver/fairway woods. For more severe slices, the golfer can be fit with a driver head with both a closed face and an offset hosel design. The rule of thumb for face angle change? At a carry distance of 200 yards, each one degree more closed the face angle is than the golfer’s current face angle represents a reduction in the slice of about 4 to 5 yards.

And a Couple More for Covering Your Golfers’ Driver Fitting Needs . . .

Total Weight and Swingweight:
The stronger the golfer physically and the more aggressively they swing, the heavier the total weight and swingweight will need to be. The opposite is true for the weaker and much less aggressive swinging player. Matching the “weights” of the driver to the golfer’s swing strength and aggressiveness is critical for swing tempo consistency and the highest incidence of on-center impacts.

Shaft:
Here’s the facts about the shaft. While the weight, the overall flex and the stiffness bend profile of the shaft has to be fit properly to all golfers, the shaft flex and bend profile are more important for golfers with a late release of the wrist-cock angle in the downswing than for golfers with an earlier release. Don’t worry, we’ll dig deeper into shaft fitting on its own in a successive column.

Comparing a custom fitting to a car wash.

What Kind of Car Wash Do You Want?

More and more golf club companies are starting to emphasize custom clubfitting as an option to their typical marketing to golfers to buy their clubs in standard form, bought off the shelf.

Custom fitting is very definitely for average golfers and not just for single digit handicap players. When done properly, custom fitting can reduce and offset some of your swing errors. In addition, proper custom fitting makes it easier to take swing coaching advice and make the changes in the swing to hit the ball better.

If you are thinking about custom fitting for your next driver or set of clubs, there are a few things you need to know to ensure you really do end up with properly custom fit clubs that will improve your game. A colleague of mine in the golf business put this in the right way when he said that custom clubfitting can be much like having your car washed.

On one hand, if your car needs a bath, you can pull out the hose and just spray water on it to wash off the obvious surface dirt. You can also fill a bucket with suds and scrub the dirt off the surface with a sponge. Or, you can pull out all the stops and scrub, detail and wax it. All three examples could be called a car wash.

Custom fitting in the golf industry today is much the same. There is fitting, and there is professional custom clubfitting. Examples of a fitting include “6 questions on a web site”, 15 minutes hitting a few balls with a swing computer, or 3 measurements and a response from a golf sales person to the effect of, “I know what you need.”

On the other hand, professional custom clubfitting is going to involve a pretty fair amount of your time, often more than one trip to have your swing analyzed in detail so that ALL the possible specifications that make up a set of golf clubs can be pinpointed and selected to match with your strength, size, athletic ability, and especially, the way YOU and only YOU swing. Professional custom clubfitting really is like the scrub, wax and detail car wash I mentioned before. The other types of fitting are not going to get you really matched well to your clubs to really result in the level of improvement that a real custom fitting can and will do. In other words, which “car wash” do YOU want for your money?

To find more about professional custom clubfitting, please contact me at bobsailergolf@shaw.ca or 403-529-0704. You will be happy you did and your club buying money will be well spent.