Are adjustable clubs OK?
"Gotta wrench?"
No, that's not your plumber talking. It's the word on practice tees at PGA Tour events as TaylorMade's r7 quad driver generates interest and curiosity. The club, which features four interchangeable weight ports designed to fine-tune ball flight, has pros looking like handymen, playing with weight combinations to find the right one. And the concept has caught on -- the club currently is the top driver model in play on the PGA Tour.
But there's a fact behind the buzz no one has mentioned: Clubs with adjustable parts have been tried before -- and none have been commercially successful.
Adjustable clubs go back to 1891 when G.F. Twist patented the T Putter -- a club that used a screw and a nut to allow golfers to adjust lie angle. Since then, clubmakers have added their own twist to Twist's first effort.
| Winners' bags |
|---|
|
David Toms Ball: Titleist Pro V1x Driver: Cleveland Launcher 400, 9.5 degrees 3-wood: Cleveland Quadpro 5-wood: Cleveland Quadpro Irons (3): Cleveland TA6; (4-9): Cleveland Tour Action Wedges: Cleveland 588 (49, 56, 60 degrees) Putter: T.P. Mills Annika Sorenstam Ball: Callaway HX Tour Driver: Callaway ERC Fusion, 8.5 degrees Strong 4-wood: Callaway Big Bertha 7-wood: Callaway Steelhead III Irons (4-PW): Callaway Steelhead X-14 Wedges: Callaway Forged+ (52, 54 degrees); Nike TW (60 degrees) Putter: Odyssey White Hot 2-Ball Blade Hale Irwin Ball: Titleist Pro V1 Driver: TaylorMade r7 Quad, 9 degrees 3-wood: TaylorMade 200 Tour 4-wood: TaylorMade 200 Tour Hybrid club: TaylorMade Rescue Mid Irons (3-PW): TaylorMade rac LT Wedges: TaylorMade rac (56 degrees) Putter: TaylorMade Rossa Modina |
Sometimes the rules got in the way. Ram produced a Zebra putter in the 1970s with a ball/socket joint that allowed for lie angle adjustments. But the USGA ruled the club nonconforming, saying the joint needed to be locked permanently once the lie was set. By the time the company did this, the market for Zebra putters had dried up.
In the late '70s the MASS driver featured a metal soleplate with 20-plus holes in it. Similar to the r7 quad in concept, players took lead slugs and inserted them into certain holes in an effort to vary the weight distribution.
In the 1990s Golfsmith produced the AHT metal wood with an adjustable hosel that allowed for different lie/face-angle combinations. Then STX developed a putter with interchangeable faces for use on different types of greens. Rockport even made shoes with interchangeable rows of spikes (metal cleats and alternative spikes). And remember the Universal Adjustable Club with the toothed-gear hosel and wing nut that was designed to accommodate all lofts?
These products hardly dominated the market. But they also did not have the brand power of a TaylorMade. And with the rules limiting technological advances, customization may be the next frontier in equipment.
Gotta wrench?
Equipment scoop from the tours:
Used on the pro tours by players such as Mark Calcavecchia and Karrie Webb, the Doc 17's face measures a whopping 17.02 centimeters (6.7 inches) wide, giving it the highest moment of inertia of any Ping putter to date. The putter, made from milled aluminum, has an SRP of $220.
The number of adjustable clubs shown in "The Clubmaker's Art," an authoritative history of antique golf clubs written by Jeff Ellis. Among the clubs (all produced prior to 1935) are 21 putters, 14 irons and eight woods.
