PGA Tour Champions
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Placing a mic on a popular pro with one of the most coveted swings on the planet is a surefire way to generate social media engagement. Add a rarely seen golf club and some insider baseball from a recent test session and you have all the ingredients for a viral video.
In a video posted to PGA Tour Champions social media last week, Fred Couples gave golfers an inside look at a club-testing session on the SAS Championship range; At the time of this writing, the video had garnered over 300,000 views. Only this wasn’t just any test session. Brian Rhattigan and Mike Bertha (black hat in the video below) worked with Couples to find a replacement for a club that is almost nonexistent in the pro ranks: a square-shaped Callaway FTi 15-degree. Squareway Street Lumber” that has been in the Couples portfolio for over 14 years.
Outside of Henrik Stenson’s Callaway Diablo Octane Tour, Couples’ 3-wood is arguably one of the oldest fairway woods in professional golf, if not the oldest. The overall construction of the club hasn’t changed much since Couples brought it into play in early 2008 and it still features the same Harrison Mugen prototype. 75X axis from the initial test session.
“I’ve worked with clubs for 25 years and I can tell you it’s the hardest club to fit in a player on Tour,” Rhattigan told GOLF.com. “They want it to be low and long off the tee but tall and long off the ground. They also want him to be able to take a variety of different shots. He has to do it all.”
Rhattigan should know. As Couples’ trusted clubmaker on PGA Tour Champions, he is one of the only people allowed to handle the former Masters champion’s 3-wood.
“I don’t know how I became that guy,” Rhattigan said. “All I can say is whatever [Fred] you feel comfortable doing, that’s what you do. That’s Freddy. He is very particular about who he gives his [clubs] a.”
A closer look at Couples’ FTi 3 blade.
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What makes the Couples Working video with Rhattigan and Bertha so interesting is the fact that you don’t know exactly what’s going on in the footage. It’s easy to deduce that Couples is testing fairway woods with different shafts, but little context is provided to give viewers an idea of why Couples chose to go through the process.
This is where Rhattigan comes in to set the record straight.
“He’s a feeling player,” Rhattigan said of Couples. “He can three-finger throw that club 245 yards with a slight cut when the 5-wood can’t get there, but he can also hit it with the stock around 250-255 yards. I have done this for 25 years and I can tell you that it is the most difficult club to fit in a player on Tour.
For Pairs, the 3-wood ticks all those boxes, with one exception. Prior to the SAS Championship, Couples and Rhattigan had been discussing the idea of adding extra distance to their trusted club to go beyond 260 yards, while also allowing them to slow down when needed. But since Couples no longer plays on a regular schedule, his tryout meetings were limited.
The couples also continued to face another problem: Finding a 14-year-old club in the wild requires a bit of luck. Not wanting to mess with his gamer version, Couples needed to find a backup version in decent condition.
Fred Couples just played the round of his life. Could retirement be next?
“I was surprised at how good the head looked for its age,” Rhattigan said. “The club was impeccable.”
The backup head allowed Rhattigan to build a second 3-wood with a longer 43.5-inch 70-gram Fujikura Speeder NX X shaft (with a 1.5-inch tip) with a D3 swingweight. The new build turned out to be 12 yards longer during testing — Couples uses a few choice words in the video to describe the extra distance — but the “tint” sound at impact wasn’t exactly pleasing to the ear. To deaden the sound, Rhattigan added 2 grams of hot melt to the interior cavity, through a port in the head, for acoustical purposes.
The video also highlights couples’ kickback testing trends. Like Tiger Woods, Couples leans on his otherworldly feel to get a sense of how the club is performing rather than looking at the numbers on the pitch monitor.
“If you listen to what he says in the video, he doesn’t get into technical numbers very much,” Rhattigan said. “For me, I’m just trying to listen to what he’s telling me and then take it from there. It sounds simple, but it works with a guy like Freddie.”
Despite gaining more than 10 yards with the new version, Couples ultimately decided to stick with his player. There is a chance that he may use the other 3-wood in the future – Couples felt the new club was a bit more upright, which was due to the longer shaft, but as is often the case with Couples, familiarity and feeling tend to win in the end.
“You have all this new technology, and Freddie is content to play in that boxy club,” Rhattigan says with a smile. “We’ve suggested a few other options, but he’s happy to go with that one for good reason. Works. There is no reason to change.”
There is no reason, actually. On Sunday, Couples shot 12-under 60 and won by six.
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Source: news.google.com