WELCOME TO MY WORLD
What it takes to keep the world’s top golfers playing their best, week in, week out
I spend 30-35 weeks of the year travelling on tour. Pretty much it’s week after week, and five to eight of those weeks will be to international events. I just spent 20 days in the Middle East (Dubai and Abu Dhabi) to tune Taylormade’s new equipment to players before the year kicks off.
I’m a workaholic. I’m driven to see success every week. When I get on the plane home from an event I need to have done something measurable or significant to justify me having been there. It’s a nice goal to have. It means I’m busy and average 15,000 steps a day.
Events start when the PGA Tour release the entry sheet – the Monday of the week before each event starts. That’s where my job kicks in. I’ll go through the entry sheet and order our players’ golf balls, hats, gloves and anything Taylormade need them to have the following week. I’ll also look to see who’s playing, which starts my ball rolling on equipment. I’ll be looking for players who might not have played for a couple of weeks, or someone who’s been out on tour for a few weeks and asked me to bring something specific for him to my next event.
I text the players the week before they arrive for an event. If Tommy Fleetwood is coming to play his first tournament of several in America, for example, I’ll communicate with him before he arrives. It means I can be prepared. Most of the time with someone like Tommy I’ll get a message back. But if I spot a player who’s maybe switched out of a Taylormade driver on the entry sheet, it will be a text along the lines of, “I see you’re searching in this area, is there anything I can prepare for you to help?” It’s fishing, and it’s 50/50 whether they respond or not. If you get something back you’re already in the game, you’ve got your first job of the week. That kind of service is appreciated by players.
There are 156 players in a field and every player uses 14 clubs and a golf ball. That’s 2,340 potential pieces of equipment that could be wrong or broken, and that’s not even considering how an iron has maybe 15 changeable parameters. Potentially there’s a lot of work that can be done out on tour every single week, because there’s not one person in the field who’s happy with everything in their bag. All 156 players will never be in the form of their life at the same time either. Of course you can discount at least half the field as they have contracts locking them in to other brands’ equipment, but there’s lots of Taylormade equipment out there.
We use very powerful spreadsheets to determine which players are free to test equipment.
Yes, we want players to play and win with Taylormade, but the absolute truth is we want to help all tour players play their best golf – and we believe we have the product, expertise and personnel too do this. The spreadsheets have stats for what equipment every player who’s ever touched the PGA Tour has in their bag.
It was developed in-house, we update it weekly and it helps me identify who’s playing competitor products uncontracted. At the end of last season, 50 percent of the players using a Taylormade driver did not have a contract to use it, and 52 percent of players using a Taylormade fairway were also not contracted. For other manufacturers these numbers are much lower.
Paul Casey’s a great example. He’s played a Taylormade driver before, but currently plays a Titleist driver and fairway wood. I’ll have a look at his stats for the year, to find out how he’s doing, I’ll look at everything about his game, and see if there’s a potential avenue we could explore. When I then cross paths with him I’m armed with all the information I need about his game. We track and target overseas players like this, too. We don’t know exactly how other brands operate, but without a shadow of a doubt, no one works to the analysis levels we do.
The real difference I’ve seen between travelling week-in-weekout on the European and PGA Tours is needing to travel on a Sunday. I’ve got a system whereby
I take a red eye flight (overnight) at 10.30 or 11pm on a Sunday evening. If I didn’t, with connections and a two-three hour time difference to pretty much anywhere in America I’d be travelling most of the day. I usually land for 6-7am Monday and head straight to the course.
On the PGA Tour, it’s a given tour reps will be on the range from 7am on Monday. In Europe it was very different. We’d get the first early Monday morning flight out to Spain, Sweden or wherever the tour was stopping that week, which meant a 3-4-5am pick-up and we’d be expected to be at the course by noon on Monday. The tour truck will have made its own way there and will always be set up and ready for us to work out of when we arrive. On the way back, on the PGA Tour, we’ll leave the course no earlier than 3pm on the
Wednesday afternoon, which means we can be back on the West Coast by 10 or 11pm, and in bed by midnight.
In Europe our tour team travels
together. So the whole team would hire a car, stay in the same hotel, be on the same flight. That isn’t the case in America. Everybody has different objectives and plans in the US. It’s a much bigger project out here.
A typical day? I’ll be awake at 6am
and head to the course early. I’ll come back and freshen up between 5.30-6pm and head out to dinner. The earliest you’re back is 9.30pm; it’s relentless. After spending all day with people there are always emails and messages to catch up on, too. Hotels are pretty boring. As long as it’s got a bed, I’m happy.
Put your bags down and go run – that’s how I beat jetlag. After that I’ve woken up, I won’t want to sleep and I’ll get to a reasonable time before going to bed again. That way, I’m not waking up in the early hours. shaft, same specs, same grip and same swing weight he’s got better performance. He really has hit a home run with Stealth Plus.
The fit wasn’t quite as easy as Rory. With Collin we went through seven or eight iterations, building our understanding and learning about the product as we went. Collin wants to know why the driver’s faster and why it doesn’t spin up on a mishit. He’s very much a person who wants to understand the product, where Rory just wants to hit it.
‘WE USE VERY ADVANCED SPREADSHEETS TO HELP DETERMINE WHICH PLAYERS ARE FREE TO TEST OUR EQUIPMENT’