Got an invite this spring to have lunch with and get fitted for a wedge by Callaway’s Chief Golf Club Designer Roger Cleveland. If the name sounds familiar & perhaps a little askew it probably should as this is the name synonymous with Cleveland Golf – the company he founded in 1979 then sold in 1990. Let’s just refer to him as Roger Callaway.
The lunch was with many members of the media and while a few bombarded him with the traditional questions about the rules and, of course, the PGA Touring Pros (of which he works very closely fine tuning and crafting the clubs that they trust week in and week out), I chose instead to listen intently and in the interest of posterity jotted down a few scribbles of anecdotal evidence.
Callaway's Roger Cleveland
I’m not convinced there is ONE game
Translation: the PGA Tour pro & the public player are very different targets and play a very different game — yet much of the efforts / resources / R&D / marketing / and money goes into creating equipment, courses, rules for the PGA Tour – perhaps the scale requires a little calibration on perspective.
Everybody can have a Professional’s short game.
Translation: the short game is about focus & technique and not about strength. It involves practise and dedication to acquire touch & feel and while we may not be able, physically, to hit like Tiger or Phil it is well within our realm to be much better than we are now around the greens.
“Hitting it long is great and you can drive it out there all you want but if I get up and down while you two putt, even better !” – RC
Is 64 the new 60 ?
Translation: The R&A is initiating some form of loft control but the degrees don’t really matter as we can grind the difference. And a 64o wedge simply presents new challenges to a player.
“For the public player my suggestion is to have fun with it.” – RC
Cleveland on Cleveland
“There is still a little of my blood running through that company, but that does not mean I do not want to beat them. I guess it would nice if they came second though.” – RC
ROGER’S GAPPING ADVICE FOR THE AVERAGE PLAYER
Start with a 58 degrees and your standard pitching wedge which is 46 degrees. Take that value and you divide it by two if you want a wedge in the middle, or three if you want four wedges.
