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So here is the challenge if you want to have more fun and play better golf.  Forget about trying to play better golf and concentrate on enjoying the game.  For in the long run this is the surest way to play better golf.  I love this game.
- Elmore Just (Louisville Golf founder)

Today we are playing in the 7th Annual Elmore Just Memorial Tournament to benefit the Elmore Just Scholarship at Bellarmine University. We are playing on Persimmon Ridge, the golf course Elmore founded, and playing with our Louisville Golf clubs, the clubs in which he promoted. Its a bittersweet day; we play #7 in silence and spend the rest of the holes laughing sharing our memories ofElmore and each other. 34 teams show up in a couple hours to play our state’s best course - check back later in the week for images and a write-up of this special day and this unique tournament.

The Masters website is awesome, and the video stream allows for little work today. One thing I came across was their new junior program; they let in kids from 8-16 years of age for free with an accredited ticket holder. Its a great way for kids to be exposed to the game held at golf’s hallowed ground. The leaders at Augusta do it right. From the affordable food and drink, the keeping of the grounds, their excellent website, the minimal advertising on television, all of golf wears a green jacket for a week. Certainly they understand the spirit of the game.

To gush on the Masters is easy, and one more reason to herald its luminosity is that it marks the time where we in the Midwestern and Eastern parts of the country start to dust off the sticks and ready the bag for the 2008 golfing season. I am playing Wednesday for the first time at our home course, Persimmon Ridge, with Ross Tanner. Ross is the equipment editor at PGA Tour Partners magazine and is coming in to tour our plant and do an article on Persimmon. One thing we will talk about is the Persimmon driver we made for Tiger Woods in 2003 and Woods recent comments on Persimmon. (He said that if it were up to him golf would be all Persimmon woods and Balata golf balls. Needless to say we are pulling for Tiger this weekend. His last name is Woods after all.)

I am getting my set together for Wednesday and here’s what I am thinking. I have to decide what clubs I need to regrip, others I need to tweak and check lofts. I play by the rules, so I am getting 14 clubs together for early-in-the-season play. That means taking out the 3-iron and using a hybrid or adding a wedge. Persimmon Ridge is a tactical course, so I have a driver that I know I can get in the fairway. It has a 44 inch shaft and a loft that hits it a little high, which is good for carry this time of year in Kentucky as the course will be saturated - we have been bombarded with wet weather as most of the country has been. I’ll change my spikes, Windex my grips that I keep and practice my short game more than hitting balls; no matter how many balls I hit with the longer clubs, the immediacy of the short game in helping me score will be of greater efficacy this early in the year.

The Masters is the inspiration as I am sure I will walk about with the echoes of Augusta in my head. Here’s to another year of golf, the greatest game.

Gratefully I received a response from Frank Thomas about my last post. I sent him an e-mail with the same content and addressing the issues I had with his answer. I received a response to that e-mail and have posted it here, along with a longer reply going into greater detail about the things I feel he just didn’t get by my initial points.

From: Frank Thomas
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Subject: RE: Persimmon vs. Titanium response

Josh,

I would like to thank you for your e-mail, I am truly sorry you don’t understand the science behind the phenomenon if the increased COR of thin faced Titanium, compared to Persimmon drivers. Tests have been performed to verify this. Also the 0.000035 seconds you quote is the difference in time spent on the face between the persimmon and titanium clubs, not the total time the ball is in contact with the face.

Frank Thomas
www.FranklyGolf.com

MY RESPONSE APRIL 9, 2008:

Mr. Thomas,

Let me be clear here because I am not arguing vs. the science of C.O.R. - I did not write anything that would communicate that. What I wrote described the error of testing with reductive values that assume truth in a vacuum. Tests for metal vs. Persimmon are never given a level playing field and your answer to the question proved it - the spin and launch could be adjusted by other specifications, so what we want is a test that compares Persimmon to titanium with the same parameters, thus singling out all other things except material vs. material. With metal’s C.O.R. we understand we would lose, but what we think would be shown is that a Persimmon driver is not 30 yards shorter than a metal, perhaps it is closer to 6 to 9 yards given the 2 or 3% increase C.O.R. does give you, but let’s be fair and leave bias towards the past out of it. (And thank you for clarifying for me the .000035 seconds. I misunderstood that part; but the point simply was to show that the ball is on the face a very small amount of time.)

I have a question: At a swing speed of 90 miles an hour, and with ALL things being equal, what do you think the distance loss would be in a Persimmon vs. a titanium driver?

I also wrote taking to task two words that do not describe C.O.R., instead they mean to misrepresent it: “spring-like” and “trampoline effect.” C.O.R. allows the ball to decompress less, thus losing less energy, so I think I understand C.O.R. just fine. The language, not the science is my biggest problem, as I think the language the industry uses to sell more clubs is a disservice to golfers, the game, and to our culture. C.O.R. is little like a trampoline or spring. The implication there is that the ball springs from the face, and it doesn’t. It is also never said that you need a high swing speed in order to enjoy the benefits of C.O.R., most golfers either do not (or should not) swing over 110 mph.

I appreciate you taking the time to write me an e-mail in return, and I am more than willing to educate myself as you certainly have a lot I could learn from. But what I am trying to change (or at least be a fresh voice) is the language of our industry and the disrespect that Persimmon gets. In drivers (not our Persimmon fairway woods) I recognize the distance difference, it was explained to us by the USGA a few years ago when we released a Persimmon driver with a titanium insert, but again, I am wary of the skewed empirical testing and the foggy language used therein that misdirects and continually degrades Persimmon when in fact, it’s a pretty fun club to hit. Fun cannot be tested really, but it is an intangible that should not be ruled out.

As the marketing director for the last wood company in the world still able to sell Persimmon woods I am just sticking up for my horse (we like those in Kentucky) and the thousands of golfers who still support us. I refuse to believe that we are selling wood golf clubs off the deck of the Titanic; I am just as surprised as you are that we are still in business, especially after Elmore died. But for some reason we are, and I feel like we’re a voice that still has a valid perspective in the industry - not to fight the sound innovations that have been a part of the game’s equipment tinkerers since the early 20th century, but as a reminder that the spirit of the game may reside in other places than tests in a golf lab.

Best regards,

Josh Fischer, Marketing Director
The Louisville Golf Club Company
The Spirit of the Game

Frank Thomas is no dummy. What he knows about golf would probably dwarf my seven years experience as marketing director of Louisville Golf, my flirtations with a club pro career and my 25 years of being an equipment junkie. But he has made some errors with a recent response he wrote to a golfer asking about Persimmon vs. Titanium; not so much with the facts as with the way he presents the testing of the two. What it exhibits is the biases those (even those who are in-the-know) have toward our favorite material.

A golfer has sent this question to Mr. Thomas: I was wondering that in all your years of testing equipment was there ever a test of actual performance between titanium and persimmon? (The answer really is no, not a fair one at least.) The golfer then continues: As a student of physics, I always wondered if loft, shaft flex, face angle and mass were constants, how much the actual material of construction matter?

Mr. Thomas responds to the question by first by explaining Coefficient of Restitution (C.O.R.). What is disappointing, however, is that he uses the out-dated term “trampoline effect” - which is misleading. The descriptors “trampoline effect” and “spring-like design” are the evil children of overzealous marketers which the golf industry somehow let through into the vernacular. It seems at odds, to us, that a game built on integrity would allow these monikers because C.O.R. is neither like a spring, nor a trampoline. C.O.R. describes a phenomena whereby the face gives a little (a very little) at impact, thus allowing the ball to decompress less, and it then loses less energy. At this point the ball can travel 2 or 3 % further if it is hit directly in the middle and if it is hit with a swing speed of over 110 mph. This is how it was explained to us by the USGA when we were submitting our SMART titanium insert driver for approval.

After a mention of C.O.R. using these stale and misleading terms (ones that we had hoped had passed for the red herrings they are) he says that the reason titanium was proven longer than persimmon was that the persimmon was launched lower with less spin. These two specifications are not static, so again, as it is so often with persimmon, it was not a fair test. The spin and launch can be manipulated by a number of specifications including loft. I can accept that for golfers who swing over 110 mph that they can hit a high-C.O.R. titanium driver 2 or 3 % further, but I do not accept 10 or 15 or 20 yards, not when there are specifications left on the table which can level the playing field.

Mr. Thomas does give credit to the ball for increased distance, but says that it can give you “an additional 8 to 10 yards.” This is also misleading because he uses the word “additional.” For the most part the golf ball really doesn’t know what material it is being beaten with - Thomas states that the ball only remains in contact with the ball for 0.000035 seconds - so any additional yardage it gives a metal club, it can give a persimmon wood as well. So take those yards off the table.

For a man of golf science, it was odd to read at the end of his response that there is “room left for our belief in magic. If we believe that we will get 20 extra yards with a new driver, we will probably make our best swing and actually get somewhere close.” What he is really referencing for the golfer is that distance is finite due to the laws physics, and that if you are searching for distance, then work on your swing, don’t go buy the Holy Grail and later find out it is a can Schlitz beer. Train yourself to hit the ball more solidly and your average distance, over time, will improve. This has less to do with magic than it does with the belief (confidence) that one gets by repetition and practice.

I’ll continue to respond to things like this we see out there which misrepresents persimmon, and, more importantly, muddies the water of a clear game. Honestly golf is this simple = you choose weapons or tools that fit you and that you enjoy playing, you practice with those tools and develop enough skill to reasonably satisfy, you try and hit a small ball into a small hole with that skill, and you have fun doing it. It’s really that simple, isn’t it?

Josh Fischer, Marketing Director
The Louisville Golf Club Company
The Spirit of the Game