Golf Club Design
Golf Club Development
Sourcing & Consulting
Knuth Golf
Dean Knuth is a retired USGA Executive Committee member who founded Knuth Golf as a means to develop conforming equipment for the vast segment of amatuer golfers. Known in golfing circles as the "Pope of the Slope" Dean is responsible for developing the slope rating system to measure the playing difficulty of golf courses around the world. Dean and his partner Steve Trattner hired me to assist them in getting their driver to the most forgiving but playable design that would help out every amatuer. The big OEMs pursue driver development that their professional touring staffs can compete with. While feedback from golf professionals have been key to Knuth Golf's testing of their High Heat driver the product is all about benefitting the amatuer golfer.
Model: Knuth Golf High Heat Driver
Material/Mfg: Investment Cast 811 Titanium with Billet Forged 6-4 Ti Variable Face Thickness
Introduction: 2015
I took over the development of this program after Knuth Golf had been working directly with a foundry that had minimal technical resources. Fast forward eighteen months and we find the High Heat driver having been tooled up at four different foundries by the time the product is ready for production. What took so much time and so many foundries has been Knuth Golf's pursuit of the absolute best driver for amatuer golfers.
Dean and Steve developed the exterior geometry of the High Heat design while my task focused almost entirely on the interal geometry, wall thicknesses, discretionary weight placement and optimization of the billet forged 7-zone variable face thickness.
With great focus on wall thickness variance we were successful deepening the center of gravity towards the rear better than any other manufacturer. The amount of rearward discretionary weight is three times thicker than the face which is historically has the thickest wall mass in drivers.
Coupled with a very deep center of gravity we were also successful in lowering the CG beyond every other OEM in the business leading to 53% of the face impact area above the center of gravity. This combo deep and low CG contribute to the High Heat's high launch and low spin ball flight conditions. Coupled with the 7-zone parabolic face design off-center impacts have proven to be longer and straighter than every major OEM driver tested on the robot at Golf Laboratories.
All of these factors are joined with a very high moment of inertia making the driver stable and straight on off-center impacdts.
