later before his second consecutive Masters win) I realized that Faldo had feel capabilities that were beyond your typical touring professional.  His ability to sense and interpret feedback was unmatched.

When I worked the tour van, we used to share stories about Arnold Palmer's tremendous feel capabilities.  Arnie claimed he could feel the difference between a 7.2 and 7.3 shaft flex frequency coefficient.  Because he was so adamant about his sense of feel we would hand cut 7.25 shaft band stickers for his clubs!

It was the spring of 1990, during the week of the Byron Nelson Invitational in Las Colinas, Texas when Nick Faldo shocked me with his sense of feel.  Nick was undergoing some contractual negotiations between OEMs.  He brought me a set of forged blades and had insisted to the manufacturer that they be absolutely perfect in their specs.  The heads appeared to be the most perfect set from a specification standpoint I had ever seen.

I was to assemble the irons using Precision FM 7.5 shafts at a D3 swing weight, with all of Nick's specs for length, loft, lie, etc. built into the set.  The irons turned into a thing of beauty.  By the time I had the set completed the frequency profile of every iron measured a perfect 7.5 coefficient.  All, except for the 9-iron.  It measured out to a 7.6.  Likewise, the irons balanced exactly to D3 except for the 9-iron which swing weighted at D3½.

Since most touring professionals cannot detect a 2 cycles/minute difference in shafts, nor a full swing weight point, I knew that this set would perform well.  With virtually every fathomable spec set at a zero tolerance (except for the 9-iron which was slightly off) I felt comfortable informing Nick that the set's specs were perfect when he picked up his irons from me.  He proceeded to play a practice round and reported back into me upon completion.  “How are the irons?” I asked.

Nick responded, “Some of the shots drifted on me in prevailing winds so I may want to look at using a different shaft, and the 9-iron appears to be too stiff and too heavy.”

It was 1990, and Lee Trevino's first year on the Senior (now Champions) PGA Tour.  Lee did not have an equipment contract settled with a manufacturer as the tour year began, so he was able to play any type of equipment he chose.  I re-shafted his chosen set which included eight different club head models from eight different sets of irons.  Lee had fond memories of each club that helped make up the set.  I was able to compensate for different hosel lengths and bore depths to arrive at a frequency matched, perfect set of irons.  Lee's complete set looked like a garage sale grab bag when it was assembled together.

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Even though you may have the capabilities of building such a set, I don't recommend it unless your customer can beat anyone on the course using only a Dr. Pepper bottle.

At the AT&T Invitational at Pebble Beach in 1992, Jack Nicklaus had recently sold his interest in MacGregor, and was contemplating a new golf equipment partnership.   He was joined at this event with his sons Gary and Steve.  Jack was tinkering around with various clubs from some of the manufacturers at the tournament, and decided to pay me a visit in my tour van.  I had provided his personal clubmaker Jack Wullkotte with products for Nicklaus on a couple of occasions but had never worked directly with Jack.  I don't recall if it was a driver I built for Jack or one I was shortening for Steve, but as I slid the grip onto the shaft I noticed Nicklaus looking at me with a perplexed grin.

“I have never seen a rubber grip installed on a golf club before,” he claimed.  I was stunned.  One would think that Jack had seen thousands of rubber grips installed between his MacGregor ownership and four decades of competitive golf.

Having worked with hundreds of touring professionals over the years, it is easy to gather first hand knowledge on the visual importance of the putter setup.  Lie angle plays a definitive role.  With some veteran golfers, a particular look during setup is very important to achieve.  In these cases, orientation of the toe or top-line, the look of the flange, or other visual keys are more important than a particular spec. 

One year at the Players’ Championship, Lanny Wadkins brought an old Bullseye putter to my tour van for adjusting.  He had the exact specifications written down and asked that I re-adjust the putter because the hosel had been bent.  Lanny stated that the putter didn’t look right to him.  I meticulously adjusted the lie angle, loft, and face progression until Lanny’s specs were achieved.  The putter’s specs could not have been any more exact, but when Lanny returned to pick up his putter he set-up to it and stated, “It still doesn’t look like I remembered it looking (before it was damaged).”  He stepped out of the tour van and slammed the head against the concrete a couple of times.  He then set-up again, laid the putter down, looked at it, and then repeated beating the head on the concrete.  After one more session of this, Lanny turned to me and said, “Now this looks right.  I’m going to go roll a few putts with it.”  Unfortunately, I was not quick enough to document Lanny’s newly “adjusted” specs for future reference.