Kelly Works Tech Side for Win for Miyazaki Golf Shafts

Posted: April 27, 2009 on thegolfchannel.com

I was there. I saw it.

Practice range. Riviera. The Wednesday afternoon before the 2008 Northern Trust Open. A grown man is swinging a golf club, talking to a laptop computer on a folding chair. Swinging. Adjusting. Talking again.

From a distance, you couldn't hear anything but the man, Jerry Kelly, addressing the hardware in the most earnest tones. Once you got closer, though, it all became clear.

Kelly was taking a lesson and getting ready to hit his Miyazaki Golf Shafts

The teacher was Jim Schuman, men's golf coach for Kelly's beloved Wisconsin Badgers, and also Jerry's brother-in-law. (Think about it: Do you take advice from your brother-in-law?) Schuman's head appeared on the screen, watching intently through the Internet camera. Swing. Talk. Correction. More work. All from 1,900 miles away.

Kelly laughed when I asked him about it.

"Can't find anyone here who will work with me," he kidded. But the episode said more about the usually cheerful Kelly's work ethic than about his fun side.

Bottom line is, Kelly has worked for his three PGA Tour victories. And he has never stopped, even through a seven-year wait for this last one at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans.

Kelly, who is a favorite among golf journalists for his dry wit and willingness to discuss all things hockey, can often be found on the range, working with or without laptop, comfortable in his relative obscurity. Stars downrange may tow around a dozen notebook scribblers and photographers, the modern emblems of sports success. Kelly looks up, toes another ball into place with an iron, and keeps working.

Rarely does he grind so hard, though, that he won't tell you what he's up to. The answers are often memorable.

"I’m a poster boy for spin," he once told me, looking ruefully at the head of his driver. "This should help keep me from spinning my tee ball too much." He teed up another ball and stroked it with the club, which at that time was the first incarnation of Cleveland Golf's HiBore driver. (Kelly has been a Cleveland stalwart for nearly a dozen years.) The ball sailed upward in a powerful arc.

"Looks pretty good to me," I said.

"Well, y’know, it’s OK," he said. "But did you see how it was beginning to balloon, sorta?"

"Um. I guess so."

That kind of perfectionism led Kelly to a reputation for occasional hot-headedness when things went awry on the golf course. But in recent years, he seems more in control, more willing to plow through adversity and try out his new Miyazaki golf shafts

Kelly today is a modern guy, taking laptop lessons and looking at swing video on his iPod. But he is also substantially old school, always willing to put in the work with the support staff in the Cleveland tech trailer. And the day after his win in the Big Easy, the tech guys, already in Charlotte for the Quail Hollow event, were all smiles.

"I've been at this for four years, but some of us have been with Jerry for seven years, since his last win," said Michael Jolly, one of the Cleveland tour techs. "We know how much work went into getting him back here. It was a day-to-day, week-to-week process."

There was a lot of experimenting and changing. Kelly even plucked a Cleveland putter from a Nevada Bob's and put it in his bag. He dutifully worked new irons and other clubs into his bag when Cleveland updated its line. And last week came the final piece of the puzzle.

"The shaft he had [in his driver], he had a couple complaints about it," Jolly said. "He wanted it to do some things better. What he felt in his hands wasn't what he wanted. And he was looking for a ball flight that would let him go at it without going left."

Aha. The famous death move to the left. It's not uncommon. For example, Vijay Singh has it too, and has also conquered it. In Kelly's case, it took some experimenting with shafts. The hard work paid off last week, just before the New Orleans event began, when Kelly settled on a Miyazaki graphite model. The new shaft is stiff flex, 72 grams, low torque – but without that "board-y" hand feedback that so many anti-twist shafts seem to have. It was a perfect feel-player solution.

"Jerry's very easy-going to work with, but he knows what he wants to feel," Jolly said. "He can't always quantify it, so there's a translation process. But he knows definitely what he's looking for."

It helped the translation process that Cleveland is now owned by SRI Sports of Japan, the same company that owns equipment company Srixon. The Miyazaki shaft is an SRI project. With an extremely low-lofted driver – 7.5 degrees – and an inch trimmed off the tip, Kelly's driver started singing to his hands.

And the satisfying feel at impact led to some good stats – Kelly hit nearly 80 percent of his greens-in-regulation for the week. And that led to an even better feel in his hands…

A trophy. Not bad for a guy who talks to computers.

Miyazaki Golf Shafts

If you are planning on becoming the next Tiger Woods the first thing you might consider is getting some new golf clubs fitted with miyazaki golf shafts. Choosing the right golf clubs can make the difference between spending your time on the fairways and greens and spending your time in the rough. Although famed golfer Ben Hogan once said, "The only thing a golfer needs is more daylight", for my money, having the right set of golf clubs runs this a close second.

Lets assume you aren't a pro. Otherwise, you probably wouldn't be here; you'd be out perfecting that already outstanding golf swing. For the amateur golfer, choosing the right golf clubs hinges on two factors - distance and accuracy - and, of these, accuracy is the more important. The ability to hit the ball half-way across town may sound great, but if you can't keep it on the fairway, out of the bunkers, and heading for the flag, then all the distance in the world isn't going to help your game. So, the starting point for all of us needs to be accuracy. Once the ball starts going just where we want it to go with reasonable consistency we can start working on building distance.

Of course, cost can be a big issue when choosing a new set of clubs fitted with Miyazaki golf shatfs, but since that's a personal conversation between you your wallet - and maybe your spouse - we won't cover it here. Don't forget though that you don't need to buy tailor-made golf clubs and that a good starting point may well be one of the many outlets for discount golf equipment. Another good starting point is to look at pre-owned golf clubs.

Begin by analyzing what's going to best fit your needs. The primary set of clubs in every golfer's bag is the irons, so that's what I'm going to concentrate on here. Irons have several characteristics to consider when you're choosing golf clubs.

The first thing to look at is the method of manufacture. Irons are normally made either by casting or forging. For the novice golfer cast irons are generally better because they have a bigger sweet spot on the club face. The sweet spot is the area on the club face that you want to contact the ball and, as a general rule, the larger the sweet spot the greater the room for error in your swing. In other words, with a large sweet spot you can miss hitting the ball directly on the center of the club face and still end up with a decent shot. Forged irons are better for more advanced golfers because they allow for better control of trajectory, allowing you to hit the ball at a desired angle to get the height necessary for the result you want.

The next thing to consider is the size of the head. As a novice golfer, you'll find a definite trade-off here. A bigger head equals a bigger sweet spot and more tolerance of miss-hits. However, at the same time, a bigger head is also a little harder to control. You'll probably want to start with a set of irons with medium-sized heads. They're easier to control than the oversized-heads, but they still have a bigger sweet spot than the traditional, smaller heads.

Bet you didn't know there were this many factors to choosing the right set of golf clubs! Well, I'm not quite done yet.

Another factor to think about when choosing golf clubs is what the head is made of - cast iron, stainless steel, or titanium. Titanium heads are best for novice golfers as this light material allows for a bigger head, without making the club too heavy. Bigger head equals bigger sweet spot! If the cost of titanium heads is beyond your wallet's reach, then consider cast iron rather than steel. They're durable and the harder material can help improve both accuracy and consistency.

Swing speed is also important in deciding upon the right golf clubs fitted with Miyazaki Golf Shafts. Golfers with lower swing speeds can benefit from more flexible graphite shafts that are a bit longer and lighter. With a higher swing speed, it's more likely you want to focus on accuracy, so stiffer and heavier steel shafts can help you develop that accurate ball placement that gets your name on the leader board.

Buy Miyazaki golf shafts at www.golfshaftsasia.com