GolfWRX your all inclusive online golf headquarters is proud to present a chat today with True Temper Sports.
0:29 – GolfWRX: Welcome guys, welcome to an audio chat with GolfWRX. Gentlemen, we’re very grateful to have you here today, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule.
0:42 – Chad Hall: I appreciate you having us.
0:44 – GolfWRX: We’re really looking forward to spending some time with you and getting up to speed with your products. True Temper’s always been a leader in the industry with steel shafts and you guys are doing a terrific job, also with the graphite shafts. We want to go into both of those in detail. First of all guys, if you can go back and introduce yourselves and give us a little information about what your job title is and exactly what you do for the company, and maybe a little history about yourselves.
1:23 – Chad Hall: Okay, I’ll start; I’m Chad Hall, Director of Marketing. My responsibilities are really tri-fold. As far as new product development, working cross-functionally with the engineer and manufacturing groups to develop the new products across all of the brands – True Temper, Grafalloy, and the Rifle brand. Then the product marketing, consumer marketing associated with those products, so the advertising and the public relations initiatives. And then, the third element is the Tour promotion which kind of rolls up underneath marketing. And, of course, we have our Tour staff out there every week who are promoting the products with the players, but that’s a big part of what makes True Temper so successful, is our usage out on the Tours. That’s one of the things I’m responsible for as well.
2:17 – Greg Cavill: Okay, my name’s Greg Cavill, I’m manager of the steel design and I got into the golf industry back in 1997 working for Apollo Sports Technologies over in England. At the time, they were the second largest steel manufacturer in the world, second to True Temper, and in 2000, that company actually went into receivership and the assets were purchased by True Temper and I came over to True Temper in 2004 and have been here ever since. Basically, my role is to liaise with marketing and then I head up the design and sample manufacture through to talking and dealing with the OEM’s and doing testing down at our test facility in Tunica, Mississippi and also in Olive Branch, Mississippi.
3:05 – Bill Lange: Bill Lange, Regional Sales Manager. I’ve been with True Temper for about eleven years, the last few years has been mostly dealing with the aftermarket accounts from a sales perspective. Tour Concept Program is the program that I manage – I’m responsible for all those accounts and those products. And then I handle some of our OEM accounts as well.
3:32 – Don Brown: Don Brown, I’m the Product Development Manager for Grafalloy. Basically, that means I’m involved in the design of our new product from concept through material research prototyping all the way through production release. I’ve been with the company for six years.
3:49 – GolfWRX: Very good, thanks gentlemen. First question, gosh you guys are all so qualified, I’ll let you guys pick on who wants to answer this one. Can you guys describe the process of how True Temper designs shafts? This might be multiple answer since it may be different from graphite versus steel. Do you guys start out with a particular swing in mind and then begin from there?
4:16 – Chad Hall: Well, I’ll take just the first part of the question just from where does it all start, and then I’ll let the engineers talk about the other elements of the specific design. But we start with a player profile in mind. We always do that with any of our shafts, and so we look at our own product line, we look at maybe what our customer - if it’s an OEM customer – what they’re looking for, what their requirements are. If it’s a consumer branded product, we’re looking at what the consumer needs, and we identify what that is and that’s where the design process begins. Now, from a specifics of engineering and design, I’ll let those guys talk about that.
4:59 – Greg Cavill: Basically the brief will come in from marketing and as Chad alluded to, it will either be for internal design as part of our shaft line up, or it will be for an OEM specific customer and they will have pretty specific details for how they want the shaft to perform, the player profile, and also the head type that will be used. So, once we’ve got all that detail, on the steel side this is, we use our design models which are generally in-house models, although we do use general models as well, and we do FBA models to predict where we need material and the flex points along the shaft. And once we’ve got all that dialed in, drawings will be issued for sample manufacturer. Generally speaking, we’ll have a customer sign off first just to make sure they’re fully up to date with the way we’re progressing and there’s no sort of quirky step patterns, for example, which could sort of detract from their overall product, and once the sample manufacturer takes off, we’re actually doing this on production machinery, so we have to filter this into our everyday production down in Amery, Mississippi which can take some time depending on the volume going through the plant at any point. But, once we get the parts back, they are immediately durability tested and then the static analysis starts. That’s where we do all of our static analysis in Olive Branch, Mississippi we will test every characteristic of the shaft from just the static weight, raw balance point, etc., step location’s make sure everything is to drawing, all the way through durability, flex profiles from the butt to the tip, etc., and once that’s complete and it’s been signed off, it will then go to our OEM customer and they will do testing. We also will do side by side testing in Tunica, Mississippi which is where we have our MIR-5 robots, and that’s where we’ll collect all of our player information using Trackman and also we will collect robot data with known swing profiles. Then, basically we will keep going around in a loop until the customer is satisfied, or our own Tour department, if for example like Black Gold - that was designed for Tour use and better players. And therefore we get a lot of feedback from Nationwide Tour players, generally because they’re a lot more approachable, we haven’t got to deal with all of the contracts that PGA players are obviously shrouded in. That’s basically the design process in steel, so we’ll keep going around that loop until we’re 100% satisfied, and then it will be launched to the public. Over to Don for the graphite
7:52 – Don Brown: My design from start to finish follows a lot of the same steps that Greg’s does. A few of the key differences are, obviously, working with graphite we have a lot more material options available to us, we have our own model over here that predicts everything about the shaft from EI profile to torsional profile, weight, balance point, frequency. The model does about 500,000 different calculations every time we change a parameter of the shaft design. It’s a very impressive tool to use. The other main difference is speed to prototype. Whereas in making a steel prototype can take up to a month, we can have a new graphite shaft prototype done in about a day, day and a half. So for us, it’s much quicker to go ahead and make several prototypes and sample them either to our Tour Department or the OEM’s and have them test several designs at one time.
8:46 – Chad Hall: One thing I’ll add there is just a quick snapshot of the product development process, and that is once we set out and we have the design that we’re trying to meet, these guys design the products, and the very first step after it gets designed is we test that shaft statically to make sure it meets all those parameters. If it doesn’t do that, we immediately go back and start over. If at that point, it does meet statically what we’re looking for, we got to the next phase which is durability testing. If for some reason a shaft doesn’t meet a specific durability requirement that we have, and we have two different parameters for steel and graphite, then we go back and we start over again. If it does meet, then we got to the next step which is robotic testing. The robot will tell us very specifically if it meets the playability now, that we’re talking about. If it does not do that, we go back to the very beginning. If it passes what we’re looking for on the robot, then we got to the next step which is player testing, and that is really where the rubber meets the road, because the robot can’t give you all of the subjective data which is the feel, and which is a lot of those things which are the reality to players. It can perform exactly like we want it to, but if, for some reason, there’s something wrong with the feel, it doesn’t quite feel right, well then we go right back. And at any point in that process, we will never bring a product to market that has not met all of those checkpoints. And at any point, regardless of our timeline, we will go back to the beginning if necessary.
10:18 – GolfWRX: Guys, absolutely fantastic detailed information. What I wanted to do is take it a step farther with the Tour players. Typically, how long does it take a Tour player, or how long do they use a shaft before they give you feedback and you make an adjustment?
10:37 – Chad Hall: Well, what we’ll typically do as far as our tour testing – we’ll do 95% of all our testing on the Nationwide Tour – and there’s a reason for that. One is, it’s just easier to do from a participation standpoint and the player profiles are exactly the same. The difference between a player on the Nationwide Tour and the PGA Tour, the line is so thin, it’s indistinguishable. So, we get all of our test data, for the most part, out there. And when we do that, we rarely give shafts to those players for them to play with for a while and then give us feedback. What we’ll typically do is we’ll target a week and go out there and work with a group of players for three days in a row during the practice rounds and then if we have to, we’ll come back two weeks later or whatever we do in the process. It’s never – because a lot of times, and it’s a good example, our Epic testing that we did, we had several players throughout that process say, “Let me keep this shaft, please let me keep it, please let me keep it.” And we just don’t let them do that. We just don’t let them keep prototype shafts until we bring the product out in its finished form.
11:54 – Greg Cavill: And a lot of the times, just like in the car industry where you have mules, these are the same. These are basically blacked out shafts, it’s a blind test that we try to do, certainly with the graphite stuff it’s very easy to coat everything in just matte black paint. They really don’t know what they’re testing, it’s purely a feel and performance figures we’re really after. So, we did the same with Black Gold and stuff like that, we made it look very, very similar to a standard product, a standard tapered product that is. It was really getting a true representation of the performance of that part.
12:34 – GolfWRX: Greg, how’s the Epic doing on the Tour right now?
12:40 – Chad Hall: It’s doing very well, it’s been out for about four weeks now, and we just got the hybrid shafts out there within the last week. So, now we’ve kind of got the full arsenal of driver shafts, fairway shafts, and hybrid shafts available for those guys to have. Seeing increased usage every week and probably the most favorable feedback or validation, if you will, is that we just haven’t had players switch out of it. The players who have switched into it, to this point anyway, haven’t switched out, and that’s of course likely to happen because we all know how we are as golfers, but it’s going very, very well and we’re expecting very big things in the coming weeks.
13:32 – GolfWRX: Congratulations guys. When can we expect to see this in the retail world?
13:37 – Chad Hall: Now. Yeah, it shipped last week. We actually beat our deliver day. We were looking for a mid-March delivery, but we got it out there in some limited capacities last week. So, it’s really starting to hit the market right now.
13:56 – GolfWRX: Now, let’s visit the Tour players. Is there a difference in the type of shafts they play compared to the type of shafts we play? Specifically Epic, is there a, for lack of a better term, a Tour issued shaft they’re playing, a better grade shaft than we would get?
14:19 – Chad Hall: There is a Tour, we call it the T-75, there is actually a Tour version of Epic which is actually available through our Tour Concept network. That is where that shaft will be available, but we’ve also got shafts, but the fairway wood and the hybrid shaft, where the same version those guys are using out there is the exact same version consumers will be buying and several of the players who are playing Epic in their driver are using the 68g consumer version. So, to answer your question – I guess yes and no. There’s not a specific Epic version that we only use on Tour and the other consumer version is radically different, it’s the same shaft. We just have a Tour 75 version that’s a little bit heavier than the consumer version, a little more tip stiff for that player profile available through our Tour Concept group. The 68g version is available to the masses and that is a shaft that’s being used out on Tour also.
15:19 – Greg Cavill: On the steel side, what you see the players use is exactly what we manufacture and what the general public can purchase. For example, Dynamic Gold being the leader out on Tour, there’s no tricked out designs of Dynamic Gold, it is purely – the number one player in teh world plays it, and it is no different from what you or I could purchase. There are very, very few designs out there, I can think of one which is a Hump shaft which is tricked a little bit for one particular player, but all of our stuff from True Temper is actually standard issue.
15:58 – GolfWRX: Well Greg, what are the Tour players playing, is there a big showing in the Black Gold department. I know Dynamic Gold is still the leader, but what’s getting into play, is the Black Gold, the Tour Concept, the different Project X’s, or what?
16:16 – Greg Cavill: Project X is definitely a great success story out there. Players like that because of the constant weight design, but also because it’s extremely stiff in the tip. The stronger players who are obviously out on Tour like that feeling because you’ve got a two and a half inch tip section throughout the range, it’s not like a Dynamic Gold. So, you’ve got two totally different shafts, they’re both constant weight, one varies in the tip length, and the other one is actually standard in the tip length and varies in the taper region instead; so both of those, Dynamic Gold and Project X, are big leaders out there. Obviously there is a descending weight following out there with the standard Rifle and Rifle Flighted and then you’ve got Black Gold as well, which was designed initially to actually compete head on with Rifle, obviously until we purchased some of the drawing and machinery from Precision when they went under. Generally speaking, they’re the main shafts. You’ve also got players playing the Superlight versions, and also the TCI, that’s done well for us in a number of players hands.
17:29 – Chad Hall: If you had to break it down by percentages, rough percentages, you would say that 45% of players every week are playing Dynamic Gold, and probably you can say 16-18% are playing Project X, and those are certainly the two largest shafts in play on Tour.
17:52 – GolfWRX: How has Black Gold been doing? Has that been creeping up in percentages, or has that been pretty constant?
18:00 – Chad Hall: Yeah, well it’s still relative to those two, kind of gaining, kind of finding it’s way. Any given week, we’ll have somewhere between upwards of potentially half a dozen players playing it. And the one thing to consider there, and it’s a blessing and a curse I guess at the same time, players are much more resistant to changing their iron shafts out at that level than they are their wood shafts. They’ll go out and try a driver shaft – you could put one in their hands and they’d hit it and maybe even switch them into it after maybe a couple of days of working with it. With iron shafts, it’s just kind of like your favorite pillow; you just don’t want to change it. And so, when we were competing against the Rifle brand, that was a good thing because of our leadership position. But, it’s one of those things, when we introduce new products; it takes a little bit more time versus a wood shaft introduction. When we’re introducing an iron version to get those guys to kind of come and switch into it, which again is a good thing and kind of a frustration at the same time.
19:09 – GolfWRX: Well, interesting that you bring this up, because on a lot of the different boards we’re on, Black Gold is the buzz. And the reason why we like Black Gold better than Project X is strictly because of the feel. We feel, for lack of the better term, that you get a lot more feel with the Black Gold where as Project X is a very muted feel. And we’re kind of surprised that that hasn’t – the type of change we’ve seen on our boards from Black Gold to Project X hasn’t reflected the same on the Tour.
19:54 – Greg Cavill: Well, I think the other thing to remember is a lot of people make this comparison from Project X to Black Gold. Project X is to say a constant weight design, where Black Gold is a descending weight design, and hence they have totally, totally different feels. Where Black Gold actually originated is we set out – when it was RP against True Temper – we set out to conquer and destroy the Rifle. And we threw everything at it, 18 months of R&D work on it to dial in the specifics of the shaft in terms of feel, frequency, and everything else, and also have the changeability where if you broke a shaft, on say a 7-iron, you could put a find another 7-iron, put it straight in, and it will match 100% just like Dynamic Gold, and hence the Gold series name to it. We control very tightly the wall, the material distribution, hence the balance point, weight, and therefore on top of that, you get this consistency of feel throughout the set, which you don’t get if you’re trimming to a number. So, we have a very, very strong product there, it’s just, as Chad says, if a person’s been playing a constant weight set, then this big switch to a descending weight product, and it’s certainly on Tour where they’re very, very feel sensitive, that change can be a little bit too dramatic to start of with, certainly mid-season. Hopefully, we see a general increase in the off-season and the beginning of the new season.
21:39 – GolfWRX: Well, Greg, I think you answered a question for me, because I think we were kind of wondering, is Black Gold descending from short iron to long iron, or long iron to short iron? In other words, if you cut the iron to length, does Black Gold become more constant weighted?
21:55 – Greg Cavill: Sorry, can you repeat that again?
22:00 – GolfWRX: Okay, no problem. Black Gold, the Black Gold shaft, you said it’s descending, is it descending from long iron to short iron, or short iron to long iron? In other words, when the lengths are cut for the set, do they become more weight constant?
22:23 – Greg Cavill: They basically drop off by round about 2 grams, basically 1.75 grams per length. So as you go from 3-iron to pitching wedge, they will become slightly lighter. What we have is through the set, the longer – I noticed some players saying it might feel a little stiff in the longer irons – that is part of the design. The reason we do that is we want to generate a ball flight with the longer irons which just kicks it up a little bit. We can change the stiffness profile from the butt to the tip, or that ration, we can effectively get the tip to work a little bit more in the longer irons and in the shorter irons, where generally speaking, our frequencies are a little bit lower than frequency matched set, for example on the FCM shafts, we ended up doing more of the work in the grip section rather than the tip and that’s what’s giving you a slightly more aggressive ball flight. And also, with player feedback, the harshness and everything, that’s all dispelled using that method as well, it’s the best of both worlds.
23:37 – GolfWRX: Got it. Also, could you just give us a general plug for a conversion table, if I were to start off with Dynamic Gold and rate the flex: X, stiff, regular. Where would you match Rifle for the X, stiff, and regular?
23:57 – Greg Cavill: Rifle, I’d say 5.5 on the FCM chart would be S3 and 6.5 is the X-100. The actual gradient of the FCM shaft compared to the gradient the Black Gold fits on, Black Gold is a flatter gradient. That then goes back to my original point where we play a little stiffer in the grip section, remember that it’s merely a frequency at the clamp exit, so we’re a little bit stiffer in the grip in the longer irons, and then we cross over at the five iron, and after that we play a little bit softer.
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