This episode of the 2nd Swing Thoughts podcast features 2nd Swing master fitter Cliff Walzak, who works at 2nd Swing’s Scottsdale location. Cliff has extensive club fitting experience – he’s helped dozens of professional golfers win major champions with his club fitting insight. In this episode, Cliff shares some of his expertise and his view on the club fitting landscape today.
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The 2nd Swing Thoughts podcast, presented by 2nd Swing Golf, covers anything and everything in golf equipment and club fitting. The 2nd Swing Thoughts will feature experts in the golf industry sharing insights and latest trends in golf clubs and club fittings. 2nd Swing Thoughts will also cover the latest in professional golf.
Hey golfers and welcome back to another episode of the second swing thoughts podcast and today we are filming for the second time ever a podcast from uh the second swing Scottdale store location um and today the special guest is Cliff wallac Cliff is a master fitter down
Here at second swing and uh he’s got a ton of experience he’s bringing it now here to the store and he’s got some fun stories that we’ll talk about as well but um Cliff for those maybe watching and listening who are aren’t familiar with your background and your experience
Can you maybe just kind of give them uh a quick introduction on what you’ve done in golf where you’ve been and and uh some of the experiences that you’ve you’ve had well I started out about 40 years ago in um in North Carolina at a place called pine needles and while I
Was there we held a couple of US Women’s opens and I worked with just a plethora of elite instructors and I would say at in my 13 years there I saw a minimum of 10,000 women golfers analyzing their swings and um you know then I realized that everybody’s playing with the wrong
Equipment so I started my club fitting um gaining the knowledge back then in the early 80s at pine needles I took it out to California and worked at uh San Jose mun which at the time was the biggest Club fitting location in Northern California okay and then um
After that I ended up with Titleist and spent 20 years working um with the best players in the world and the average guy so it was it was really really fun yeah that sounds like cuz you know we’ve talked before with some of the on our on
The staff here about how you know the ones that have been in in the business for a while such as yourself um Larry bobas another one that we’ve talked uh to about this how much different Club fitting is now with the technology and and back then it was kind of a what the
Ball what’s the ball flight you’re looking for and what do you want to feel and that’s pretty much all you kind of were able to go off of and it was and what’s interesting is Larry was the master at giving a player what they wanted to see and
Then making the ball fly the way it needed to fly to make it the best because you know he was a club Builder and he could go in there and he he was bending clubs and doing this and doing that and I can remember standing on the
Tea with tiger and Larry and we’d always give tiger something that would be like his second backup and he’d work it into play and um we were had a set of irons and Larry said says trace this one so I set the iron on the table and I trace it
And then he goes here put another one on there tiger thinks it’s different and I’m telling you it a 16th of an inch he could tell really and I mean it was big and you do it and it would be a little different peak in the toe or a little
More roundness somewhere and he would go no that’s not quite it and then larry’d go to work and make it until it was perfect but that was how good he was was yeah at figuring that out right it’s it’s actually it’s amazing to think back with tiger because at that you know at
That point he’s in his 20s right he’s that’s kind of right as he was peing at the around 2000 right before then um where you know at that age to have that much attention to detail with the equipment um and then obviously you guys were there servicing it and building it
For him that’s uh had to be a wild thing especially watching him during his prime as he’s peing and taking over the entire it was but you know and then you get um you get Adam Scott that comes out when he’s 17 he comes out with Greg Norman
And you’re like looking at this swing going oh my gosh who is this 17-year-old who’s playing bullet irons wow and you know we look at him and you know what do you want to see what do you want to do and he’s a very flat ball flight player
So you’ve got to give him Loft on everything you got to give him Loft on a driver a three-wood a especially that longer stuff but you know he knows what he likes to see he likes to see more offset mhm so that had to be done for
Him as opposed to Ricky who wanted less offset and you know so it was it’s really interesting with the elite player that the look was very very important now when we do the survey at second swing and we say hey what’s important to you and people will say oh look and that
Is important but they don’t know what they’re looking at yeah you know you have to go yeah this one’s got a thicker Top Line this one has a little more offset this one’s got a longer blade length and all of a sudden they look
Down at it and they go oh that’s why I like that or I don’t like that whereas the Tour player knows what they want to see and then you work from there I feel like I have in talking with even like my own friends they you know it’s like
They’ll grab some of my clubs or uh they might grab you know other clubs from the group and they put it down like I don’t know why but I I like this club better I like the the way this looks and they can’t really quantify it or put the the
Words behind it to uh describe what they’re looking at and that’s kind of it right there sometimes nowadays it’s we got to kind of show them this is what the top that’s so you know the thickness of the head like these things are very different from Club to club and you know
It’s funny because nowadays you have the launch monitors and the technology and the distance uh figures all up there so so many golfers are attached to that instead of we know back decades ago and it was the look and the feel is is what all you could really discuss with a
Player and then the ball F of course that was being generated as well that’s uh it’s a it’s a it’s pretty crazy how it’s changed I imagine For You especially in the last couple you know when when you came from um oh we the player wants to see his driver flatter
Yeah you had to take the driver put it in a mold that was specifically made for that head heat it up and then try and bend it without breaking it and then take it out and show it to them good no okay we’re going to heat it up we’re
Going to bend it again and then all of a sudden you can start clicking and you can go okay that’s a little flatter and um you know for the uh for the clubs at retail yeah there was one way the sleeve went in yeah at tour you’d have
Different sleeves so you could make it flatter and that seemed to be something a lot of the tour players liked in their their drivers yeah but it it’s just very interesting to see how fine-tuned a lot of these players are to the look they want and once they see that look it’s e
It even goes to the golf ball oh I imagine somebody comes in and they look down and one’s whiter than it than the other one one has a certain dimple over another one and they’re looking at it and you can just see them the wheels turning in there because it’s a little
Different and it’s just it’s really unique how fine-tuned those athletes are right and especially cuz you know mentally they’re they’re trying to get into a mode of just not even thinking and hitting and that becomes u a possibility after they can trust the equipment trust the golf ball all these
Other factors um and it’s just it’s fascinating how like you mentioned how just attention to detail I mean we talked about tiger and is there any others that jump to mind that you’ve worked with that like were very particular about their equipment what it looked like and and or maybe there were
Some that are just like whatever you think is best I’ll I’ll play with yeah that that last scenario would be rare okay um in the college and Junior we would get that sometimes which was good because after you work with elite players and you go okay I’ve seen this
Work for the best in the world and that’s what you think you could be someday so let me steer you in that direction yeah I got you you know but um you know with the with the irons you know everybody has their little thing they want to do to some degree but when
We’re making when we were making new irons we tried to incorporate tour feedback but the big one is wedges and I probably did a thousand Club fittings with Bob vogi and uh with players of all different skill levels sure and I can remember one time um Bob had um a tour
Player over on uh one part of of our facility doing wedges and I had this 15-year-old kid or 16-year-old at the time who was like Hey you know my wedge is going a little short I’d like to get you know another yard or two out of this
Thing what do you have and Bob had designed a 46 degree prototype vogi wedge rather than the you know wedge that came in the set of irons and so I said hey let me go ask Bob if this is something you know you can have yeah so
I go hey Bob I get this kid over here his name is Rory yeah and he wants a stronger lofted wedge and you know you got this 46 Pro he goes yeah let him take it and so that’s how those things work sometimes interesting you know
Because at the time Rory was a you know he showed up as a 15-year-old yeah young man with from Ireland with his Dad he had a lot of skills a year later he shows up and he goes hey guess what I just got a car but I don’t know if I can
Afford the fuel for it I got a Volkswagen and then um you know like something that was kind of sporty and I don’t know if I can you know and then you know after that he’s winning tournaments and you know you get a call from your buddy in Belfast and he goes
Well Rory’s got the new Range Rover and you’re like oh man how times change with these guys at that Elite level if you are that elite elite elite like young player things can change pretty quickly if it’s unbelievable I was um last uh spring I was at
ASU um for their home tournament at papao walking with the Texas Tech coach and I I used to spend a lot of time at Texas Tech as a matter of fact I was with them in Phoenix at the Grand Canyon course when covid hit and stopped
College golf so a few years later on there watching um ludvig Ober yeah um play and I had done his clubs when he was a freshman in college and I really hadn’t seen him since so um you know I keep track of him I text with him and I watch him play at
Papao and pretty darn good I watch him at Grayhawk and you’re like man this kid’s got a bright future and now look at it yeah when you talk about things changing meteoric rise I mean couldn’t be a nicer guy yeah just great I mean he’s now regarded as perhaps the best
Player off the tea like in the world I mean he drives it well it’s it’s unbelievable uh so that I mean that access and kind of the you know the relationships and the work that you’ve done with players and You’ get to see them rise and you know
The become the best players of the world and working with them beforehand had to be really cool to like watch that growth and be a part of it with them as you sort of build the clubs that they needed to it it was fun seeing things and you
Know just doing other things when you I I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Daryl survey but Daryl survey comes out and you know they go to Every tournament and they’re writing down what clubs everybody has in the bag yeah and they do it for a lot of College events they
Do it for every um Pro event and if you go to the Tour Championship and you go hey I got the top 30 you’re probably going to have three or four two irons and the rest are hybrids 19s 21s a bunch of five Woods a couple of seven woods and you go
To the ncas and you got 242 irons yeah and you go hey you’re trying to be like these guys that the Tour Championship and the pros are playing golf balls to go here and you’re trying to play something here so you know you may want to think about that a little bit that’s
Kind of and that’s really interesting to see because the you know you get out there on tour and you’re like yeah I got a birdie every par five right and I don’t want to be there hitting two iron into it and trying to hit a high cut yeah double crossing myself and making
Six when everybody else is putting for three or making a four yeah it is fascinating to see how that has the the perception of the high lofted furry wood has changed um a lot over the last few years and I think it kind of is sparked by tour players
Putting it in the bag a lot you see a lot of guys now using that when you would have rarely ever seen those in the bag you know 10 plus years ago but unless you were looking in vj’s bag true yes I remember he being one of them a
Little bit of a an exception to the rule right absolutely uh and nowadays uh this I’m not not saying that every player it’s you know I think you’re still in the minority of players that might have like a seven wood but it’s a lot more
Now than there was say even 10 years ago well what’s interesting is as you go through the bag of an elite player and I first saw this with Jason duffner because Jason duffner played a golf ball that got retired so his golf ball after all these years is going away and he’s
Got to find a new one so he came out and we probably had half a dozen balls for tour players at that time and he came out and hit his current golf ball with every Club in his bag and then he hit every other golf ball with every Club in
His bag and you look at an elite player and if they’re just hitting a standard wedge standard nineiron and not flighting it their wedge 9 8 7 six five and Driver all reach the same Peak height okay and then you go to a four iron and you go hey that’s seven feet
Lower is that acceptable or do you want to look at a hybrid or possibly a fivewood to get that in the air hey your three-wood is 20 feet lower do you want a little more Loft on the three-wood do you want to carry the three for off the
Te or a five for in the Fairway to beat up on the par fives and that information also filtering down when you get a an elite junior or an elite college player and you go hey guess what I just went through his bag and his Peak height was
The same and you go uh-oh let’s bet on this guy let’s not bet on the guy whose five iron is 20 feet lower and he’s playing a two iron his three wood doesn’t get in the air at all and you know he’s just he beats people because
He’s talented but is that going to work down the road right probably not and so that was information you could share and it all comes from the top down yeah it’s I’ve I’ve wondered too because I think it in a way that’s just it’s a it’s a gapping problem but it’s also a
Consistency and ball flight I guess issue that you cover in Club Fit with obviously the best players in the world but then here working with everyday players I imagine that concern is always there and and that same question applies to basically everybody that comes in for a club fitting of some sort is
Identifying the you know five iron four iron four hybrid five hybrid seven wood five wood I mean trying to figure out how that’s all going to be navigated and using the peak height as sort of a a starting point for that conversation well with an elite player um we would
Build three 5 and8 and our fitting system was 3 five and8 so you could pretty much run the gamut of the bag mhm at a at a second swing facility you’re primarily fitting with five irons or excuse me seven irons but we do have a
Few other full sets to look at but you pretty much know with a seven iron if the vertical Landing which is the combination of speed launch and spin is 45 that’s going to hold the green pretty well but your five Iron’s not going to hold the green that well if your seven
Iron is at 51 you go thumbs up on the five iron yeah and guess what if you like a four I’m not going to argue with you but I am going to show you an alternative and you can decide if that’s better or worse or if that’s the extra
Club in your bag and when you go play a practice round you go huh four iron or four hybrid which is the prevailing wind this week yeah and do I need it into the wind or downwind and you know that’s the kind of thing that we can do here but
It’s based on knowledge of the entire bag and how things work right right yeah because that that conversation I know is is it kind of relates to the whole seven wood thing and and it’s a it’s a very nuanced one but I know it’s one that I
Know I have friends that struggle with that area of the bag and they’re wondering why can’t I hit my fore iron why can’t I hit my even four hybrid sometimes and the the answer for a lot of those is well you probably could use something that gets the ball higher in
The air um that that way you can land it softly on the green and plus typically with more spin you get more control that ball too so it’s not going like this as much um instead it’s a more controlled consistent flight yep and for those guys
You can either play a club that’s easier to get in the air or you can stop watching YouTube videos where it tells you to lean the shaft so far forward yeah and you’re turning your four iron into a one iron and you know your seven iron’s going 198 yards because you’re
Just leaning that shaft forward which seems to be very popular on the internet yeah and that’s one of the things that we see here is that a lot of people are picking up their instruction online and whatever they’re seeing and trying to translate into their game may not be
Ideal for them which is why you would come in to get a club fitting so you’re not trying to find a club on your own and they’re trying to develop a swing on their own without someone steering them in the right direction so you see that
Quite a bit and for people like uh Elite Juniors and college players that have access to trackman there is a thing on trackman called z00 that a lot of people try to achieve and I can remember being out on the corn Ferry and having a player just stripe a three-wood and he
Was two into out and one closed and it couldn’t have been a better ball flight and he said I can’t hit this when I try to swing 0 and I’m like I’ve watched you hit 10 shots and you’ve been two in out one closed it’s been perfect yeah and you can’t even swing
Z00 when you try and he goes well I need a club that flies perfect when I swing z00 and never heard from him after that year yeah he was done so for for those listening and watching being 0 means a 0.0 face ankle and a 0.0
Uh club path which is basically the your club path and your facing are exactly square at impact which is like the hardest thing to achieve in a golf swing the Unicorn it’s yeah it’s it’s like it’s the perfect golf swing and as we know like repeating a golf swing that’s
You know kind of good is like really tough and that’s why the guys on tour are getting paid but to do Z zero over and over is impossible and so to your point there’s a maybe a a today’s where you have when you have that information it’s almost like you’re they’re seeking
Perfection at a level that is like you can’t really attain and at that point with that player in particular they’re they think they’re going to be swinging zero a lot and they’re not that the fact is nobody swings zero more than once a day that’s why when you fit you fit to
What they can repeat and if they own that swing and it does the same thing and I will tell you what the Tolerance on a tour player swing is amazing tight compared to what your average player is and it’s it’s it’s really really good right but it’s not
Always z00 and it rarely is z00 yeah I mean even you watch it you watch any event on on TV everybody’s playing a shot shape typically everybody’s got a go-to shot shape that requires them to not hit z00 right you know if you hit a
Stock fade shot off the T I mean John ROM play plays a big cut off the te every time he te’s off that’s not a z00 swing that is you know your club path is probably what minus four or something like that for that but he repeats it and
Hits it the same way every time 300 plus yards with a high cut down the middle with one of the old uh Envy greens yes yes which he got two weeks into his college career at Oceanside Titleist with Ricardo R linqu the Spanish Federation liaison at the time
Really when John brought him out and I he was playing Wilson clubs and I was like John let’s hit some stuff and he hit it and I’ve still got the video he’s the only one I’ve got a video of because I saw that and I went that’s really
Really good nobody knows who he is so we we signed him up on the spot and said hey you’re a titlist guy we’ll take care of everything you want and I got him that Envy shaft and now that’s what he’s played in every head head with every
Manufacturer he’s been with and John was playing three iron and I think it was between his freshman in sophomore year he came in and he said Cliff I want a fivewood I’m getting rid of the three iron and he’s had the fivewood in the bag and um he also at one point can’t
Quite remember when it was but he went from a 35 to a 36 inch Putter and it was like oo that’s that’s a little big yeah and cuz he’s beating everybody with a 35 right he went out and beat him more with a 36 but he knew what he wanted to see
And what he wanted to feel and it was really cool but when you’re talking about shot shape um when uh when Colin was at Cal y um I was working with the Cal team and he was a you know playing other equipment and he saw one of the
Drivers I was having one of the players hit and he goes hey I really like that driver can you get me one and I’m like you hit cuts this isn’t a cut driver you should have the three not the two I like the look of that two so I waited up
Waiting the toe and all that and I you know gave it to him at a tournament in Chicago the Western am and he puts it right in the bag and I’m like oh my gosh I got Colin morawa playing a yeah title as driver and uh few days later he hands
It back to me and I said no go and he goes nah I hit it too straight and I’m like what do you mean you hit it too straight he goes I was 5 yards in the left rough and I’m like so why don’t you
Aim in the Fairway he goes I don’t do that I play my cut go I want it to be 10 15 20 yard cut aim at left Edge and I know it’s going to be in play I can play the entire width of the Fairway so that
Was one of my introductions and that’s one of the things that when you’re I spent a lot of time on the course with Juniors and college players and you get to see where they aim and what they do when you’re indoors getting a fitting and you watch somebody hit a series of
Shots in the bay and you’re looking at the dispersion pattern and everything is 12 to 15 yards right and they’re going Ah that’s going right and you’re like that’s perfect they’re all within three yards aim at the left edge of the green that thing’s going to be right in the
Middle of the green aim left center of the Fairway that’s going to be right in the middle imagine you don’t worry about hitting it straight you’ve got a perfect bait butter fade I imagine you’ve shared that Cur story before it’s like if if oh jeez it’s my best one yeah it’s it’s
Really good cuz there’s so many people out there that think they have a slice a major slice and it it might look like a slice if they start it dead middle and it curves off into the right rough every time but if it’s consistent a butter cut down the middle
Like you said is there’s nothing wrong with that if you can repeat it no but that’s why when you get into Club fitting you have to look at that and you have to go oh this guy came in saying that he hits this fade and he wants to
Eliminate it and so you go all right we’ve got some ping sfts and we’ve got some heads that are biased to the left a little bit um and they tend to spin a little more yeah and you give him one of those heads and all of a sudden he goes
From 2800 2900 spin to 3500 Spin and it still Fades MH and you go well all I did was make it go shorter yeah so then you go H oh let me go to that low spin head and knock his spin down to 24 100 and
The 12 yard fade is now an eight yard fade the spin is less it hits and it rolls out and you you’re like done right and it’s the opposite of what you thought you would do when you when he came in because you’re trying to find
The best way to optimize what he does not what you’re thinking the perfect swing is or this so knowledge is gained through experience and that’s some of the things that when I was working a lot with Larry you’d go out and you’d go why
Did you give him that you I just want to see what it would do and sometimes you’d give a slow player an X1 and they would hit it higher and straighter right than a senior shaft because it didn’t kick as much and you know you just sort of look
Around and go hey there’s more than one way to get where we need to go and it might not be by the book all the time right and that only comes through seeing it time and time again yeah that’s one of those that you probably your experience kind
Of creates that maybe different door opens that different door to look through on something like that where I imagine there’s you know people listening or watching this that they think they they are that player that struggles with the slice and it keeps that left to right ball flight they just
Can’t get rid of it um but maybe it’s just this different perspective that they needed to look at it and say well if I just aim it down the left the the line of the left rough play that fade back that you know power cut if you
Will there might not be a big change needed with driver uh you might be giving up some distance depending on how much spin is on that cut but you could play that thing you can and you know once you decide that you’re going to play it then you can optimize the driver
Yeah and you’ve got no problem now one of the things that I see when we’re looking at a lot of the players that come into second swing is they think they make a different swing every time because they’re not consistent and the biggest difference between the elite
Player and the player that we see on a regular basis is the elite player woke up one day and they were probably 10 or 12 years old and they knew exactly where the club face was they knew what it felt like to hit the ball straight what it
Felt like to hit a cut what it felt like to hit a draw and I’ll see players in here and their swing will be very very consist consist but they don’t have a feel for where the club face is so on the technical mechanical side understanding where the club face is you
Know if it’s open 10 degrees on one swing and closed seven degrees on the next swing they think oh my gosh I made a terrible swing well the swing wasn’t that bad the awareness of the club face is the thing that I think more of our recreational players should be
Concentrating on sure and you know they go in they get instruction and they’re like oh yeah use your big muscles use your hips and your shoulders and the club will fall into place but I don’t think enough emphasis is always placed on where is the club face and that’s the
Biggest thing that I see between the elite player and the recreational player is awareness of the club phas and um so you know that makes a big difference in the fitting yeah the fitting experience is very different for you then you have to you know you have to go in there and
Say how much of a partnership do we have here yeah you know I’m going to do my part and you are a 105 ping Max with a regular 65 gam shaft and that works great if you get your Club face in a a range yeah but if you’re way
Outside that range one way or another it’s not going to be what you want so you figure out what you’re doing there we’ll get you the club that works when you’re in that range and let’s uh let’s do this together yeah yeah exactly it’s a it’s a it is a partnership I think
That’s a great way to put it because there’s there’s it’s a journey to get better in golf and it does require a club fitter requires potentially a PJ instructor and as that growth happens on in both those Avenues it you know can can really end in the positive result
With better scores and uh you know like you said it it starts by coming here and understanding what you might be doing with the club face because you might not understand it so um I think that’s actually kind of a great way to to wrap this thing up um is as encouraging
People to come get that fitting and uh do it with someone like Cliff you’re at second swing But ultimately you’re going to learn a lot about your game right I mean it’s it’s it’s a great way to kick things off if you’re trying to get better absolutely you will get an
Education and you will leave knowing things rather than wondering about them right exactly well golfers thank you for watching and listening uh make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel and schedule that fitting with someone like Cliff so Cliff thank you for the time here you bet thank You
2 Comments
Excellent discussion guys! Thanks.
Great insight into the elite players.