PXG’s Brad Schweigert joins Fairways of Life to discuss the their new Black Ops line of clubs and the incredible technology that goes into designing cutting edge equipment.
Welcome back to the fairways of Life show I love this time of year we get to see products just like this those are the new Black Ops clubs coming from pxg we’re going to dive into them with Brad uh Swagger who is my friend over at pxg Chief product officer
Brad how have you been I’m great good morning Matt how you doing it’s great to see you I’m really excited about what you guys have created here pxg Black Ops driver uh pxg Black Ops Fairway of which I’ve got the driver I’ve got a three-w I got a fivewood I
Haven’t seen the hybrids but we’ll get into that too the the interesting message points from pxg on this one I’m going to start with this one Brad because it is it’s bold and and I’m very curious to dive into the how and wise the first bullet point that I got
Was complete in total victory in engineering that’s your bag what is that that all mean well I think summarizing it is to say that typically when when uh drivers are designed they kind of lean one way whether it’s forgiveness or distance and uh we we feel strongly that we found a
Way to kind of deliver on both of those in Spades without making any sacrifices so this really delivers both from a a distance perspective and um extremely forgiving so you can really hit it all over the club face as long as you deliver that club face somewhat where
You’re going to get a really really good result and um the consistency in distance all across the club face and Direction um and trajectory in terms of spin rate and ball velocity everything that’s going to create the distance very consistent all across the club facee so um it’s it but there’s some technology
We can get into more details of that that that allows it to deliver from a distance perspective too so you don’t really have to make that tradeoff in terms of you know going to a Max forgiving driver and and feel like you’re giving up some of the distance
Out of the center this thing deliv delivers on both ACC chords all right let’s get into that technology that you were referring to uh first of all I knew that I know that the face technology is an advancement for pxg what did you do
Here and how were you able to do it yeah so we’ve it’s a proprietary material it’s a new material um that we’ve developed in partnership with some material experts but it’s it’s a very unique titanium alloy we call it AMF technology it stands for advanced material face as you know Bob with his
Military background he he also wanted me to remind people that uh in the military that AMF stands for something different which may be applicable to to golf but um the uh the you know we always have our Bob isms which are fun you know but the um the the material itself it’s it’s
An alloy that’s very unique for titanium in that a lot of titanium when they go stronger they also go stiffer um and when you when you increase the the stiffness it doesn’t um you know it doesn’t Flex as much this particular alloy we were able to accomplish uh an a
Much higher strength alloy but with actually a a a lower stiffness and so that’s very unique and that allows the phase to flex and bend in conjunction with the the crown and sole carbon fiber geometries that we’ve created during impact we get a lot of movement and flex
In the body and in the face and that helps launch the ball really high with low spin rate which um you know I think based on our testing and I think a lot of the independent testers are starting to find out out there that this driver has basically the highest launch angle
That’s out there for like say a given 9 degree loft if you keep everything else equal yeah but also uh keeps the spin rate down in the lower third of drivers that are out there and so that combination of high launch low spin really helps to maximize distance I
Happen to have ironically I have a nine degree uh driver right here in front of me I’m G I’m going to hold it this way just for a second you guys can see that on camera I believe and and Andrew is putting in a lot of beauty shots of the
Products uh when you look down at this club it has a really beautiful shape on it could you talk to us about the deline design philosophy and how some of these Technologies tie in yeah you know at pxg all our designers including myself we we’re passionate golfers so we really care
About what the product looks like it’s new for us is that the the high gloss carbon fiber Crown um we’ve sted with like a matte Crown in the past but we wanted to do something a little unique we think it looks really nice but the geometry the club shape it has a really
Pleasing uh address position um it’s we also we obviously wanted to maximize kind of the size of the driver to get that Mass to the extreme perimeters and boost that moment of inertia but we we did it in a way where it just it still looks very pleasing behind the golf ball
And sets up nice I think people are going to love it okay so you’ve taken us through the face so far Brad you’ve taken us through the discussion of the crown and the fact that you as a result of what you did with the crown had this discernable weight that you could move
To more advantageous places in the driver and how that then can contributes to initial launch angle etc etc I do want to get into the so on this club because lots of times with these Advanced drivers and certainly is the case with pxg the soul itself tells a
Story what story is this Soul telling well it starts with the carbon fiber insert on the so there’s a uh we were taking Mass out of the middle of the golf club with that carbon fiber insert it’s really carbon fiber ex stream lightweight uh it’s flexible so
Allows that again allows the face to flex even more during impact than than previous models um but it getting that Master perimeter and then the next thing you notice obviously with our technology is the the movable weights and the position of those so they’re so we we create mass in the extreme perimeters
The heel toe and back so that we can boost the inertia but also so that we have the ability to fine-tune or adjust that driver to fit an individual’s needs so um we can move mass in the heel to create more draw buys we can move it
More into the toe to create more fade buys more more mass in the back is going to increase launch and and make it in its kind of most forgiving setting but we have the ability to split Mass too kind of um you know we have we make
Those those uh those masses in 2 and a half to 20 grams and two and a half gram increments all the way through so our Fitters when you come in they have the ability to to to customize that driver to your knees they can go heavier they
Can go lighter there’s just a lot we can do so um you know 10,000 M mois but combined Moi of 10,000 big buzz wordss this year we have the ability to go um beyond that uh by adding just a little bit more mass to our to our standard
Head weight at our standard um stock configuration we’re just barely under 10,000 combined M but uh we can easily exceed that uh through our adjustability it’s incredible what you were just saying in fact I’m going to ask you Brad to have an expert of your degree on the
Show could you explain to the world more about you said it’s going to be a big buzzword with with Mo Moi and and getting to a threshold of 10,000 and you’re telling us that you can easily exceed that could you explain to the world I if I may in lay in terms what
All that means yeah so Moi is it the it’s an acronym also it stands for moment of inertia um it’s everything has inertia people think of a uh um in everything that we do every every Mass has a certain amount of of inertia to it it’s a resistance to a body’s change in
Motion when we talk about moment inertia we’re talking specifically about resistance in rotation so um you know when when when when we look at it in regards to a driver we we really primarily focus on two values so there’s a a moment of inertia about the vertical
Axis through the CG and that’s going to affect the body’s resistance to rotation on heel and toe mishits so um you know when you miss hit heel and toe we all can kind of relate to that that the club might twist open and you get like the adverse gear effect which creates like
Draw Spin and so the higher the moment of inertia the less twisting you’re going to have so you’re going to have a more consistent trajectory on those M hits heel and toe the other inertia that’s really important is through the horizontal axis so that’s going to affect the body’s rotation on high and
Low misses so similarly to like heel and toe when you hit it high you know the body rotates you get a higher launch kind of lower spin combination you hit it low you get the opposite which is never really good it’s a low launch higher spin combination so by increasing
That moment of inertia you you can get a more stable Spin and launch characteristics as you miss it up and down the face so you know obviously if you miss it high toe you get a combination of both of those and and so the higher that you drive those values
The more stable the driver is going to be the more consistent it’s going to be on off center strikes and you feel like this Black Ops driver I guess I would say relative to anything else that’s in the marketplace but also relative to your pxg line This is a significant step
Forward yeah we really drove thei up in the horizontal axis on this particular driver so in a past like our Gen 6 XF had a very highi about the hor the the vertical axis so that heel to miss hits but we increased the Moi about the horizontal access in this one by over
25% in the stock settings so that’s a huge gain um that brings our combined Moi just under 10,000 in its stock configuration if you uh for those of you who you know may be familiar with like the rules of golf the USGA does limit thei about the the vertical axis to 5900
So we live right close to there as well um and so it’s but but increasing that about the horizontal axis allows it to be much more stable um we’re getting really consistent dist control and and everything that goes in the trajectory and all those off center hits one of the
Things that um we do during our research is we we test drivers not just ours and our past ones but also competitors not just out of the center but we have a nine-point position test where we hit it all over the club face and one of the
Things that we look at is is the overall dispersion across all those nine points but we also look at um kind of the diff difference and distance from the center hits or the longest position to any whichever position creates the shortest distance we call that like the distance
Range and um this driver in our testing outperformed not only any driver we’ve done in the past but every driver in the marketplace and sometimes by huge gains so in our test when we set this up at 100 miles an hour and we hit pretty far
Around the club face so we we get a difference in distance with our driver of just around I think it’s 15 yards of drop off between the center to the low to to the shortest distance some of the competitor drivers that we tested were over 36 yards of drop off in that same
Exact test so you know huge gain so um as consumers and as golfers you know we we tend to hit it you know at a much bigger dispersion pattern than than like professionals do so that kind of technology is going to be huge for the average consumer allowing them to to hit
And get more out of their M hits is is is a big performance game for them very very cool indeed is this available in the market place right now yes it is you can visit uh pxg.com and take a look you can purchase it there you can go to any of our store
Locations um we have mobile Fitters all over the country you can schedule a fitting my my recommendation is to to go get fit schedule that fitting um if you’re if that is impossible you can jump on the phone and call and talk to one of our um fitting experts onl on the
Phone and they’ll walk you through the process as well okay great so you can contact pxg through pxg.com or 844 playay pxg as just two of the different options not to mention the retail stores and and the mobile fitting that Brad was talking about let’s jump into the
Three-wood I have a three-wood I have a fivewood here I’m going to leave it to you and to the photos video and Graphics that we have in the hybrid because I don’t have one of those yet Brad but if you want to take us through the the
Fairway wood and hybrid we can we can tell the world about the virtues of these also yeah so the technology and both Fairway hybrid there’s some similarties similarities between the technology stuff both of them feature a much thinner face than what we had in the past and a new face material that
Allow us to go thinner um similar like on the driver we found that material alloy that allowed us to go stronger and flexible with with the steel alloy it’s not it’s not actually more flexible but by thinning it out it makes the face actually more flexible
And flex more so kind of some of this a similar uh a a strategy um getting more Flex out of the face to get the better launch more optimal launch conditions um we did that in the in the Fairwood it’s 12 1 12% thinner in the hybrid it’s it’s
10 and a half% thinner so both of them significantly thinner than the predecessor um that also allows us to save Mass from the face which we can distribute kind of low move that Center gravity lower so um again with both the fids and the hybrids um we try to
Combine both distance and forgiveness all together in one package in our previous models we had two different models an XF and a and kind of a standard model and what what our goal was with its Black Ops was let’s beat it the the original model in distance and
Beat the XF in forgiveness and and I I I’m confident in that we we definitely achieved kind of both of those and combined The Best of Both Worlds into one product and and we’re we’re getting great feedback early on from from players of all abilities from the PGA
Tour to um all the way through to to high handicappers are really enjoying these these Fairways and hybrids Brad if we took the the crown off this Fairway metal this three-wood that I’m holding in my hand what would we see underneath the hood what did you do internally here
That would contribute to to the sound and to the feel of course yeah so one of the things that we do across all our Woods is is we engineer sound quite a bit we have the the technology that’s improved over my career is amazing in terms of like the CAD software that we
Use and and so one of the things we can do is we can optimize and the the product for feel and sound before we even make it and and we can do it much much faster than what we used to do in the past we always had FAA but it was
Really clunky it took hours to run an analysis now we basically get real time outputs as we make a change and so if you look inside there you’ll see all kinds of rib geometry structures that are designed to um stiffen the geometry in certain areas and and and what we’re
Trying to achieve is create a a high modal frequency so that means a really quick vibration um we’re trying to to to limit the the amplitude which means the the kind of the loudness of it and then shorten the duration of that of of that
Vibration so you get more of a a quicker um sharper uh and and not too loud of sound and so it’s it’s a one of the things that we have got a lot of comment and and it’s and it’s really been designed and engineered into the product
Is that the entire line from driver fairwoods and hybrids all feel and sound incredible and uh you know that’s part of the experience is so important I think uh with with with golf is that you want to enjoy the experience and and how it feels and sound is a big part of that
Well you can see in my set I have the pleasure of having pxg next to me all the time folks because they are a longtime partner of the fairways of Life show for which Brad we say thank you very much more so thank you for what you
Guys are doing in the golf industry I know that you are excited about this new line called Black Ops which is available as he just told us in the marketplace right now pxg.com or call 844 play pxg and according to this technology and the experts witness that he has just
Provided to us you can play your very very best off the te from the Fairway or from pretty much any kind of rough from the driver to the Fairway medals to the hybrids my friend thank you very much for your company it’s always great catching up with you I’m sure that you
Guys are as excited about 2024 with this new line As we are yeah thank you Matt really appreciate you having me on and getting our opportunity to share our story um hope everybody has a has a great day and gets a chance to get out there and try those Black Ops I think
You will be pleasantly surprised hopefully or or or just impressed with the product I can’t wait the the opportunity for me is going to be tomorrow looking forward to it Brad all the best we’ll see you soon yeah thanks a lot man bye all right more of the fairways of
Life show coming up folks right after this
1 Comment
Am I too cynical at the sheer coincidence of several major manufacturers all “discovering” the 10K MOI in the same time period?