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Nike Golf R&D Facility
Recently, I was in Fort Worth with the Canadian PGA Education Facilitators at Nike Golf’s Research and Development / Fitting Centre. What a trip. The “Oven” as it is affectionately known is a state of the art facility devoted to inventing, developing, testing all new Nike Golf innovations. You can see by the team they have assembled over the past 10 years why they are leading the industry in so many categories.
The CPGA singed an agreement with Nike Golf to be there fitting partner in education. All new apprentice/assistant professionals will be trained extensively on Nike’s 360 Degree Fitting System. My feeling that it is the best system in golf. We had the opportunity to be fit and use the system at the Oven and it was impressive. You can really maximize your distance and accuracy with the driver and fairway woods – quickly.
I was fortunate to have “Nike Rob”, from the Nike Golf PGA Tour van, and James, Oven R and D staff, fit me. He was excellent especially with my somewhat unique ball characteristics. I spin the ball too much and prefer to play a fade. It was a big challenge to get my spin down and maintain an ideal launch angle. After several tries with a bunch of different combinations – I was fit into the new Nike SQ Dymo – round, 8.5 degree driver with an Epic 68 X shaft. The coolest thing was the Straight Fit driver. It has 8 different head positions – that are interchangeable easily with a wrench – included with the driver. People are really going to love this driver.
Another neat feature of the trip was talking and seeing first hand how they make, grind and shape wedges for the best players in the world. Mike has been making wedges for 30 years and works with Tiger and all the other PGA Tour players. He was great to ask questions to about bounce, loft and lie options as well as the look of a wedge. He talked a lot about how the club head works into and through the ground and the sound it makes. Mike is known as tops in the world with respect to wedge making.
The size and technology of Nike Golf’s facilities was staggering – it was huge and they are in the process of doubling it. The fitting centre was equipped with all the best technologies – putting studio, Iron Byron – testing machine, Trackman, Sam Putt Lab, and every club / ball combination available. The new short game area was perfect and a huge driving range (natural or artificial grass). People were down to earth and friendly – complete open to sharing info and stories. They were first class.