![]() ![]() That comes from some… maybe it’s a gift-you just follow your eyes and know what you’re looking for. It’s not like you can look at an iron head or a wedge and know, Okay, I hit it three times there and I did this over here. “I’ll pick them up and look them over-and they are absolute money. “There have been times when I’ve come in the shop on Saturday and returned on Monday to take the cloth off the heads and I have no idea how they ended up like that,” he says. I feel like making clubs is the same way. He’s just feeling his way through the moment. “His fingers are moving, but it looks like he’s just not there. “You ever seen Eric Clapton play guitar?” Taylor asks in his thick Texas drawl. Even today, Taylor still follows the same process, preferring to sketch instead of leaning heavily on CAD (computer-aided design) to turn his creations into reality.Īsk him to describe his procedure for creating the perfect transition from hosel to topline using only his eyes and otherworldly feel and he just shrugs. In an era where high-tech computers continue to take on more of the load in the golf club design space, Taylor is a throwback to a bygone era when irons and wedges were predominantly shaped by hand using a pencil and some imagination. It wasn’t until Taylor started Artisan Golf with cofounder John Hatfield in 2017 that he fully stepped out from behind the curtain to become one of the faces of the Fort Worth–based wedge and putter start-up. For more than three decades, Taylor worked quietly behind the scenes for the Ben Hogan Golf Equipment Company, Impact Golf Technologies and Nike Golf, molding and shaping irons and wedges for some of the best in the sport. There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Mike Taylor, but that doesn’t make him any less significant than Roger Cleveland, Katsuhiro Miura, Bob Vokey or Don White-four well-known titans of the clubmaking world. Many of the notes, dutifully taken down in pencil, belong to him. “There’s more in the drawers,” says Mike Taylor, pointing to a few more binders, these with different names. The mystery was always part of the secret sauce. They’re significant because Woods has never been one to freely offer up his club specs. The notes are significant because they belong to (arguably) the greatest golfer to ever touch a club. An era of six major championships, each won with Swoosh irons and wedges in hand. Open the top cover-gently now-and you’re greeted by a multitude of club build sheets with handwritten notes dating back to Woods’ Nike Golf days. But, the burly Texan in charge tells you, these binders are different.Īnd then you catch a glimpse of a discolored label on one binder’s spine: “Tiger Woods Wedges and Putters.” Countless more can be found inside the drawers, one nondescript black binder tucked against another. You wouldn’t know it from glancing at the pile of black binders balanced haphazardly atop a dusty filing cabinet. The holy grail of equipment documents is housed inside an unmarked building on the outskirts of Fort Worth, Texas. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |