TULSA, Okla. — It was the phone call that Kenton Oates had dreamed about, but never thought would happen. Two weeks after the Masters, where Bubba Watson had finished T-39, he was calling Oates, who is a PGA Tour rep for Ping Golf and one of the people who helps to ensure that Watson, who has a lifetime contract with Ping, is happy with his clubs.
“On the Wednesday of New Orleans, Bubba called me and said, ‘Hey Man, send me like three or four regular graphite shafts. I want to try something lighter and get a little more pop in my bat back,’” Oates recalled.
Watson has been happy to try new drivers over the years and has typically switched into Ping’s newest models easily. These days, he uses a Ping G425 LST, but he had been playing the same pink Grafalloy Bi-Matrix X prototype shaft for more than a decade.
Aside from the color, what makes it unique is that the top and middle sections are graphite, but the lower third of the shaft is steel, so it is extremely heavy by today’s standards. According to Oates, it weighs about 88 grams, which is about 30 grams more than many graphite shafts that elite players on the PGA Tour use.
“We had been down this road before,” Oates said. “The last time we tried this with Bubba, we remembered that so many shafts today are really stable, and they can make your shots under-spin and not curved as much. So we added a little loft, put some weight on the toe to make sure the ball would cut for him, because if Bubba can’t hit his stock cut he’s not going to play the club.”
Oates sent the shafts to Watson, including a 60-gram Project X HZRDUS Smoke Black 60 TX, and Watson texted him within days and said he loved it.
Stunned, Oates and the Ping team had two challenges to overcome next, getting a customized, pink HZRDUS Smoke Black shaft from Project X and getting Bubba’s grip just right.
“The minute he told us he liked that one, we got on the horn with David Wilson at True Temper and said, ‘Hey, can you get us a pink one?’” said Oates. “To their credit, they got us a pink on by the time we got to the Byron Nelson .”
Meanwhile, the club builders in Ping’s tour department in Phoenix, known as Ping WRX, had managed to do one of the hardest things in club fitting: get Bubba Watson’s driver gripped just the way the two-time Masters champion likes. Watson needs 11 layers of tape under the top hand of his Ping Gold grip, and 13 layers under the bottom hand, and the cord in the grip needs to be in just the right spot.
“Bubba Watson gripping instructions takes up a whole line in the Excel spreadsheet we have in the truck,” Oates said with a laugh.
But after the ping Project X shaft arrived at the Byron Nelson, Watson didn’t love the way the grip on it felt as much as the grip on the black shaft. With Watson, everything is about feel, and there was something not quite right with the grip on the pink shaft.
“The black shaft is set to the perfect amount of openness,” Oates said. “If you put Bubba Watson’s driver down into a playing position, and you held the grip so the rib felt square in your hands, the face would be pointing 7 to 10 degrees to the left, which is open for a lefty.”
Rather than tinker at a major championship, Spencer Rothluebber, who builds clubs in Ping’s PGA Tour van, encouraged Watson to go with the black shaft and leave re-gripping the pink one for another week.
The advice has proved to be solid as Bubba Watson is leading the field in strokes gained tee to green heading into the final round of the 2022 PGA Championship and is averaging 331 yards on the two driving distance average-measured holes.
“He’s like a kid again,” Oates said.
Maybe the wait for that call was worth it.
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