Cobra Director of Tour Operations Ben Schomin is as respected a representative as anyone on tour. This is as a fitter, as a person, as a professional, as a father, as a friend, etc. He is undoubtedly one of them.
My relationship with him began in 2018 when I first started working with GolfWRX. I remember the first call I made to him to convince him to come to my then Gear Dive Pod.
“What can I do for you son?”
A term he uses a bunch, and one I’ve adopted myself. Within seconds, I was disarmed by Ben’s calm nature and instinct to just be helpful. For the past eight years in the industry, he’s been one of the go-to sources for tips on clubs, careers, and just someone I enjoy talking to.
This video was special to me because working with people like Aaron Dill (Vokey), Adrian Rietveld (Taylor Made) and in this case Ben, gives me the opportunity to show you what makes these guys so special as assemblers and what kind of human beings they are.
Three things to learn from fitting in with Ben Schomin
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Fixtures are not ball speed contests
This is what I think separates the good from the great. Ben definitely gave me setups that were faster overall than what I was landing with, but Ben, being an incredible observer, knew – and heard – that regardless of the numbers, I wasn’t confident with the look of one driver or another.
Some fitters would have sold me on numbers, but he didn’t. He made the pivot and maximized the head that I felt comfortable hitting. The thing about adjusting for speed is that the player still has to get out on the course and i play golf. The player needs confidence in the look, which will translate to confidence in the course. Speed ​​is more likely to show up over time with that tactic than with having the speed in hand and “making the driver work” on the course. The OPTM X was a driver I responded to immediately, and although it took some work to get there, Ben knew that, based on my feedback, the X would give me the best in good golf.
Ben thinks beyond fit
This is a true thing; it’s easy to create a vacuum in a fit and focus only on the performance that day. One of the things that all great riders do – especially on Tour – is project into the future. A good matchup builds defensive rails everywhere to make sure that misses actually help you against flushers, which, in any case, will always help you, but a miss shot won’t. Put simply: Raise the floor and the ceiling will follow.
The OPTM platform is definitely a floor lifter in general. POI is a real metric that will become part of the R&D ecosystem. Is it already? Maybe in some form, but making it the retaining wall of your design will undoubtedly become a priority. Efficiency is what makes a great club. It’s a combination of three things: distance distribution, consistent playable loss, and speed. For example, on the Cobra truck, Ben and James Posey will lean toward a shorter, more controllable build versus a stock or longer build. You can cheat speed with taller builds, lower lofts, etc., but these guys don’t. Is the same practice done in other trucks? of course. But if you look at the specs of the Cobra Staff players, most drivers are 45 or shorter, and there are also a lot of shorter freeway builds, etc.
