Tiger Woods has become one of the most meticulous and demanding golfers when it comes to his equipment, of all time.
But he wasn’t always like that. Much of his “training” in gear-nerd-dom can be traced to former Titleist Tour representative Larry Bobkawho was responsible for helping build Woods’ first set of Titleist 681T irons in 1998 when he switched from Mizuno blades he won the 1997 Masters with.
On the latest episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, Bobka recalled the story of Woods’ iron creation to co-host Johnny Wunder and debunked old rumors that Woods’ first title irons were actually forged by legendary Japanese brand Miura, which was known to make irons for other brands.
“(They were) from Tennessee, Hoffman Forging,” Bobka said. “Yeah, actually it was, actually there were two. We had some older models from Titleist. That’s how it ended up, his long irons were a fake model and the mid and short irons were a different model.”
Bobka wasn’t originally supposed to work with Woods on his irons. Woods first worked with Terry McCabe, Titleist’s VP of R&D, on them.
“So one day, Wally Uihlein (then CEO of Acushnet) called me,” Bobka explained. He says, “Terry is going to work with Tiger on some prototypes he made for him, and I want you to go there too.
“And I say, ‘Well, you know, I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes and whatever,’ but it’s like, well, you know, Butch (Harmon) had kind of called Wally and said, ‘Hey, you know, we kind of like having the A team, we like having the best guy helping us.’
Bokba had a previous relationship with the Harmon family through Butch’s older brother, Dick. So Bobka went and met Woods and Harmon for breakfast before a session at Isleworth with McCabe to better understand what he wanted in his irons.
After watching Woods hit balls for 90 minutes, Bobka had what he needed.
“Butch says, ‘What do you think?'” he recalls. “And I said, ‘Well, I think I’ll fly back to California. And I’m going to go make him some golf clubs.'”
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Bobka asked Woods if he made him three identical sets of clubs, would he be able to play a set of his favorite 2-irons, 3-irons, 4-irons, etc., from each set.
Woods said yes, and then Bobka pointed out that the lengths of his Mizuno set were not progressive, and he asked if Woods would like him to adjust that.
“Yeah, fine. I don’t mind that,” Woods said. “I didn’t even know that my clubs were kind of messed up like that. So, yeah, it would probably be pretty cool.”
For today’s Woods, you could never hide a bubble in the fairway under one of his putts from him, let alone his club lengths of 1/16 of an inch. But for a 22-year-old just starting to take the golf world by storm, he was still learning.
Bobka returned to California and told Woods it would be several weeks before he could make them. But it wasn’t long before Woods was looking for something else.
Woods had messed around with a set of Ben Hogan Apex cuffs. They weren’t his spec, but he liked the way the irons interacted with the terrain and asked Bobka if they could incorporate the sole pattern into his irons. Woods sent them to Bobka to see for himself.
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“They were actually the year they, the only year they tried to do an Apex cast in the ’70s,” Bobka said. “But there was a little more camber front to back, and there was a little more roll, heel to toe, and he says, ‘Can you put some of this on my bars?’ And I said, “Yes, of course I can.”
Hogans inspired the first edges worn on Woods’ final set of irons.
Woods liked the Hoffman-made set of Titleist 681Ts, but those cuffs were eventually used to make a template that would be produced by legendary Japanese forging house Endo Manufacturing.
It was a set Endo made for Woods to go on his legendary Tiger-Slam run of 2000 and 2001, winning all four titles in a row.
For more from Bobka and Wunder, including how Bobka found Woods’ Titleist 975D driver and why Butch Harmon kept a 681T set for his students to hit, listen to the full episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped hereor see below.
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