The traveling Titleist Tour Representatives work with some of the best players in the world week after week. They watch as Titleist Brand Ambassadors progress in their games and help them capture their ideal setup – whether it’s dialing in with Trackman or building their custom set.
Last week at Bay Hill, Titleist Brand Ambassador Bud Cauley celebrated his 28th birthday with an equipment change. We spoke with our Tour Reps for an inside look into this process, which began later than expected.
"Typically we prefer not to test iron shafts on a Tuesday afternoon," Titleist Tour Representative Jim Curran said. "It is a major change to make so close to the tournament rounds and we encourage the player to work with new iron shaft options beginning on Monday's or even Tuesday morning of tournament week, or when they can test at home during an off week so they can get a good feel for them."
Bud only wanted to test with the Titleist Tour team on site and wanted to see how the new iron shafts worked in combination with Pro V1. The challenge: Bud felt he was spinning the golf ball too much into the wind on full shots and on shots he was trying to curve.
"Bud has played True Temper S-300’s his entire career," Curran said. "We built 4 and 8 irons with a 718 MB head in two different shaft models. He overwhelmingly preferred the flight and weight of the True Temper X-100 shafts. Bud said he has a tendency to get too quick with his transition in tournament rounds and the heavier X-100 gives him more total weight, which helped with his transition back to impact."
Bud’s reaction to his new setup: “I feel like I have adult clubs now!" To wrap up the busy Tuesday, Tech Representative Peter Bezuk worked into the evening on the Tour Van, so the irons were ready for Bud’s Wednesday morning range warm-up and pro-am round. In addition to the irons, Bud added another scoring club to the set, a new 818 H2, 21 degree hybrid.
The work paid off, as Bud finished the week T14 and ranked 5.973 strokes tee to green for the week, an important stat for analyzing ball striking proficiency.
Take a closer look at Bud’s Titleist equipment in the gallery below, and happy belated birthday, Bud!
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