Children’s Beach House will hold its 20th annual charity golf fundraiser Monday, May 20, at the Peninsula on the Indian River Bay.
All event proceeds support the longtime Lewes nonprofit on Bay Avenue. CBH operates the Margaret H. Rollins Child Development Center, a youth development program and other programs.
The $300 entry fee per golfer ($1,200 per foursome) covers the golf and cart, pre-golf and on-course beverages, boxed lunch, prizes, dinner buffet and a silent auction. On-site registration begins at 9 a.m. with a shotgun start at 11 a.m.
For pre-event registration, text GOLF4CBH or go to cbhinc.org/golf.
Sponsorship opportunities remain available. Go to e.givesmart.com/events/Acc/.
Vokey wedges
The famous Vokey wedges are among the reasons why Titleist is one of the top-selling golf equipment makers worldwide.
Named for creator Bob Vokey, his SM line has appealed to tour pros and duffers alike through several iterations for many years.
At the 2024 PGA Show, I interviewed Aaron Luttrell, the product manager for Vokey wedges, about the new SM10 designs and how best to pick which model to play.
New Vokeys tend to be adopted quickly. Luttrell said 160 SM10 wedges were in PGA Tour players’ bags at the January American Express tournament near La Quinta, Calif.
Ad copy for the newest edition suggests they produce a lower flight, improved feel and maximum spin.
He said the stock shaft is the Dynamic Gold S200 steel, with some golfers preferring a lighter 105-gram version. Graphite shaft options include the new Tensei AM(2) Red model in either a 65- or 59-gram option.
Luttrell is a scratch golfer himself and plays regularly at Shadow Ridge, a Carlsbad, Calif. course frequented by other golf industry members. When asked, he quickly rattled off which Vokeys are in his bag – “a 46/10F, a 50/12F, a 54/12D and a 60/0T.”
Translated from gearhead speak, those numbers describe each club by degrees of loft, degrees of bounce angle and Vokey’s letter-based sole grind designation.
The six grind options are based on the notion that turf or sand interaction plays a critical role in fine-tuning the club to achieve the best results from a given swing. In alphabetical order, they are D, F, K, M, S and T. With so many choices, going through a fitting process eliminates the guesswork and mistakes that come from simply grabbing a new wedge off the racks.
Luttrell discussed the wedge-fitting app Titleist developed for club fitters and how it works.
“Everyone struggles to get fit for wedges in a consistent manner. There’s a lot of ambiguity to how to do that. What we wanted to do was take a more scientific approach. We had Bob Vokey fit a large number of players, and take those players in a room where we had motion capture cameras. That way we could see how they attacked each shot that Bob had them hit. They hit full shots, open face shots, they hit pitch shots,” Luttrell said.
He continued, “We took a look at how they were delivering as far as attack angle, shaft lean. We came up with an algorithm to be able to evaluate how that player was delivering it and what grind would best fit them.
“We also collected a bunch of information about where they play, what kind of bunker conditions they’re in, and collect[ed] feedback from the players as far as that goes. [We] also look at what their current set makeup is and what wedges would gap well off of that,” Luttrell said.
“As we did that, we created the algorithm. So now a player can come into an indoor setting or in an outdoor setting and hit anywhere from three to five shots with specific wedges and be told what grind to play, what lofts they should play, or [receive] a good recommendation based off of where they play and how they actually attack the ball for specific shots,” he said.
Luttrell continued, “The unique part of this is we’re using either a Trackman or Foresight launch monitor to measure their delivery, so [our] app actually talks to either of the launch monitors and collects data from them on carry distance, attack angle and shaft lean. It displays it to the golfer and the fitter and describes, ‘Hey, this is what is actually happening.’ The nice thing is we ask the golfer to evaluate where they use these wedges the most, and we have them hit those specific shots.”
“What we’ve realized over time [is] that a players’ full swing may be quite different from their pitching or open face delivery. So, we’re fitting the player for the shot they hit most with each wedge, rather than just what they would do for a full swing,” Luttrell said. “When you evaluate the wedges or the lofts with appropriate grinds, you have a better fit overall rather than just basing it off how they make a full swing.”
Imagine that, another compelling argument for club fitting to best match your equipment with your swing.
This is my shocked face.
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Fritz Schranck has been writing about the Cape Region's golf community since 1999. Snippets, stories and anecdotes from his columns are included in his new book, "Hole By Hole: Golf Stories from Delaware's Cape Region and Beyond," which is available at the Cape Gazette offices, Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach, Biblion Books in Lewes, and local golf courses. His columns and book reviews are available at HoleByHole.com.
Contact Fritz by emailing fschranck@holebyhole.com.
