The fascinating tale behind Koepka’s Mizuno irons
By James Savage
So that’s now all four majors of the year won by players without club deals so is it a smart move on their behalf do you think?
It’s always tricky dealing with professional athletes. They are obviously the best in the world at their craft and you get to a level where you feel like you could play anything. The clubs don’t matter, it’s all me.
But you’ve seen it with Patrick Reed and Brooks where you’ve got two guys who rather than chase the money, they are playing what they think will make them the best golfer.
If you look at Tiger Woods signing with TaylorMade it has very much been a work in progress to get the right clubs in the bag. That means some stuff doesn’t work straight off the bat.
We’re the polar opposite to that because we got players saying ‘hey, this clubs work, I’m going to play them and we’ll figure out the rest further down the line’.
To me, if you’re a golfer looking for greatness, you find what works for you rather than sign a deal and hope you can make something work for you.
Are there other pressures when you sign a big money deal?
It’s added distraction when you’re looking to prove your worth.
For Sergio Garcia to go from a complete TaylorMade bag to a complete Callaway bag – that’s a 14-club change.
We’ve seen how difficult it can be just to get one or two clubs to change in somebody’s bag.
The ultimate way to do it is to start with performance then figure everything else out after.
Any given week you are playing for millions of dollars so it makes sense to get it right.
How will the relationship between the JPX irons and the MP irons work moving forward for Mizuno?
It had always been MP irons for the better player and JPX irons for the higher handicappers.
So we’ve been trying to change that way of thinking and put it more into a look and a design philosophy.
MP is for that super traditional, classy guy who wants a blade that doesn’t look too modern – that looks old school. A work of art, a thing of beauty.
And the JPX is more of a modern beauty – the lines, edges and finishes are different. It doesn’t speak to that old school blade guy. It speaks to that younger more aggressive, ‘millennial’ type guy if you will.
We don’t want to to be a choice of game-enhancement or game-improvement we want it to be traditional or aggressive.
More information can be found on the Mizuno website.
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James Savage
Former equipment editor of NCG. Inconsistent ball-striker and tea-maker.
