‘You’ve got to be prepared to have your heart broken by players’

Aaron Dill is Titleist’s Director of Wedge Relations. In this blog for NCG, Aaron talks about his early life in golf and what it’s like to be mentored by a Hall of Fame designer.

I got into golf like a lot of people did. It’s not like golf is just part of your life from birth, somebody introduces you to golf, and that somebody was my dad.

When I was younger my dad would take me out golfing and my best memories are just sitting in the cart with him. Just hanging out and having a snack, hitting a ball here and there, but it was basically just hanging out with my dad watching him play.

So I started when I was quite young, about 5, and I just loved the game. It made a lot of sense to me being outside, being with people that I cared about and had a good time with. As I got older golf was never in my mind to do it professionally, it was just something I liked to do as a hobby.

But I felt like golf was calling me as a career, so I studied that. Then, when I was 23, I got a call from Titleist.

That’s where I got my big start working on the fitting works van, which is a smaller version of the big tour van, which we have on the PGA Tour every week. It was my first entry experience in what that life is like. The travelling, the driving, the club building and all that stuff.

When I was doing that job I got to know Bob Vokey. Bob was very kind and allowed me to come into his office, work with his team, study from him, learn from him and make mistakes, and have him coach me through that process to get better.

It was that time and experience that showed Bob I was a hard worker and that I wanted to learn and that I was eager to get better. He was looking for somebody to teach. I didn’t realise that at the time, and I don’t think he realised at the time. At that moment I was just trying to learn from him. Two and a half years later he asked me to work on the PGA Tour for him and I’ve been doing it for 13 years since.

Bob is the best. Anybody who’s met Bob or talked to him knows he’s no different than you or me. He’s just a kind, generous man and he really wants to help people. It’s not about anything other than just helping players get better and learning and working for the brand and making the brand better. He’s just a great guy. When we first started working together we were employees, he was my mentor, and I was learning from him.

As the years have gone by we’ve become more like family so we have meals together, we hang out together, he hangs out with my kids, its really morphed into something deeper and special over the years so its been a really cool journey.

He taught me a lot about grinding first. If you’re learning to grind its really easy to just grind. But the question I always ask people is if you’re going to grind something off a wedge you need to ask yourself why are you doing it. What are you taking away and why?

• Related: What is wedge grind?

He taught me a lot about fitting, about what my expectations should be, how I should work with players, what I can expect.

He gave me a lot of great advice along the way which is to remain patient, take it day by day, don’t expect too much, be prepared to have your heart broken when players take clubs out of there bag, and just do your best every single week. If you do that you’re going to be successful.

He sort of ingrained that into his life when he was younger when he started golf and he shared that with me and I’ve used that ever since.

You can follow Aaron on Twitter.

More from Aaron Dill:

• Which tour player has the most unusual wedge setup?
• ‘Some players may use a wedge for a year, some change every two weeks’
• Have you got the right bounce on your wedges?

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