Nick Faldo's Equipment

[The Gachet]

Nick Faldo's gold plated Ping B60 kept in the PING Gold Putter Vault in Arizona.

 

One of two, the other is with Nick himself probably alongside his Pal 2 which he used in the 1987 British Open.

 

[The Gachet]

 

[jebb]

Great pics again Gachet and thanks for all of them.

One there from Sir Nicks's "Plastic Hair with a Dash of Harrison Ford" phase, and then one from the start of his golden era. Little did I realise while I was buying all the Wilson Staff gear that he was playing Mizunos most of the time.

Thanks again for the pics!

[The Gachet]

[quote name='jebb' timestamp='1308082573' post='3307152']
Great pics again Gachet and thanks for all of them.

One there from Sir Nicks's "Plastic Hair with a Dash of Harrison Ford" phase, and then one from the start of his golden era. Little did I realise while I was buying all the Wilson Staff gear that he was playing Mizunos most of the time.

Thanks again for the pics!
[/quote]
No worries jebb and hope all is well with you mate.

I have a load more to put up so as and when I find the time they will start appearing !

[The Gachet]

The Open Championship 1990

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jebb]

I can't recall a tournament I enjoyed more than The Open 1990.

Thanks again for the pics.

[tembolo1284]

The Gachet is the MAN!

[The Gachet]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Staffer]

[quote name='jebb' timestamp='1308253597' post='3312454']
I can't recall a tournament I enjoyed more than The Open 1990.

Thanks again for the pics.
[/quote]

The Open 1992. Some iron play.

[The Gachet]

Mizuno Bettinardi Bi-Metal Putter for Nick Faldo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[PKMillerJr]

Hi Jebb,

 

Hope all is well mate !?

 

In answer to your question, to be perfectly honest I don't know only because I unfortunately live in the past and am therefore more fascinated about his equipment from the early to mid 90's however I do know exactly where you are coming from with regards to those grips.............................these ones also really do it for me !

 

Ooh Matron !!!

 

 

Those were great grips! Wish they still made them!

[jsherm45]

I want that Mizuno visor Sandy Lyle is sporting at the top of the page.

Lookin' suuuper tight.

[The Gachet]

[u][b][size="4"]Nick Faldo talks technology, club fitting, and how he gets his clubs just right ![/size][/b][/u]

When TaylorMade decided to create the prototypes that would eventually become the Forged Tour Preferred MB, MC and CB irons, three-time British Open champion Nick Faldo was consulted early in the process. "It wasn't like we were beginners at making irons," says TaylorMade vice president of product creation Sean Toulon. "But I think what Nick brings to the table is, first, a passion and a love for equipment. Second, he's got an eye for the minutest little details. He gave us ideas and things to look for that we really hadn't seen before."

At his peak, that attention to detail drove Faldo to trim his nails on Mondays so he'd have perfect feel in his hands on Sundays. It pushed him to trek over two hours to meet with a club builder at Royal St. George's, site of this year's British Open, to get his driver re-shafted. It also helped the man Queen Elizabeth II knighted in 2009 become the No. 1 player in the world and a six-time major winner.

We sat down with Sir Nick to talk about how equipment has changed since his prime and what amateurs should do before buying clubs.

[b]Have you always enjoyed experimenting with your gear?[/b]

When I was a kid I just loved tinkering. I used to love cleaning my clubs. I had my own little workshop and got into things like filing them down, working with emery cloths and fiddling around with bounce on wedges. I used to hand-grind my wedges by putting a really coarse piece of emery cloth on the ground and hitting it to see where it scratched.

I wanted to learn things like when you leaned into it, what difference would it make and what different angles did on this sand wedge? So I learned where the sand wedge actually hits the sand, and how to create different shots.

I lived in a little terrace house when I started to play golf and I remember going to the front of the house, in the garden, putting a ball down on the concrete and thinking, 'All right, I'm going to use this sand wedge to hit a ball over my house and land it in my back garden.' Just to see if I could make it work and if I could handle a tight lie. That was a little bit of a scary moment. Gosh, that was moons ago, but I'll never forget it.

[b]And your tinkering only got more intense as you got older?[/b]

America was so far ahead of Europe at that time it was amazing. Jack Nicklaus used to come and play in the Opens, and I would look in his bag and see all these beautiful matched clubs. There was no lead tape on the back of the clubs. They had flex-tested shafts and then frequency-matched shafts — we never even had matched shafts in Europe at that time. You had to hit them, and if you liked it you kept [i]that[/i] shaft.

A lot of my shafts actually stayed in my clubs for a hell of a long time. I reckon I won all my majors with the same shafts. I just attached them to different heads. I could feel the difference. I did so much from feel and visual feedback. But now, in the scientific age, they know what the feedback is. You can start to replicate clubs.

[b]Do players today have the same intense knowledge about their equipment that players of your generation had?[/b]

I think a lot of guys on Tour don't even know how to put a grip on. To some extent, that's a good thing and a bad thing. Even with all the science, I'd still put my own grips on. I wouldn't depend on somebody else to do that because there is something about the way that I would stretch them and twist them.

I used to put my glove on and then grip the club, squeeze it, and go into impact position and twist it so I could feel like, "Okay, that's impact, that's the face." That's why you never wanted to change grips in our era. My God, you tried to get a set of grips to last you a season. And the worst thing was having to change a grip mid-season because you'd have this beautifully matched set of grips and suddenly you'd have one brand new one. Ahhh!

[b]Does tinkering around like that make you a better player?[/b]

I would think so. I think that for your own self-belief, you would want to look after your own equipment. Eventually all my shafts were flex-tested and frequency matched and I did all the grips. My clubs were balanced because of that. Everything about them was the same.

I don't know if that gave me an advantage over the competition, but in the early days you might get an ugly club sent to you and you can't play with an ugly club. Eight-irons were very tough to get looking pretty in that era.

[b]What was the toughest club for you to find?[/b]

It was the drivers and the longer stuff mostly, but the sand wedges were hard too because we used ones with curved or concave edges. You just didn't want to change them because the bounce was just perfect, the grip was just perfect, the shaft was tuned. I think I had a smart idea when I started having "practice wedges" instead of using "tournament wedges."

The driver of course was important and re-shafting mine was a real trick because of where I lived. I went down to St. George's to see Barry Willett because he was the guy who could do it and in that era it was a two-and-a-half hour drive.

I used to sit in the corner of his workshop, which was tiny. It was a shed with clubs and stuff everywhere. I would sit and gab, watching him work and fiddle away with all these clubs. He'd take the shaft out, put the pin in, add the glue and then wait 24 hours for the glue to set. So we'd risk it by hitting it a bit early.

That was terrible because you had to learn to adapt to the characteristics of [i]that[/i] club. You could have a driver that had a shaft that was maybe doing this, and a 3-wood that had a shaft that was doing that, and you had to know this! They all had a character to themselves.

[b]But today that process takes just a few minutes.[/b]

That was the best invention, the two-minute glue, because you could go in and heat up and try new clubs. Now we've got it down to 10 seconds. Adjustable drivers let you go click, click, click and there you go.

I still have great fun doing that, sneaking on the golf course with two drivers and setting up the weights differently. Does it really work? I set up the faces differently, start messing around with the weights and it's like, "Wow, these weights really do work! You can make a ball fade or draw with basically the same swing."

[b]With all of that in mind, how you recommend mid- and high-handicap golfers go about finding the right clubs?[/b]

I once made a foolish statement that about 90 percent of the golfers out there play with clubs that don't match their swing. I'd like to change that to about 98 percent.

A lot of people say that they can't feel the difference from one club to another, but I've proven that to be wrong.

I tell people that you've got to go out and try it. Folks tell me all the time, "I can't because I don't know that much about golf." It doesn't matter — you can pick two clubs, swing them, and feel the difference. You go, "I like that, but I don't like that." That's simply what you do. I think that is an absolute must.
[b]
* Note that his club builder the late Barry Willett in fact worked out of St. Georges Hill Golf Club in Weybridge and not Royal St. Georges in Kent as mentioned at the beginning of the article. [/b]

[tembolo1284]

Gachet...you should get a golfwrx award or something for your consistently rockin' posts!

[jaskanski]

Excellent post Gatchet - glad to see you're still keeping this thread alive!

[Nicknick]

Here is a photo of Faldo's Precept Tour Golf Ball as discussed above.

 

 

 

Yep! Everyone is right with there comments, Faldo was a big idol of mine and had everthing he had, infact thanks for reminding me why I had the Rossie putter!

 

Still a stack of Rextar balls and Precept Tour balls brand new in boxes somewhere as well, and still use bridgestone balls now.

[starsail85]

I think I play bridgestone balls because of faldo in my subconscious haha

[The Gachet]

Here is a Scotty Cameron Tour Pro Platinum Sonoma made for Nick Faldo (COA A019539) which recently sold for £710 on an auction website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[The Gachet]

Nick Faldo Tecnic Golf Shoes.

 

 

 

 

 

[85020]

I remember seeing him about 1984 or so at the Masters. He was playing a set of Macgregor Tourney Custom 985's. I wasn't much on clubs back the just noticed since I had some 985's myself.

[Cwebb]

[quote name='fiveunder' timestamp='1293148951' post='2856532']
For a big, strong fellow, Faldo didn't hit his irons very far compared to the numbers we hear on telecasts these days. Beyond the limitations of the ball, his irons had what I call a progressive loft. The long irons were set at what is still considered "standard" today but the mid and short irons were old school.

The lofts of the Mizuno TP 19 irons he used during that period were:(iron/loft) 2/18*,3/21*,4/24.5*,5/27.5*6/31.5*,7/36*,8/40*,9/44*,PW/49*.

It certainly worked for Sir Nick.
[/quote]

If a player doesn't want to use a Gap Wedge, those lofts really make a lot of sense. Nick cared only about efficient consistency and seemed to put all ego about distance completely out of his mind. It certainly worked well for him.

[dalehead]

[quote name='Cwebb' timestamp='1319474890' post='3711527']
[quote name='fiveunder' timestamp='1293148951' post='2856532']
For a big, strong fellow, Faldo didn't hit his irons very far compared to the numbers we hear on telecasts these days. Beyond the limitations of the ball, his irons had what I call a progressive loft. The long irons were set at what is still considered "standard" today but the mid and short irons were old school.

The lofts of the Mizuno TP 19 irons he used during that period were:(iron/loft) 2/18*,3/21*,4/24.5*,5/27.5*6/31.5*,7/36*,8/40*,9/44*,PW/49*.

It certainly worked for Sir Nick.
[/quote]

If a player doesn't want to use a Gap Wedge, those lofts really make a lot of sense. Nick cared only about efficient consistency and seemed to put all ego about distance completely out of his mind. It certainly worked well for him.
[/quote]

+1

Today's golfers want to hit their pitching wedge 140 yards. When they have a shot of 110-120 yards they have no club with which they can make a full swing. So they add a gap wedge. Previously players hit the same shot with what was then called a pitching wedge. They hit their 130-140 yard shot with what was then a 9 iron. Only difference? Ego.

[tembolo1284]

Nick Faldo Tecnic Golf Shoes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gachet, if I forgot to mention it...you rock sir!

[Thrillhouse]

this is my favourite thread on golfwrx

[jgpl]

[quote name='mat562' timestamp='1208877063' post='1033619']
The best shot I've ever seen was a Faldo 2 iron - I was standing pretty much right behind his 2nd to #18 in the World Matchplay final against Woosie in '89. Draped a soft 3 yard cut all over it for a winning eagle... The most perfect strike and flight I've ever seen.

It's a pity that any photos of him leaping in the air after he holed the putt will always feature a horrendous red 'Geometric George' Pringle sweater...
[/quote]

I remember it too - incredible strike with a butter knife

[QEight]

Nick Faldo Tecnic Golf Shoes.

 

 

 

8 3/4 only?

[The Gachet]

Nick Faldo Tecnic Golf Shoes.

 

 

 

8 3/4 only?

 

Just to clarify that these are not actually his own shoes.

[Vegaman]

[quote name='lotbean21' timestamp='1208863612' post='1033315']
Faldo was sponsored by Wilson, early on. I thought his first 2 Masters wins were with Wilson blades. He definitely used a Wilson TPA putter to win his first or second Masters.
I know Mizuno poached him after his second masters victory.
[/quote]

I don't think Mizuno "poached" him at all, back then Mizuno didn't pay players to use their irons. He probably used Mizuno because he thought they were the best irons available, hence the bag full of Mizuno irons even after he got signed to other brands..

[85020]

Taylor Made had the design for the TPA line of putters which was fairly popular among tour pros, most notably Nick Faldo. At the time, Faldo was a Wilson staff member despite the fact that he wasn't gaming any Wilson sticks. In an effort to change that, Wilson bought the patents from Taylor Made and began producing their own TPA putters. Unfortunately for them, Faldo liked the Taylor Made version and didn't like the Wilson version, so he never gamed the Wilson version. A few years later when Faldo left Wilson, the TPA patents were sold to King Cobra who then began producing their own version of the putters called the TPAi which were the same shape but with a yellow urethane insert in the face. [quote name='The Gachet' timestamp='1208864382' post='1033319']
It was always my understanding that he used a Wilson TPA XVIII black mallet headed putter in his early Master's wins but I read somewhere later on that it was actually the Taylor Made TPA XVIII version which looked identical !?

Not sure if anybody can confirm this but you would have thought being sponsered by Wilson in his early days that it would have been that version.
[/quote]

[The Gachet]