Nick Faldo's Equipment

[The Gachet]

[quote name='mat562' post='2158008' date='Jan 3 2010, 03:17 PM']For what it's worth, Sandy Lyle played a very similar set to those Tour Proven stamped TN87s when he finally won his World Matchplay title in '88. I distinctly remember thinking how odd it was that he'd ditch the TP11s that he'd had so much success with that season for another set.[/quote]
Interesting, good info Mat. I do remember seeing a Golf World magazine 'What's In The Bag' article for Faldo in 1990 and it did actually state his irons as TN-87's so I presume that these are the European 'Tour Proven' stamped model of the TN-87's. I am also pretty sure that they were never released to the public and that there were only made available to European Mizuno staff players.

[The Gachet]

Faldo suffered from tendinitis in 1990 as shown below using a built-up left grip in the US Masters on his irons and then subsequently using a tee peg to practice irons shots at the British Open.

 

"Later I was bothered by tendinitis, as early as when I won the British Open in 1990. The worst area: The "snuffbox" on my left hand, that little pocket at the base of the thumb and forefinger. At the '90 Open, my snuffbox was so sore I hit all my iron shots in practice using a tee. Everyone thought it was some new kind of practice technique, when in fact I couldn't take a divot."

 

Appears that he possibly had a similar problem at the 1991 British Open with there being some sort of build-up tape on his putter grip.

 

 

[mat562]

I reckon that tape was probably there as a reaction to using a left-handed putter Paul.

[The Gachet]

[quote name='mat562' post='2162251' date='Jan 5 2010, 02:12 PM']I reckon that tape was probably there as a reaction to using a left-handed putter Paul. [/quote]
Yeah, I thought something didn't look quite right about that shot ! Must be one of those mirrored photo's, not sure why they do it !?

[Mr. 67]

[url="http://www.golfsmith.com/products/18749/Lamkin/85TH_Anniversary_SURE_TAC_Tour_Grip#"]http://www.golfsmith.com/products/18749/La..._TAC_Tour_Grip#[/url]

Lamkin 85th Anniversary Sure Tac Grips @ Golfsmith for $2.19. NOT cord though.

[titleistmad]

Reading about the Rextar golf balls has jogged my memory and I remembered that I had a dozen lying around. I finally found them. They where bought in Florida in '94 (29.99 dollars), pro model 100 compression. I can't belive how soft they are, dig a nail into them and you can nearly mark the cover. Listening to the golf from the SBS it sound like the balls are going back to be this soft again.

[MrHavecamp]

Faldo never used a set of Wilson blades. Ever.

[MrHavecamp]

Faldo's irons were, in fact, a modified version of the European TP-19 model.

[The Gachet]

Nick Faldo's Scotty Cameron Del Mar III Tour Prototype is up for grabs.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/Scotty-Cameron-TOUR-We...=item2eaa3fcde7

 

 

 

[The Gachet]

Faldo never used a set of Wilson blades. Ever.

Correct, the only Wilson clubs he ever touched was a Wilson Staff JPII Sand Wedge in the late 80's and the irons he used in the making of the 1988 Nick Faldo's Golf Course video. Oh yeah, and he used a Wilson TPA XVIII Putter in the 1990 Golf Course Vol. 2 video obviously due to sponsorship even though he was actually using the Taylor Made TPA XVIII model in tournament play.

 

 

[mat562]

I hate to burst bubbles but he was playing a set of Wilson Staff Fluid Feels in competition for a short time in August 1987. For at least the four rounds of the Lawrence Batley tournament up at Royal Birkdale anyway. I got clonked in the shoulder by a Faldo drive at that year's event and had a gawp in his bag whilst Big Nick was cracking a joke at my shoulder blade's expense. A job lot of Fluid Feels was the result.

It's certainly true that he was apparently no fan of Wilson's tackle though, despite them presumably slipping a few quid his way for the best part of five years or so, and for the most part was a fan of the #1 iron in golf for most of his time with Wilson and even bagged a set of beryllium Eye 2s at one point in 1986. Other than that one tournament though, I can't think of another time when Faldo had Wilson irons in play.

It's total speculation on my part, but perhaps the weeks following his maiden Open title made Wilson more aware than before that their new No. 2 player (Langer was presumably their No. 1) was conspicuously bagging someone else's iron and someone at Wilson Towers made a good argument for getting a set of Wilsons in the bag - even if not for very long.

[The Gachet]

Actually I do now remember you mentioning this earlier in the thread and can see your logic with the possibility of it being related to Wilson becoming a little sensitive about their Open winning contracted staff player not actually using their clubs ! Fair play really.

Heard the story about the Ping Eye 2's, shot a 62 or something similar round Sunningdale and then complained that they went too straight !?

[jaskanski]

Anyone got any info on his bag in his early years as a pro? I've seen a bag on Getty images with Nick sporting an uber ported sand wedge - something like five holes drilled into it. Anybody know the details of it?

[The Gachet]

Anyone got any info on his bag in his early years as a pro? I've seen a bag on Getty images with Nick sporting an uber ported sand wedge - something like five holes drilled into it. Anybody know the details of it?

Here is that forementioned photo from 1978 and a couple of others from the early 80's but unfortunately I do not know anything about them.....................yet !

 

 

 

 

 

 

[acquadiice]

hitting the RAC wedge from TM yesterday at the SBS championship + using the new removable face plate TM wedges to show the groove change rule.

anyone catch that?

[chip75]

You might be referring to one of my earlier posts Gachet. The story was in Nick's biography around the time of his '87 Open win. It's a good read if you can find it. It starts out with Nick's first PGA win to his swing changes, sponsorship woes during those changes and his love of otters! Regarding the PING's with the old balata they were harder to work than blades and Nick's game was all about subtle changes in ball flight. Does anyone know if Nick ever used the Mizuno World Master driver or the funky Mizuno Hot Metal ET?

[jebb]

Does anyone know what model that iron he has in his hand on the cover of Golf Course video?

Great thread all.

[chip75]

I wonder if Nick's affinity to Mizuno's had anything to do with the tour van workshop wasn't it a Mizuno van and Mizuno craftsman (Turbo) which worked on all players clubs? Mizuno was the no.1 iron for years and years on the European tour I'd imagine players could get their clubs quicker than anyone else. Remember when players had a Callaway staff bag and only a couple of Big Bertha fw's in their it's amazing how many players have 13-14 clubs now from one OEM? Now nearly every OEM has their own workshop van.

[The Gachet]

[u][b]From his book 'Faldo - In Search Of Perfection' published in 1996:[/b][/u]

"With my golf equipment, it is more complicated, as I can only use clubs and balls that suit my game. At various times I have played with Wilson, Spalding and MacGregor clubs; now I use Mizuno. Usually the deals have been put in place before I have a set that I am completely happy with."

"In 1986, after a couple of years out of the limelight and a previous club deal having gone by the board, Karsten Solheim's Ping company was looking to get me interested in playing with their clubs. A set was sent over in the summer of that year and I tried them out in the European Open at Sunningdale - and went round in 62. After the way I had played, John Simpson from IMG came down eager to make the deal, but I don't know what he must have thought when I said, 'I'm sorry, John, these just won't do, the ball goes too straight !'

"I have always been a worker of the ball: I like to shape it left to right or right to left, never straight. The Ping's are fine clubs, but I just couldn't manoeuvre the ball in the way I wanted. Ping's are the frontrunners in perimeter weighted clubs, in which a much higher percentage of the weight is located at the heel and toe of the clubhead, giving a much wider 'sweetspot' than a traditional blade and are more forgiving to the handicap golfer. Their hooks and slices don't go as wide, but it was that very concept that made them unsuitable for me."

"I would advise any youngster aspiring to be a great player to learn the game using blades rather than the 'game-improvement' type clubs. That is the only way to develop a quality strike to see him or her through to the very top. Some of the top players now play with hollow-backed clubs, but learnt their trade with the blade. It is a bit like learning to drive with a gear shift before moving onto automatic transmission."

"The club that seemed right to me at that time was Mizuno. When they arrived in Europe in the mid-1980's, they had an approach to precision that was simply light years ahead of anything even in the States. In those days manufacturers would send you what they called a matched set of irons, and you could feel the differences in weight and shaft flex. That was when I learnt how to take clubs to pieces and check on all the vital statistics so that when I went on a course, I knew I truly had a matched set. Now I have a workshop in the back of the house, and I still check every club before I use it. It is nowhere near as necessary as it used to be, but having done so gives me that extra confidence that nothing has been left to chance."

"The high standards set by Mizuno have dragged most top club manufacturers up in their wake, but for me they remain the market leaders. I was tinkering with their clubs in 1987, but it was 1991 before we cemented the deal. It is a bonus that they are the company that has sponsored the tour workshop and have trained the personnel that man it. They are the only people I trust to tinker with my clubs apart from myself."

Continued below.................................

[chip75]

[quote name='The Gachet' date='09 January 2010 - 12:14 PM' timestamp='1263039252' post='2170577']
From his Faldo - In Search Of Perfection book dated 1996:

"With my golf equipment, it is more complicated, as I can only use clubs and balls that suit my game. At various times I have played with Wilson, Spalding and MacGregor clubs; now I use Mizuno. Usually the deals have been put in place before I have a set that I am completely happy with."

"In 1986, after a couple of years out of the limelight and a previous club deal having gone by the board, Karsten Solheim's Ping company was looking to get me interested in playing with their clubs. A set was sent over in the summer of that year and I tried them out in the European Open at Sunningdale - and went round in 62. After the way I had played, John Simpson from IMG came down eager to make the deal, but I don't know what he must have thought when I said, 'I'm sorry, John, these just won't do, the ball goes too straight !'

"I have always been a worker of the ball: I like to shape it left to right or right to left, never straight. The Ping's are fine clubs, but I just couldn't manoeuvre the ball in the way I wanted. Ping's are the frontrunners in perimeter weighted clubs, in which a much higher percentage of the weight is located at the heel and toe of the clubhead, giving a much wider 'sweetspot' than a traditional blade and are more forgiving to the handicap golfer. Their hooks and slices don't go as wide, but it was that very concept that made them unsuitable for me."

"I would advise any youngster aspiring to be a great player to learn the game using blades rather than the 'game-improvement' type clubs. That is the only way to develop a quality strike to see him or her through to the very top. Some of the top players now play with hollow-backed clubs, but learnt their trade with the blade. It is a bit like learning to drive with a gear shift before moving onto automatic transmission."

"The club that seemed right to me at that time was Mizuno. When they arrived in Europe in the mid-1980's, they had an approach to precision that was simply light years ahead of anything even in the States. In those days manufacturers would send you what they called a matched set of irons, and you could feel the differences in weight and shaft flex. That was when I learnt how to take clubs to pieces and check on all the vital statistics so that when I went on a course, I knew I truly had a matched set. Now I have a workshop in the back of the house, and I still check every club before I use it. It is nowhere near as necessary as it used to be, but having done so gives me that extra confidence that nothing has been left to chance."

"The high standards set by Mizuno have dragged most top club manufacturers up in their wake, but for me they remain the market leaders. I was tinkering with their clubs in 1987, but it was 1991 before we cemented the deal. It is a bonus that they are the company that has sponsored the tour workshop and have trained the personnel that man it. They are the only people I trust to tinker with my clubs apart from myself."
[/quote]

Thanks Gatchet you answered my answer LOL! On the Mizuno Hot Metal ET was that club created by Barney Adams?

[The Gachet]

Continued from his book 'Faldo - In Search of Perfection"

"Barry Willett, a professional and clubmaker, has been with Mizuno almost since the day they came to Europe. His problem in the beginning was that, as a Japanese company, they designed clubs for an average height that was two or three inches less than Westerner's, which resulted in clubs with a flatter lie - a shallower angle between clubhead and shaft - than is normal for taller people, and short shafts."

 

"Barry is the same height as I am, six feet three inches, and to start with he had trouble convincing them that for the European market, let alone America, they would have to alter some of the fundamentals. It was not until he stood one of their principal designers on a box, so that he was somewhere near Barry's height, that they understood the problem. They then sent their tallest clubmaker, a relative giant of six feet one inch called 'Turbo', to be their senior man on the European Tour."

 

"Another change they had to make was on the leading edge of the clubhead. The turf in Japan is dryer than elsewhere in the world, and tougher. Hitting shots off their fairways is a bit like playing from a doormat, so the leading edge of their clubs tend to be razor sharp. Use them over here and that sharp edge would just dig into the ground. The rounded edge is designed to give the club a bit of bounce as it goes through the turf."

 

Sadly, the great Mizuno clubmaker Barry Willett passed away in 2008.

 

 

Barry Willett, who has died, aged 70, was at the forefront of bringing to reality the vision of Neil Coles, Europe's Number One golfer in 1963 and again in 1970, to provide the burgeoning European Tour with a mobile workshop that would herald a new level of professionalism on the circuit.

 

Willett, once a two handicap golfer, and Coles forged a lifetime friendship after meeting at the St George's Hill Golf Club in Weybridge, Surrey, where Willett first pitched-up as a boy caddie in 1950 when Max Faulkner, who was to win The Open Championship in 1951, was the professional, and where Willett was to learn the trade of clubmaker under the studious eye of Lambert Topping, who in addition to succeeding Faulkner became personal clubmaker to King Hassan of Morocco.

 

Willett and St George's Hill, where his wife, Barbara, was to run the secretarial side of the business, were virtually inseparable but the lure of turning Coles's dream into reality took him away from the club after 35 years to spend much of his life in a mobile workshop on the edge of practice grounds at European Tour events throughout Britain and the continent.

 

The project started in 1984 when Willett set up a temporary workshop at The Open Championship at St Andrews where Seve Ballesteros, who as a 17-year-old had visited Willett at his St George's Hill workshop, was to win the second of this three Opens. In fact many top professionals, including Nick Faldo, the winner of six Major Championships, would choose to visit Willett and his clubmaking team at St George's Hill in the then closed season to "fine tune" their equipment.

 

Nevertheless the success of the 1984 Open Championship equipment facility persuaded Coles, who had also become Chairman of the PGA European Tour Board of Directors, with Willett to plan a mobile workshop to follow the players on The European Tour and to help bridge the gap in standards between the European and the United States Tours. After Japanese club manufacturers Mizuno embraced the concept, Willett marshalled the service.

 

The Mizuno Official European Tour Workshop quickly became a fixture as did Willett at the helm of a popular team that initially included driver Pat Dent and two Japanese technicians. In effect Willett, who at 6 foot 4 inches towered over the Japanese craftsmen, became the man the professionals came to see for their pit stops and the Mizuno state-of-the-art workshop was a hub of activity next to the driving range throughout the week.

 

Willett admitted to having an ambivalent relationship with his on-the-road role – "When you're on the road, you want to be at home and when you're at home you want to be back out there," he once said – but both home and away few people enjoyed life more than the genial Willett and without question everyone who worked with him, including so many of the world's leading golfers, will miss his kindly word and knowledgeable insight.

 

Barry Willett, who retired in 1998 following the PGA Championship at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England, and who courageously battled illness for several years, leaves his wife, Barbara, and their daughter, Kim. Andy Kikidas, spokesman for Mizuno said: "Mizuno can be forever grateful to Barry for being so instrumental in the introduction, development and promotion of the brand in Europe. As both a craftsman and a respected statesman within golf he was held in extremely high regard by everyone at Mizuno and by many of the top players around the world. Barry's achievements were never made at the expense of the people around him. He led his field for many years and set high standards in everything he did. We will remember a big, warm-hearted man who entertained and counselled us all for many years and we'll dearly miss him."

 

http://golf.mizunoeu...icle=2008_07_28

[lead]

Great reading guys!

[chip75]

They don't make them like they used to. From the archives...

[Caldymat]

great articles, amazing reading and easy to forget how good faldo was

[KevCarter]

[quote name='chip75' date='10 January 2010 - 08:32 AM' timestamp='1263133930' post='2172428']
They don't make them like they used to. From the archives...
[/quote]

COOL pics Chip!

Thanks,
Kevin

[The Gachet]

[quote name='chip75' date='10 January 2010 - 02:32 PM' timestamp='1263133930' post='2172428']
They don't make them like they used to. From the archives...
[/quote]
Great archive pictures chip, I recognise them from the Mizuno TP golf brochure back from the early 90's. Do you have any of the pictures of the pages from the wedges section !?

[chip75]

[quote name='kevcarter ' date='10 January 2010 - 02:54 PM' timestamp='1263135299' post='2172460']
[quote name='chip75' date='10 January 2010 - 08:32 AM' timestamp='1263133930' post='2172428']
They don't make them like they used to. From the archives...
[/quote]

COOL pics Chip!

Thanks,
Kevin
[/quote]

Thanks Kevin... I wish I had some of my older Mizuno catalogues they had great stuff. I remember a Maruman catalogue from the early '90's it had four or five sets of blades in it. Mizuno could release any of those blades as a limited run and I think they'd fly of the rack.

Faldo ID's.
[attachment=520135:nfid.jpg]

[chip75]

[quote name='The Gachet' date='10 January 2010 - 03:25 PM' timestamp='1263137105' post='2172498']
[quote name='chip75' date='10 January 2010 - 02:32 PM' timestamp='1263133930' post='2172428']
They don't make them like they used to. From the archives...
[/quote]
Great archive pictures chip, I recognise them from the Mizuno TP golf brochure back from the early 90's. Do you have any of the pictures of the pages from the wedges section !?
[/quote]

I only have '97 onwards hope these help Gachet. I always regret not picking up the shoes when they went down to £30 a year later I'm such a Scrooge LOL!

[attachment=520163:03.jpg]
[attachment=520164:04.jpg]
[attachment=520165:02.jpg]
[attachment=520166:01.jpg]

[The Gachet]

They don't make them like they used to. From the archives...

Great archive pictures chip, I recognise them from the Mizuno TP golf brochure back from the early 90's. Do you have any of the pictures of the pages from the wedges section !?

I only have '97 onwards hope these help Gachet. I always regret not picking up the shoes when they went down to £30 a year later I'm such a Scrooge LOL!

Wow, cool ! It's great to see this old stuff again, much appreciated chip and thanks very much for posting !!!

[chip75]

They don't make them like they used to. From the archives...

Great archive pictures chip, I recognise them from the Mizuno TP golf brochure back from the early 90's. Do you have any of the pictures of the pages from the wedges section !?

I only have '97 onwards hope these help Gachet. I always regret not picking up the shoes when they went down to £30 a year later I'm such a Scrooge LOL!

Wow, cool ! It's great to see this old stuff again, much appreciated chip and thanks very much for posting !!!

 

Thanks Gatchet and thanks for all the work you've put into this thread. Do you know if Nick used the Dual Force Rossie mallet or the smaller Dual Force Rossie 2 to win the Masters?