driver shafts why are they $350 when they cost 8 bucks to make somebody asked him once at a at a thing I was at what's the most important thing about when you're making a shaft designing a shaft the guy said color so all because we think prov1 is the best for a lot of people it's not the best for them the vast majority of people that will actually hurt you I don't care how far your seven iron goes I really don't care if you hit at 190 150 130 I don't care as long as that's how far it goes if it's not going far enough hit a six when you take a driver out of your bag you're trying to hit as far as you possibly can with accuracy when you take a seven iron out of your bag 19 times out of 20 you're trying to hit a number exactly right exactly right welcome back to the channel guys we got a new type of video we're going over the top 10 biggest myth in the golf industry and with us we got Bob kitchen mapa Hill Golf one of the top golf retailers in the nation you guys have been around for how many years 46 years going on 47 years yeah so all new used any type of golf club any type of golf merchandise product basically you guys sell yep and you're in it with everyone as opposed to like you know if we met with a titlist rep this interview might be a little different so be a little yeah Bob has the honest take and Ryan you can kind of go over what we did before to set this up and then we'll get right into it yeah so just for the viewers we previously met with Bob a couple weeks ago to kind of brainstorm what the top 10 myths in the golf industry would be um and like Jo said we could tell how animated he was so we had to calm him down a little bit to get him ready for this interview but one of the first ones we want to talk about is Juiced fitting so we talked about how do companies fudge numbers on golf simulators to make certain numbers look better for golfers when they're doing their fittings yeah like you're thinking you're hitting at 320 but in reality like do they change things do they actually change things or is that more of a myth H it's hard to change things from one club to the next as far as like if you put a boost on there you can put a boost on there you can juice the whole fitting what a lot of Fitters do is they skew the fitting so what I mean by that is you got a guy in there that's a 14 handic cap that needs like game improvement golf clubs and they'll give them a Players Club up the game improvement Club the game improvement Club is going further and straighter cuz they're comparing apples and oranges so if the if the consumer doesn't do a little bit of homework and know what they're walking into a little bit it's easy for them to get snow blown a little bit and kind of taken advantage of in my opinion which I do put most of that on the fitter the fitter needs to do the proper job you know like like you hope anybody is right you hope the policemen are doing their job properly you hope teachers are doing their job to the fullest you hope the fitter is doing his job to the fullest but I do know I've got back results from people in in different places especially those Boutique fittings where it's $250 or $350 and you get a 100% back as long as you buy the clubs from them on a jacked up price and I see what they hit and there'll be a guy that hit like Titus t00 Cobra tours CBS you know like blade blade and then it'll hit like a like a Callaway AI smoke which is a game improvement normal club and they' be like yeah look how much better I hit these smokes well so they'll literally give them like the worst possible clubs and they'll do one that's good for them they're like dude look at these look at these numbers now if the consumer's smart on enough and he goes I want to hit the AI smoke versus the tailor made Qi versus the Cobra you you have a much better chance of having a proper fitting I've always said follow the money and it's true it's follow the money like whoever's getting paid the most on it that's what they're going to push yeah yeah so in the end it sounds like it's a little bit on the consumers before they kind of go into those fittings to know what they're getting themselves into but in the end it can come down to the Fitters knowing that the consumers don't have that knowledge and they could take advantage of it a littleit abely we talked about the bad clubs versus good clubs in the fitting have you ever seen Fitters just like elevation 10,000 when they're heading driver so all the drives are just carrying way farther is that more of like an actual myth there I think that that's maybe more of an actual myth I think you can screw around with some of that on some of the different fitting things but the my point is is that it's hard to put that on driver a and not driver B even if you do have that jacked up or if you have a 10% power boost or 20% power boost or any of that BS on there it's hard to do that on this club and not that club yeah right all right that was great um I think this is a good tangent into the next one when is the best time for a golfer to get a club fitting because obviously if it's a new golfer they could take 10 shots and they could all be completely different swings so we need to see the best possible most consistent swings that golfer is capable of making so in season or when your swing is grooved so the guy that wants to come in and get fit in December and hasn't swung a club 11 60 days or or January in this lovely state of Michigan um sometimes that's tough like hey dude you've been hitting the range you got a simulator in your house or you've been hit using a simulator or X golf or any of that kind of thing if they have and they've been staying on it or if they're just pretty darn good and they got a pretty consistent swing anyhow fine let's do it if they haven't been at all that's tough that's really tough that's number one number two is if if we happen to be in Florida or California or somewhere warm where you can golf year round the best time to get fit is probably in like January February March while the old model's still around and the new model's coming out and you have an option of picking like hit a Qi 10 versus a Q35 see if it's worth another 100 or 200 or whatever the price difference is because then you've got a chance at like looking at not just different brands but different models from the same company because they're both around if you wait till June um odds are pretty darn good there'll be slim pickings for Qi 10s in come June right the older models will be harder to come by so basically like it's not necessarily your skill level for fitting but it's like is your swing consistent so if you're a 25 handicap but you have the same exact SM every time then it's probably good to get fitted but if you're all over the place then it's not as good yeah that's it that's it we need consistency if not like which swing do you want us to fit sir you know what I mean you just made 10 different swings six of them didn't look alike yeah four of them were kind of similar we'll just go with those four yeah so you like you said fittings obviously help but in the end it comes down to the player needing to go out and practice so I think that leads us kind of into our next one is it golfer's true goal to get better or not because for example we talked about how if you get a $500 driver versus $500 golf lessons we feel like nine out of 10 guys are going to choose if they have 500 bucks laying around and they're like I'm going to spend it on golf most guys would be like I'm going to get a brand new driver like most guys aren't going like oh let me actually get seven lessons um I believe some of them do the game of golf is to be enjoyed right it's a game that's why it's that's why we pay to do it it's not supposed to be aggravating frustrated like a lot of people turn it into are we trying to get better I don't know I think a lot of people are trying to buy the magic wand you know it's like take yeah like what what percentage 500 bucks what percentage of guys would you say spend that money on lessons vers a new club how many drivers do we sell a year ver how many lessons do we give a year probably 20 drivers for every lesson yeah so that's kind of the answer right there that's a that's a guess but that's a great question as far as are we trying to get better or not I don't know I think the game should just be enjoyed like don't take it too serious almost like whatever level that is personally for you whatever enjoyment that you're trying to get out of it it's almost on a personal level obviously and that could be buying a new driver yeah like that it could be that you might you know that might bring you more enjoyment at least in the short term than the lessons all right and then I know you hinted at this one before and this one we could tell when we were talking with you earlier really got Bob heated up over here so let's address the the big one that I think we'll be excited to talk about was the I swing so hard that I need a stiff shaft all right this one drives me crazy so um well what swing speed do you uh need for that shaft I don't think that tour Pros or teaching Pros or PGA Pros or live tour players just go based on their swing speed and then match it up to a shaft it's just about performance that's it so this shaft Flex thing and I swing really hard my buddy says I swing really hard he's really good at golf he knows a lot my goodness stop stop if you're right-handed this stiffer the shaft is the more right the ball's going to go you go to my driving range on any given night 85% of people are hitting it to the right either pushing it or they're hitting a pull cut and the ball's ending ending to the right it's estimated that 85% of the population is playing a shaft that is too stiff for their swing I think it's higher than that I think 85 is too low I think it's more like 90 95% because the male ego is a is a dangerous thing right and uh I swing really hard you know I need a regular Flex so or stiff Flex or extra stiff flex no sir you need a regular Flex what like I it'd almost be better if it didn't say anything on it you know like a one star two star three star the point of the whole thing is and the whole shaft flex and I need extra stiff let results dictate what you need not swing speed not statistics I want the golf ball going as far and as straight as humanly possible whatever the hell it takes to get there that's what you should be using right real quick story I was at the PGA show maybe 5 years ago down in Orlando where I just saw you guys and standing there Believe It or Not Chi-Chi Rodriguez walked up to this booth and he was looking at this uh new driver from this company and he happened to know the same guy I know and he walked up to the guy and he's like hey um is this a new one and the guy says yeah it sure is and he says send me one will you he goes yep you got it he goes you want a 105 or 12 he goes give me a 105 he goes what shaft he goes ladies he walked away and I went over to him and I said excuse me Mr Rodriguez I said my name is Bob kitchen I'm in the golf business I grew up watching you when I was a little kid did you just say ladies he goes yeah I've been playing ladies for like the last 10 to 15 years what I was like really he goes yeah it goes further I was like okay thanks for answering my question question have a great day good for him yeah he plays men's length obviously but he plays a L's Flex to hit it further that's crazy yeah yeah I never I did not know that I I think I feel like I reached so much in the golf and I did not know like really you think about it like you're going to hit it a little farther if it's less flexible you know that's kind of crazy well it's it has a the more flexible it is the more lag it has the more lag it has the more whip it has the more whip it has the harder it's going to hit the ball so the the the guy that really wants to hit it further and is all about distance go as flexible as you can with finding your ball yeah all right moving on to the next one is golf equipment actually getting better or is it all just advertisements promoting them and showing them to be better that's a good question so it depends on how how outdated the person's product is that they're currently playing like the difference between a Qi 10 to Qi 35 going back to tailor made for a minute like are you going to go out and shoot five Strokes better with it instantly I wish I could say yes but no I don't I couldn't in good conscience say yes to that question now if you have a tailor made R7 or R9 or R11 or or one of those white white ones from back in the day like yeah you can improve off of that some of that stuff was pretty spinny and but like from year to year it's a lot of its marketing and everybody wants the new one everybody you know there's there's the new iPhone comes out the new car comes out the new anything comes out people there's a buzz about it and you kind of got to keep that to stay relevant like Taylor Made and Callaway have kind of those two brands in particular have kind of painted themselves into a corner where they kind of have to launch something every year whereas Titleist and ping go 2 years and they're like this is what we're going to do for 2 years we're not coming up with a new club and ping used to say I don't know if they still do but they used to say if it's not better we won't make it so they had ping had that I2 iron back out in the ' 80s and '90s probably before you guys were born but they had that Golf Club out I think it was out for 13 years without a replacement they had no new club CU they couldn't build anything that worked better so like from one year to the next n if you have something that's three four years old it's probably worth switching for you kind of hinted a little bit at our next point that we'll talk about in your description of the last one but wanting lower Loft lower spin to make the ball go farther so do golfers actually need that lower Loft lower spin driver or not necessarily everyone it's a it's the best analogy I've ever had and you have to kind of bear with me from that but take a hose turn the water on full blast MH hold that hose high low somewhere in the middle that Waters me squirting out at a per at a perfect trajectory landing on the pavement and running away from you yeah right go turn the water pressure down when you turn the water pressure down you have to raise the hose to get it to go exactly right now if you have a fire hose off of a fire truck which is really moving water fast you can hold it at any lower angle than what you kind of Hose right so that's a tour pro uh regular hose at full blast is maybe a average guy like like us three maybe you guys are younger than I am but uh and then you got your our parents that don't swing as hard they're the ones turn the faucet down need need to increase the the launch of the of the water to get it to go as far as possible that's a really makes sense makes sense it's it's an easy one to understand because water pressure is very much like swing speed here's a here's an interesting one that I heard when I was at ping years ago we won Regional fitter and ping flew us out there and they had Lee Westwood who isn't one of the longest hitters but obviously at the time he was number two in the world right behind tiger phenomenal golfer right he's been on PING staff since forever kind of your build if you ever met Westwood or no no but he's a he's just absolutely jacked just ripped out of his mind really attractive 10 out of 10 on the low Westwood is is gold right and he's been with ping forever and he's got a very repetitive swing right he's the best there was as far as repetition how fast his hands move from the top to impact and how fast they they tracked like it was a 70 or 80y old female how fast her hands move from here to impact it was like 2 miles or 3 mph difference hand speed how fast their hands move from here to he Westwood was barely faster than a 7y old so he's like swinging slow he's a his Club head speed because how he lagged it and how the thing was moving was like 50 m hour faster how the club head moves so Hand speed oh so he's able to maneuver his hands the same speed as an old lady but he's a little faster than an old lady as far as as far as how fast his hands are moving but the club how because the club's longer too right so how fast the club is moving is is gigantically different that's crazy so what he needs versus what she needs is night and day difference even though their hands aren't really moving that much different as far as from the top to impact so figuring that out there's a point of diminishing return if the ball's moving 150 mph close to it you need to move the golf in that 11 to 13 launch and you need to keep your spin in that 22 to 2600 range and you can manipulate the numbers up and down a little bit and kind of mess with it and see what like what's on the screen right now and I'm looking at ball speed 156 total spin 2177 that's smash Factor 1.5 that's all really good numbers that was my last Drive last night and then and then I decided I was like you know what I'm just going to end La 12.1 is that VA yep okay so that that's really good so that you you're not going to do much better well you know where I got fitted right yeah of course well I'm going to change it off here because not going to do much better than that I don't care what well I'm I'm the opposite because when I went and got fitted like you know when I first started out people were like dude you're already crushing it if you got a lower Loft and lower spin driver you'd be crushing it even more but I am like if I wasn't fit if I wasn't fit right those numbers would be like potentially 7 to 8 degrees launch spin at 1,600 and my Ball's not getting out of the air so I kind of knew the answer to this one but like it is almost like a pulley system because for me I needed to launch higher and to spin more to get more distance but not everyone knows that right you know right all right moving on to the next one golf balls do golfers actually need to be out here playing the nicest newest Pro ons or can they just play what they found in the woods yeah I will tell you he was a Woods golf ball player for until you joined on with us and you know I probably didn't I probably bought one box of balls in my life yeah started seriously but say you just play a ball for a little bit and you keep it how much of a difference is there actually between having to use ball for that long oh Ed ball new ball they did a study on that one time I remember seeing it back when Golf Digest was the rage and they did a perfectly new ball one with a little bit of mud on it one that was slightly scraped like a cart path and like they were all within like three yards okay like from a brand new ball so I mean I don't read too much into that I I just kind of hit it and go if it's if it's really bad if it's got something hanging from it like a skin hanging from it one of the urethane balls like a prov1 that might affect the wind a little bit but other than that I just rip it and go so essentially the the average golfer 10 to 20 handicap weekend warrior whatever as long as the ball is not cart pass scuffed has any markings on it like whatever you're pretty much fine no difference really whatsoever so all because we think prov1 is the best for a lot of people it's not the best for them for the vast majority of people that will actually hurt you all right moving along the line uh driver Shack why are they $350 when they cost eight bucks to make yeah we we talked about that briefly so marketing is the answer to that question and profit margin is also the answer to that question so we were talking before we were talking about the fitter golf stores all that kind of thing they want to make as much money as they possibly can so um follow the money follow the money follow the money follow the money so if you got a shaft that's $350 retail the markup on that shaft I can tell you for a fact cuz I sell them is gigant antic so we don't sell them for retail or even close to it um we we try to give the best possible deal I'm not blowing smoke I'm telling you the truth we try to literally give the best possible deal we can on everything but most stores just well retail that's what it is you know would you like one and the markup is just gigantic so of course you'd rather make $175 on a shaft than sell a shaft for $75 so what do you think they're going to try to sell you they're going to try to sell you the one that's they're making more money on two two things I heard over the years that were really important one was from graphite design right their shafts are all $3 $350 like very expensive somebody asked them once at a at a thing I was at what's the most important thing about when you're making a shaft designing a shaft the guy said color I was like really the shaft business is just absolutely incredible and you can you can buy a $40 Shaft or $350 shaft and hit great shots of both of them right it's just branding it's like the $80 like at some point there's a difference but like once you get to those $80 $100 shaffs they not much different than I'm guessing than the 3 $50 ones almost none and I I try to tell people that every day like like go try this it's almost exactly the same and you're not going to notice a difference in performance it's you know especially if the guy's like a 10 handicap or higher there there's no chance you can tell a difference your str's not good enough yeah if the guy's a two three4 handicap maybe maybe oh the other thing I was going to say the second point one was color the other thing the guy told me this was a different company that's no longer prominent but they're still around it's not Fuji Cara one of the one of the major brands that's currently a player but this guy told me that they often times take shafts unpainted and give them a new name new marketing and it's the exact same product they've already had relaunch it under a new name and say here hey look at this new one and people go oh my God that's so good and they go running after it that's crazy it's not even different at all it's just there graph so like yeah like with drivers it's like sometimes from year to year there's like one little cosmetic change and you're like those are the same but you're literally saying with driver shafts it will be the exact same just paint it different a different name exactly all right well the next one we've kind of already talked a little bit about but we can either kind of piggy back off that or add some new topic around it but lessons so should I or shouldn't I get them whether you're kind of the weekend warrior that just likes to have fun or whether you're actually trying to improve at what point should or should you get lesson my answer to that is always like what's what's the goal like I think people need to be honest with themselves about their goal you know like are you really trying to get better at golf or you trying to enjoy it more you want to not be embarrassed when you're playing a scramble like I just want to be able to hit the ball and get it in the air okay great if you take a three pack of lessons and practice a little bit maybe here and there you'll at least get in the air and get it moving won't be embarrassed and then how much you practice in between like all those things you really need to be honest with yourself and a lot of people oh you know I'm going to practice this way this much in between like okay make sure it actually happens then if you're going to do that if you're just planning on taking lessons not doing anything about it and expect to it better you might not you know what I mean like you can't just go to the gym once a month and just expect to be strong true that's not exactly how it works so for like a new golfer like the lessons even if you don't practice are probably good to get some basics down but then once you get to a decent level it's like you need to practice what you're being taught in order to actually see a benefit from it yeah exactly and it's really good to start off with good habits as opposed to try to break bad habits once somebody starts bad habits it's really tough to break and I don't think that Scotty Sheffer when he started Golf let's say he started at age eight or 10 or however old he was I don't think his first lesson was how to hit a draw and how to hit a cut yeah it was how to grip the club how to where the ball position goes and how to swing a golf club semi- properly and then when he was probably at 15 16 years old his coach was like all right let's try to get you to you know you need to be able to hook it on demand and Faded on Dem man here's how you do that that's the progression that's how it works if Scotty Sheffer only knew how to hit it straight he'd still be really good right right if he didn't know how to hit a hook and a and a slice on demand he he's that good he can Chip and Putt he hits the ball straight so what are we trying to do are we trying to enjoy the game more are we really trying to improve what and just kind of go from there but if you find a good instructor lessons are wonderful and it's a good thing to get get out of the house get away from the phone just go hit some golf balls and you know enjoy yourself which is the goal of golf all right well last up on our list for top 10 myths in the golf industry would be the decrease in Loft in irons over the years so do irons actually go farther or in reality are they just kind of jacking the ler right right right it's called Tech ology versus specy um so like Ping I 2 we we referred to that earlier today so ping I 2's pitching wedge back when they were first made in the late 70s the pitching wedge was 52° the N9 iron was 48 and then the eight iron was 44 now the pitching wedges of almost anything you buy is 44 cuz I was thinking you're going to say 48 so you're saying it's four degrees difference in irons generally speaking no but it was 52 when did you say the 52 pitching wedge then 489 iron 448 iron okay and now it's 44 pitching wedge so from 52 to 44 yes yeah 8 degrees that's over how many years 40 which is like it's a I mean is that a two Club difference right probably with the shaft length maybe more because they've been able to thin the face too so there it do they go further if we had today's technology and we use the old Lofts they they'd go further because the face is thinner different Metals Etc there's more technology in what we're dealing with now than P if you look at a ping I 2 it's pretty and it was groundbreaking at the time like oh my God nobody had ever made a cavity Back cast golf club like like that everything was blades and hard to hit and suck and Carston soham comes along the founder of ping and was like this is too hard let's make it easier let's widen the soulle move the center of gravity down give it a cavity back so there's more perimeter waiting give more generous on offc Center hits called forgiveness great and then ever ever since then that's what everything is so do they go further yes they do are the Lofts jacked yes they are are the lengths jacked yeah some of the lengths are jacked too but also as you lower CG Center gravity move weight to the bottom of the golf club the ball wants to naturally go higher cuz there's more weight below the ball puts more spin on it spin increases lift the pitching wedge of today like a 44 pitching wedge versus the old ping I2 52° pitching wedge if you hit them both the Ping would probably go slightly higher but you'd be surprised how similar they are as far as trajectory now here's the thing that drives me crazy so three irons back in the day were 21° now four irons are like 21 to 20 mhm okay so bear with me we used to go 52 to 21 that's 30 1° right was the range of Lofts you got in your set of golf clubs now most sets don't come with a three anymore they just come a four through pitching wedge so now we got seven clubs but they go like 20 to 44 call it that as a as a good number so that's 24° we used to have 31° now we have 24° in order to actually get the golf ball in the air you need a certain amount of Loft on a 3on or 4on whatever like if if they would have taken a three iron from 21 to 8° Stronger would be 13° nobody get it in the air you you can't launch a 13° iron so you can't jack the loft of the low clubs you could Jack The Lofts of the of the high high lofted clubs so the range of lofs that the consumer is being sold now is worse but because they they haven't they haven't lowered the for iron as much as the pitching wedge so it's like they lowered them all at the top end or you know the pitching wedge end and then not as much on the four iron end it's compression and Loft like and that's why these guys are like I can't hit a four iron I can't hit a five iron because the differentiation and Loft is so minimal that it doesn't make any difference in distance it's it's not really a different club like all it's not really a different Club exactly right they have two clubs that are doing pretty much the same thing plus the five iron's a half an inch longer than the six iron so it's already harder to hit it doesn't have enough Loft they can't get the damn thing in the air I don't care how far your 7 iron goes I really don't care if you hit it 190 150 130 I don't care as long as that's how far it goes if it if it's not going far enough hit a six it was going too far hit an eight that's why they gave you a whole set of iron when you take a driver out of your bag you're trying to hit as far as you possibly can with accuracy when you take a seven iron out of your bag 19 times out a 20 you're trying to hit a number exactly right exactly right so how how far do you want your irons to go the further it goes the more a problem it creates on the short end you didn't solve anything you just created a different problem yeah you know what I mean now well we yeah my pitching wedge used to go 120 and now it goes 130 okay so now what are you going to do for 120 sir cuz that yardage is going to come up yeah so now you need another gap wedge so that's why you see these sets that come with a pitching wedge approach wedge gap wedge Sand Wedge lob wedge like now we have two Gap wedges holy moly so we've gone too far and we need to dial it back so that's and that's what you're seeing as they're taking they're bringing the lofs back up now CU we've gone hopefully we we went too far yeah we went too far that makes sense I don't know if you're an NFL fan but it almost reminds me of right now this is the first year in like 10 plus years where running the ball has more expected yards per play than passing yeah and it's that same it's almost like in the industry there's give and take you get two far one way then things start kind of resorting back and they change the rules for some of that too right like passing got really well I think I think the biggest well for the NFL in my opinion is all the linebackers got smaller to cover the pass M right and now it's a lot easier for the lineman to block them right when these kind of smaller guys so just which is a little bit of a different given different give and take but similar to like lower lofs now everyone's not hitting it they're hitting it too low like okay we're going to get the you know like they'll bring them back up the market we got more spin more control you know everything has got a little bit of a a little give and take a little bit of a v to it yeah that's the way it is thank you for doing this to us we appreciate you if you guys are going to buy anything golf related map Hill golf.com help our boy Bob kitchen out come on in