On the latest episode of GOLF's Fully Equipped, former Titleist Tour Rep Larry Bobka tells the story of designing Tiger Woods' irons.
Tiger Woods has become one of the most meticulous and demanding players when it comes to his equipment, of all time.
But he wasn’t always that way. Most of his “training” in gear-nerd-dom can be traced back to former Titleist Tour rep Larry Bobka, who was responsible for helping build Woods’ first set of Titleist 681T irons in 1998 when he switched from the Mizuno blades he won the 1997 Masters with.
On the latest episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, Bobka recalled the story of crafting Woods’ irons to co-host Johnny Wunder and dispelled the long-standing rumors that Woods’ first Titleist irons were actually forged by legendary Japanese brand Miura, which was known to make irons for other brands.
"[They were] from Tennessee, Hoffman Forging,” Bobka said. “Yeah, it was actually, it was actually two. We had some older models from Titleist. So it ended up being, his long irons were one forging model and the mid and the short irons were another model."
Bobka originally wasn’t supposed to work with Woods on his irons. Woods initially worked with Terry McCabe, the Titleist VP of R&D, on them.
"So, one day, I get a call from Wally Uihlein [then-CEO of the Acushnet Company], Bobka explained. ” He goes, ‘Terry is going down to work with Tiger on a few prototypes that he made for him, and I want you to go down there too.’
“And I’m like, ‘Well, you know, I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes and whatever,’ but it’s like, well, you know, Butch [Harmon] had kind of called Wally and said, ‘Hey, you know, we kind of like to have the A team, we kind of like to have the best guy helping us out.'”
Bokba had a previous relationship with the Harmon family through Butch’s older brother Dick. So Bobka went and met Woods and Harmon for breakfast before a range session at Isleworth with McCabe to get a better sense of what he wanted in his irons.
After watching Woods hit balls for 90 minutes, Bobka had what he needed.
“Butch goes, ‘What do you think?'” he recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, I think I’m going to fly back to California. And I’m going to I’m going to make him some golf clubs.’"
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Bobka asked Woods if he made him three identical sets of clubs, would he be able to play a set picked from his favorite 2-iron, 3-iron, 4-iron, etc., from each set.
Woods told him yes, and then Bobka pointed out that the lengths of his Mizuno set weren’t progressive and he asked if Woods would want him to fix that.
“Yeah, cool. That doesn’t bother me,” Woods said. “I didn’t even know, I didn’t even know my clubs were kind of messed up like that. So yeah, that would probably be really good."
For present-day Woods, you could never sneak a bubble in the tape underneath one of his grips by him, let alone the lengths of his clubs being off by 1/16th of an inch. But for a young 22-year-old just beginning to take the golf world by storm, he was still learning.
Bobka went back to California and told Woods it would be a few weeks before he could get them made. But it wasn’t long before Woods asked for something else.
Woods had been messing around with a set of Ben Hogan Apex irons. They weren’t his spec, but he loved the way the irons interacted with the turf and he asked Bobka if they could incorporate the sole design into his irons. Woods sent them to Bobka to see for himself.
TaylorMade P7TW Custom Irons
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“They were actually the year that they, the only year when they tried to make a cast Apex in the 70s,” Bobka said. “But it had a little bit more camber front to back, and it had a little bit more roll, heel to toe, and he goes, ‘Can you put a little bit of that in my irons?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, of course I can.'”
The Hogans inspired the pre-worn leading edges on Woods’ eventual set of irons.
Woods loved the set manufactured by Hoffman, the Titleist 681Ts, but those irons were eventually used to make a template that would be manufactured by legendary Japanese forging house Endo Manufacturing.
It was a set made by Endo that Woods to go on his legendary Tiger-Slam run of 2000 and 2001, winning all four majors in a row.
For more from Bobka and Wunder, including how Bobka found Woods' Titleist 975D driver and why Butch Harmon kept a set of the 681Ts for his students to hit, listen to the full episode of GOLF's Fully Equipped here, or watch it below.
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