StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - Golf Tech and Astrophotography, with Jimmy Walker and Neil Tyson

Episode Date: May 9, 2019

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel…. Golf technology and astrophotography – these worlds collide as hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice sit down with professional golfer and astrophotographer Jimmy Walker, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Matt Plumb, former Global Product Line Manager for Nike Golf Clubs.Photo Credit: TourProGolfClubs [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)] Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. And this is Playing With Science. Today we explore the universe with the 2016 PGA Championship winner, Jimmy Walker. If you ever wondered where geeks and jocks collide, you are in the right place because it's right here and it's right now. Yeah, and check this out. Jimmy Walker has his own personal telescope in the Atacama Desert, trained on the stars, so when he's not sinking putts, he's shooting stars, because we can let him hook up with our best friend,

as you know him better as your own personal astrophysicist, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. But it's not all about amazing astrophotography. Jimmy draws us into the golf tech that's reshaping the clubs, the courses, and even the players themselves. Plus, giving us the inside knowledge on golf tech is former global product line manager of Nike Golf Clubs and now Nike Golf Shoes, Matt Plum. Yep, it's going to be one of those shows. And yes, you are going to love it. All right, Chuck, let's introduce our guest.

Absolutely. He's the 2016 PGA Championship winner. He's a six times on the PGA Tour so far. He's been selected to two Ryder Cup teams and one President's Cup team. I believe that's where we talked to Jeff Ogilvie. Yeah, yeah. On that same team. And one of the PGA Tour star players, literally and figuratively,

which I can't wait to get into that because we'll find that out in a minute. Yeah, it's none other than Mr. Jimmy Walker. Jimmy, welcome to Playing With Science, sir. How are you? I'm good. Thanks for having me on today, guys. I like how you said six wins and basically counting, so that was good.

Yes. We're not writing you off. We never write you off, my friend. We have the good doctor with us, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. And you and this one, I can't say surprised, but intrigued me. You're an astrophotographer, sir. That's amazing. How on earth did you get into that?

I think it all stemmed as a kid. I had a telescope and looked at the moon. And I got older and our first child was being born. It was kind of one of those deals where I was always interested in it. My wife said, hey, what do you want for Christmas? I said, how about a telescope? It started there. I was fascinated with all the pictures and stuff that I'd seen that everybody had been taken, especially from amateurs.

I said, man, that'd be pretty cool. Let me try that in my backyard. Well, I figured you couldn't. I learned that you couldn't do that very well from the city lights. And so it just turned into an obsession to get to darker and darker places. And I got better and better equipment. And that's how it all started. So I got nothing against golf.

I'm only here because of your astrophotography. I just want you to know that in this interview. Yeah. I appreciate it. You're not getting a free round of golf there, Neil. You know you've talked yourself out of that. I guess so. That's all right.

It's been an incredible experience. I've had so much fun doing it. Jimmy, I have to ask you, because I'm on your site. Yeah, he's got a website. Yes, I was about to say. This is not just a private, secret avocation. Right? Plus, I have to say something.

Go ahead. He referenced amateur astronomers. An amateur astronomer is an expert in the night sky. That's right. Do not confuse amateur astronomer with amateur neurosurgeon. night sky that's right do not confuse amateur astronomer with amateur neurosurgeon or some profession where you would not go to them if the word amateur showed up on their door by the way that's why i have no feeling in my left leg amateur neurosurgeon so so amateur astronomer is actually a badge of honor in our field these are people who live for their access to the night sky.

Yeah. And it made it a hobby like none other. And they're the ones who can get you around. And just ask them about their telescope and they'll talk to you for the next hour.

Well, that's... Jimmy, what do you pack? Okay. Excuse me. I got them now. Go ahead. What do you pack? What do you have?

I'm using a 16-inch Ritchie Cratian. Excuse me. And it's a pretty good size. Yeah, you're not. Pretty good size scope. That's called a non-portable telescope. It is.

Yeah. I actually just got it set up in the Atacama Desert in Chile. I mean, literally like three days ago. So we shipped it out from California, and it's literally in Chile right now. You just lost your amateur status. You know that, right? Yeah.

I don't do anything half-assed. Chuck is checking out your website and I'm sort of rubberneck here. Wait, wait, wait. I got it. That's awesome.

One other thing. The Atacama Desert, look it up in the Guinness Book of World Records. It is the driest place on Earth. It's never rained. It has never rained.

And the little bit that it was raining, I think somebody was peeing at the time. Oh, TMI. And rain comes from clouds. So it's basically one of the cloudless places on Earth. So he knows where he puts his telescope. Wow. Yeah, 320 clear nights a year. 320 clear nights a year.

That's a pretty good run, I got to say. Shut up now. No, no. It's great to see you so excited. Jimmy, we've never seen him this excited to have a guest on. Especially a sports guest. Yeah. You've got to talk us through Dark Skywalker,

because it sounds like half Sky at Night, half Star Wars. So you better explain for a novice like me. I mean, you know, I'll take credit. I came up with it all by myself. It was just a nice play off of, you know, Dark Sky and Skywalker and Star Wars and just tying it all together.

And I was actually shocked that the domain name was available when I looked for it. But that was it. I just thought it was a good play on words and it was, you know, it's kind of Dark Skywalker. Oh, you can see different ways. So it was good. I loved it. So Jimmy, I'm looking at these images and for those of you interested at home, And for those of you interested at home, it's darkskywalker.com. All right. And you'll see Jimmy's images.

These are so stunning. And they're so professional. I have to admit. No, they're so amateur. They're so amateur. Yes, I take that back. In my field. Right. That's the biggest compliment.

Most professional astrophysicists can't do that. Can't do that. They don't know how to do that. They're so amateur and they're so professional. Yeah. I honestly thought you took these off of NASA.com and just slapped your name on it or something. But how do you process these?

What is the process of coming up with this final image i'm just i'm just curious i it's got to be it's got to be intense you don't have to get into the weeds photoshop gets such a bad name today because everybody thinks it's it's correcting flaws and people spaces and the whole hollywood deal but photoshop is actually an incredibly powerful software program and that's what all the hubble images are put together on it's what all the mars rover stuff and it's all spliced together all using photoshop so it's an incredibly powerful program and that's what i use um so when you take a picture you're not paid by adobe i'm not. I'm not. I should be. That's funny. But I mean, it's just like it takes a lot of time. It takes

hours and hours and hours of data to get a good signal. You got to think when you're shooting into the middle of the dark sky, there's nothing there. You have to accumulate a lot of light and a lot of soak time on a picture. So I use a monochrome camera,

so I have to go red, green, and blue and shoot for each color. And then I do a black and white for all the detail. And by the time you get done with it, a lot of these pictures have over 24 hours worth of data. And you just use software to stack the pictures on top of each other and increase the signal. And that's how you get a really clean, pretty image

that's not noisy. Wow. So like when you get a really clean, pretty image. It's not noisy. Wow. Like when you take a picture in a dark room with your cell phone camera, you can't do it. It looks all pixelated and nasty. And so imagine that in the middle of the night in space, trying to take a picture of something that you can't see. So it takes hours and hours and hours and hours to do it. Amazing. So what's going on there is in a very low signal, the picture you get is mostly noise, actually.

And you see, as Jim was saying. And for those who are uninitiated, noise would be distortion. No, no, no, not distortion. Well, it's just, well, it could come from many different places. It could be just the temperature of the camera. When you take a picture at the beach, this bright sun and the exposure is a thousandth of a second. All the light you need is there in that fraction of a second. As Jimmy said, if you're photographing something your eyes can't see,

you're just told it's there, you've got to open up the shutter and just leave the thing open or accumulate enough data. And what happens is, as you accumulate data, the thing that's there builds. Right. And the noisy, when I say noise, this is a visual noise. Right. So the noise that's there, sometimes it's up, sometimes it's down.

That ultimately cancels out. But the signal that you're after builds. Right. So you increase your signal relative to the noise. And he's stacking. When he says stack, he's got all these images that have noise going in every direction, but the thing he's after is always there.

It's always remaining. And as he stacks them, the signal rises up out of the firmament. And he gets his beautiful pictures that he does. And one other thing, he just said it, but I got to emphasize it.

You're taking black and white photos through color filters. It's still a black and white photo, but I got to emphasize it. You're taking black and white photos through color filters. Right. It's still a black and white photo, but it's what the sky would register coming through a color filter. You take the RGB, black and white pictures, put them together through RGB light, and you get a full color photo.

Right. And that's how we do it. We don't use color film. No. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Yeah. You're building element by element. Yes,. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Yeah.

You're building element by element. Yes, you are. That's great. Okay. So, Jimmy, I mean, we just went through your list of honors there, and that's a dream for just about any sportsman, let alone a golfer. That's not so much money the man made. You made a couple of dollars in there.

No, no, no. No matter why he's flying his telescope to Atacama. Don't monetize this conversation. I mean... The man's smile on the man's face. We got him over Skype right now. Yeah, he's happy as. And I'm with him. He's like, just your cat smile. For sure. Alright, what? So,

all of those things that must have given you such a professional buzz as a sportsman, but what was the biggest thrill going with the telescope? Because there's a lot of detective work, a lot of time, as you've explained, what was the biggest thrill? What was the one photograph you sat and looked at and go, I am so proud of that one?

I think some of the deep galaxy pictures that I've taken, and it's not just the foreground galaxy that I've gone after. It's being able to pull out the background stuff and get rid of the noise and be able to show stuff from an amateur side that's billions of light years away. When somebody looks at one of my pictures and there's five to 10,000 galaxies in one picture, to me, that's a real accomplishment for an amateur astrophotographer. It's easy to take a picture of the moon. It's easy to do a picture of Orion, pretty much,

but because it's so bright and the color just explodes. Being able to dig out that stuff way in the background on these deep galaxy pictures, that's my favorite thing to do. Can you talk about this in the locker room? Sorry, Chuck. Can you talk about this in the locker room with the other guys and not get looked at in a really strange way? Oh, man, here comes Jimmy.

We're going to have to talk about galaxies again. I'm never the one that has to bring it up. Everybody usually brings it up to me. So it's pretty interesting. I've had guys ask for artwork, and I've found some stuff and some guys home. Yeah, that's cool. So as you look at this website, there's a progression of my history with astronomy and how I process data. And in the very beginning, it was very bright and oversaturated, and my color balance was off.

And as I get down towards the bottom, I think my skills have gotten a lot better. I've had a bunch of astronomy pictures of the day from NASA and those guys. So that's a big honor. Yeah. So there's a website, APOD. All right. And it's a, every day there's a beautiful picture from somewhere in the universe. And you can submit one of your pictures for it.

APOD. I've worked this one out. Astronomy picture of the day. Yeah. Right. And many people have it as their screensaver or their first thing. Or the homepage you come up to on your screen. So why do you have to

look at your own website every single time, right? Why don't you look at something that changes every day? So congratulations on getting some APOD action. I have one APOD. It was a Manhattan Henge. They put that up once. I got a Manhattan Henge one. Oh, very nice. But really after it's stuff that Jimmy's... I think I've got seven or eight, Neil. So you've got some workenge one. Oh, very nice. But really, after it's stuff that Jimmy's... I think I've got seven or eight, Neal,

so you've got some work to do. Oh! Called me out. Very nice. I'm only going to keep getting more with this move to Chile, I think. Yeah, that's fantastic. So let me ask you this.

This is a silly question, but if you could hit a golf ball to any galaxy, which one would it be? If I could hit one at it? Yeah. Shoot. I don't know. Andromeda is pretty cool.

I've actually, you can, if you get into a dark enough spot, it's so big and it's so close, you can actually see it with your eyes. Right. I've done it in a couple of places in New Mexico, been able to see it. You can actually see it from my eyes. Right. I've done it in a couple places in New Mexico. I've been able to see it. You can actually see it from my home sometimes if the sky is really transparent. Andromeda is the... It's a cool...

It's a hard galaxy to shoot because the core is so bright. You have to do HDR-type exposure real long, and then you can get the... You go deep, you can get all the crazy stuff on the outside, and then you've got to shoot tight for the core. I've got a couple of really good pictures of Andromeda on there. Just to be clear, he's talking about how bright something is that you otherwise can't see unless you're in a very dark place.

That's how good his photography is. Wow. Just so you know. Yes. So Andromeda is the farthest object visible to the unaided human eye. Right. It's two million light years away. Is it really?

Yeah, the single farthest object. We can see it. Yeah, with the naked eye. Yes. He? Yeah, the single farthest object. We can see it. With the naked eye. You probably hit a golf ball to a galaxy. But wait a minute, we have other, like, golf, you know, golf has been around the solar system, you know, you realize this. Right. But the, so, Jimmy, it's fun when you always hear they talk about landing,

putting landers on Mars by traveling all these many miles over these many months, leaving Earth, which is a moving target, to Mars, which is a moving target. So you have to send it to not where Mars is, but where it will be in nine months where they then intersect. And they always reference golf when they do it. Yeah. They say it's like a hole-in-one over however many because they land it within like a five-kilometer circle on Mars. And it's a better hole-in-one than any all that ever hit. So I was always jealous. I can't imagine.

That was a sport that was always used. I never played golf, but it was always the reference for how accurate the NASA missions are when they land stuff in craters on Mars. Gotcha. I was going to ask you, Jimmy, we know you have quite a fascination with the universe. Has that sort of translated itself into an interest in science?

And if so, has that involved itself in your game as a player? You know, it's hard to say. You can kind of get wrapped up in your own little world when you're out playing, but there's times in your life when everything kind of seems to slow down and you realize hey man it's just a game and you know when i sit there at night and look up in the sky and see how big it is and what's out there and the vastness of it uh you know it's like man when you get over a hard golf

shot sometimes it's like just a little ball floating around out here with all that going on. It doesn't seem real important. But at the same time, when your kids are born, it's the same way. Everything is so right here and so right in your lap, and that's the most important thing. And all the other stuff just kind of washes away. So you can go both ways with it. So are you saying that you have discovered a golf cosmic perspective?

It's a golf, that's what that sounds like to me. Yeah, and saying that you have discovered a golf cosmic perspective? It's a golf, that's what that sounds like to me. Yeah, and exactly what you need as a golfer. You don't get too high, you don't get too low, you don't let a missed shot phase you, you just,

yeah, that's cool, I can deal with this. Yeah, it's a stabilizing force on the field. All right, Jimmy, sort of bring it back a little bit more terrestrial here. The number of developments

with golf clubs where are we at right now in terms of what's new as far as the tech's concerned so the governing bodies have put a limit on how fast a golf ball can come off of the club face so we're kind of limited on distance but scientists and engineers can kind of tweak that. And now it's about the aerodynamics of the golf ball and always changing and trying to figure out new ways to put the dimples on the golf ball so they can make golf balls that different certain covers and different layers of hardness inside

and the way those react to each other. They create more spin. They create less spin they create less thin some some balls fly through the fly into the wind better um so there's all kinds of little tricks that they're that the companies are trying to do to get an edge because by law a ball can only come off so fast so why are they limiting jimmy why are they limiting how fast a ball can come off the goal suppose i'm just a really fast swinger i don't understand what why so it doesn't matter it doesn't it doesn't matter how fast you swing it uh you know if you're if you swing it at 130 miles an

hour there's some math formula that the ball can't come off any faster than this, it's called coefficient of restitution, the COR, and that's the number. That's of the ball itself. Okay. Yes. Okay, so it's a property of the ball. So I get that. I think, I mean,

the formula is it can't come off any faster when they've got a testing machine that they hit the faces. And if it comes off at.257, that's the max legal limit. If you go over that, the club's considered damaged and it needs to be taken out of play. So we're limited on that. We're limited on the grooves. If people are inventing different kinds of balls for different purposes, does that mean you can go in there with a portfolio of balls for specific

kinds of shots that you take? Exactly. So say you've got a golf course that you know is going to play really hard and firm and fast. And when a ball lands on a green, it's going to have a hard time stopping. You can actually go to a golf ball that is going to, the club will be able to grab it more with the grooves and put more spin on it.

And a lot of guys don't really do that though. It takes a while to get acclimated and accustomed to a golf ball to know exactly what it does in every situation with the wind. And so guys don't really do that. You try to find a golf ball that's great all around her. Absolutely. And so for somebody at your level, these things, I mean, the level of competition is so high, it makes sense for these things to, you know, give you an edge. Small things are big things. Small things are huge things when you're at a very high level of competition.

So for the regular guy who's listening right now, who likes to get out on a Saturday and, you know, he's playing a public course and do any of these things actually make a difference? They do, I think. I think the most important thing you can do for a player is actually getting properly fitted for a set of golf clubs, going to a fitter, finding a shaft that works good for you. And then the shaft is really the engine of a golf club. And then it goes down to looks.

You know, when you look down at a golf club, you want it to look good. There's a lot of confidence that goes in hitting something that you'd like. Wait, wait. You can diss someone else's golf club? You can diss somebody else's golf club? You got some ugly clubs. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't even bat an eye.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We do it all the time. We do it all the time. We do it all the time. Some serious trash talk. Man, it's like, boy, I sure hope that club feels good because it's ugly. No! I hope it feels good.

I miss that scene. Like when you say when somebody has a pair of shoes that are ugly, like, God, I hope those are comfortable. You must be saying that a lot because there's some ugly shoes out there. What's the famous golf movie with Rodney Dangerfield? Caddyshack. Caddyshack.

I missed that scene. They needed that scene in Caddyshack. Yeah. Just in someone's golf club. All right, Jimmy, before we have to let you go, and sadly, sadly, we will have to let you go. The guys are coming out now. They're punching 400 yards. There's talk of guys being able to drill it past 500 is that the

future of the game or are we looking at still the best of the best of the best not just the power guys oh the power guys out here don't hit it that far you're talking about the guys that just do long drive competitions there there is going to be a new class of player out here that's it's already kind of starting to hit you just got better athletes playing golf and i'm not going to say better athletes what has happened with the equipment is it's allowed kids and to these clubs have become so forgiving that they could swing at them harder and harder and harder so kids are learning how to hit the ball harder every year and the clubs are letting them do that. So I think that's a big thing that you see on the increase in distance. Back when you were playing a wooden club and you didn't have the graphite, when you missed one of

those, they didn't go very far at all. So you really learned how to hit the golf ball properly every time and if you wanted to really step on one you had to you're gonna have to pay a consequence if you missed it because it would really go offline where today these kids learn how to just smash it and there's not as much consequence if you just completely go at one so you're gonna see kids hitting it harder and harder and harder and harder. You sound a little bit like the old man telling him to get off your lawn. Okay? These kids today.

I am 40 now, but I still hit it about as far as anybody, so I'm okay. Good for you. I'm okay. See? He didn't fail to remind us that he's still hitting it as good as anyone. That's it, because that's what pros do. They're competitive. If you're going to go in a conversation line where maybe it's not good,

they're going to just bring you back and remind you just how good they are. Jimmy. Hey, man. Thanks so much. Thank you. Jimmy Walker there. Six PGA Tour wins and counting. And counting.

And a man whose eyes are fixed, not just on the prize, but way, way into the universe and some of its furthest paths. So to Jimmy Walker, thank you, sir. Thank you. Best of luck. Thank you.

Thank you, guys. Thank you to Jimmy Walker, the 2016 PGA Championship winner, and of course, our very own personal astrophysicist, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, taking us through astrophotography and golf technology. Neil deGrasse Tyson, taking us through astrophotography and golf technology. Right, we are going to take a break. When we come back,

we are going to drill deeper into golf tech with Matt Plum. He is the former global product line manager of Nike Golf Clubs and a man who is now global product line manager of Nike Golf Shoes. And I can tell you, this interview is unbelievable. Do stick around. We'll be back shortly. Welcome back to playing with science um fabulous fabulous interview with jimmy walker and you have to check out dark sky walker uh he's not just a guy with a telescope pointed at the stars he's a guy that takes the most amazing photographs and brings them into the public domain. Right. From one guy whose head's in the stars to a guy who is definitely based here on Earth. Got his feet on the ground. Yeah.

He was global product line manager for Nike golf clubs. He is now global product line manager for Nike golf shoes. Both of those sentences are vital to golf itself. So Matt Plum, welcome to Playing With Science, sir. Thank you, thank you. Welcome. All right, let's take a brief trip back through history. We know it was wooden and the whole thing.

So where did we go? I mean, from that kind of getting the irons, getting everything sophisticated to where we are now, if you give us a quick journey, that would be perfect for our listeners. Yeah, I mean, wood to steel was the big revolution. As we moved from wooden golf clubs to steel golf clubs, we were able to specifically get the faces hotter

and start to make the heads bigger. And then, you know, the big thing was about how can we move those golf clubs quicker? So, so moving from steel to graphite and the shafts was a huge move. Being able to, you know, take golf shafts that had traditionally been north of 125 grams and get those sub a hundred grams. And, you know, now we see some shafts sub, sub 40 grams. And then in the heads themselves, the big thing was being able to move from steel to titanium and now continuing to explore, you know, all sorts of alternative materials, whether it's carbon fiber or other alternative materials

to lighten the golf club in certain spots, which in effect allows us to make them bigger, move the weight around and have them fit more people. Amazing, because I think, Chuck, if you go to titanium, you're just gratuitously improving the price. So it's interesting because you've touched on very lightly on the physics because you've got all of these pivot points throughout a golfer's physique. Then you've got the momentum and speed. Is there much more you can do outside of the

weight of the club? You know, it's funny. I think that the biggest revolutions going forward for, you know, the average golfer and or the tour player is going to be in terms of matching that equipment to them. And so, you know, if you look at kind of the rules and regulations that are set by the USGA and the RNA, in some way, shape, or form, we've all touched one of the corners of those boxes. We've made the golf clubs as big as they can be. We've made them as fast as they can be. We've started to touch each one of those corners. And so with each product that comes out from every manufacturer, they kind of choose a lane.

manufacturer, they kind of choose a lane. You know, in my previous role as a product manager for golf clubs, when we would brief in a product or we would create a product, we would say, okay, what are we trying to accomplish here? Are we trying to make this one extremely forgiving? Are we trying to make it low spinning? Are we trying to make it real fast off the face or some combination thereof? But with manufacturing, we basically touched all those corners. And so the biggest gains for people are going to be finding what ails them in their golf swing and finding the right product that matches to them. I think that's where you're going to start to see these huge gains that people talk about. So you're kind of talking about like bespoke golf clubs, like you're finding a way to custom tailor the club to the game that already exists instead of having the player kind of alter their game so they can use that type of club.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So, Chuck, do you remember the guys at the long drive competition we went to? And, you know, you needed a telescope just to see where that ball landed. That was way off in the distance. Now, if I put one of those light clubs in one of those bruisers, or maybe some, you know what, one of the DEs off of the NFL, who's 270 pounds and can swing it, would that be like putting a V12 engine in a little mini?

Something is bound to go wrong. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it's that. So there's durability concerns, but then there's also, you know, if you've got players who are high speed or high spin, you know, matching them to product that is designed to lower their spin rate or matching somebody to a product that's designed to draw the golf ball when they fight a slice. That's where I think the average player is going to see the biggest gains.

So let me ask you this. When you talk about like matching players to clubs, and I'm talking all players, not just professional players, we're talking, you know, golf is a hugely popular sport and you see people out, especially this time of year, all over the country. So what can you tell about your swing based on, let's say, like the divot that you leave? And then what would that do in terms of clubs and what you want to do with what type of club you would like to have? I only ask, maybe there's guys out there right now listening, it's just like that they might be able to pick something up from you as a tip. So just from the divot that I leave, would I be able

to find something out about my swing or what kind of club I need? You can find a ton out about the divot. That's, you know, in my experience with fitting, that's how we fit people is we read their divots. And it's a little bit of kind of matching that art and that science. So when you look at the divot, it's kind of a blueprint of what happened during that golf shot. Because a divot on a well-struck shot starts after you've struck the golf ball. divot on a well-struck shot starts after you've struck the golf ball. If you look at a divot and you see it a little bit longer on the toe side of the golf club, specifically with an iron, you've got some indication that potentially that golf club was either swung over the top

or also your golf clubs may be too flat for you in terms of the lie angle measurement. If you see that the golf, the divot is a little bit longer on the heel side, potentially that golf club was swung from the inside, but also potentially could be a little bit too upright. So the divot combined with what we saw in the shape of the shot will often tell us a lot about if those golf clubs fit or match to that consumer, that professional. That's amazing. Because I hadn't, now you say that, duh, Gary, that's obvious. But until you go divot, well, that just means you're hitting the ground, not the ball, you fool that, duh, Gary, that's obvious. But until you go divot, well, that just means you're hitting the ground, not the ball, you fool.

But now you've got so much, I mean, this is really cute data analysis where you're saying, you know what, this minimal part here at the swing end is a major disruption at the far end where the ball lands because it's taking it off into the trees wherever it is the water hazard so yeah it's it's it's an interesting thing i mean all right go back to the data is because every sport now has an avalanche of data analytics has has that had an

effect on club design has that had a massive effect on golf and players and such? Hugely, hugely. I mean, if you walk up and down a PGA Tour event nowadays, you don't see many players hitting shots or practicing without some sort of data capture device behind them, whether it's a track man or a flight scoper or a GC quad. You're seeing all these players wanting to know data about each one of their shots and being able to adjust whether it's for conditions, whether it's for the way they're swinging that day. And for us on the manufacturing side, to be able to measure and calculate all of that data starts to show trends and themes and areas where we can create improvement.

You've just given me an idea, Chuck. You know what this means. My brain hurts. Right. improvement uh how far up you've just given me an idea chuck you know what this means my brain hurts right how far are we away from the perfect one size fits all golf club that will adjust itself is that just me having a fan a fantasy moment or is that possible i mean one size fits all i think is maybe a bit of a fantasy moment but it's a it's a nice north star for people to start to think about um yeah i think one size fits you you nice North Star for people to start to think about. I think one size fits you. You know, you've seen some companies start to explore the single-length irons and the single length, so you can, in theory, bring one swing and have all 14 of your golf clubs or 13 of your golf clubs fit.

That's Bryson DeChambeau. Absolutely, yep. He may not be one of yours, but he is a golfer that's done exactly that, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. So I think, you know, one size fits all golfer that's done exactly that. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I think, you know, one size fits all, maybe not so much because you look at, you know, Mrs. Haberkamp at 68 years old and, you know, the really good young 18 year old player who's playing at Sage Valley, you've got some varying physical attributes that maybe one size fits

all is a little bit extreme. So one size fits all is a little bit extreme. So one size fits you. It seems kind of like that when I think about what you just said earlier, is it that you guys are now looking at clubs in such a way, and once again, I'm talking for the average player, okay? Not your Tiger Woods, which by the way, congratulations to Nike along with Tiger. Because as Tiger goes, so does Nike. You guys, you know, you guys are kind of married together in a wonderful union. So congratulations. Thank you.

We like to say as Tiger goes, so the golf business goes. I mean, people talk about moving the needle. Tiger is the needle in terms of the golf business. Absolutely. Tiger is the needle in terms of the golf business. Absolutely. But from what you said earlier and what you just said about Mrs. Whoever and the young 18-year-old, are you guys now looking at clubs in terms of taking the player's game and then making the club to kind of, I don't know,

compensate for player deficiencies so that you can actually find your correction in the club? Is that what I'm hearing you say? Absolutely. I mean, you know, the old adage goes, golf's a game of misses, right? And it's making your misses better is generally what we're all about. Whether you're, to your point, talking about the tour caliber player, you're talking about the average player. We all have missed tendencies. And if we can make those misses certain percentages better, you know, when we get to the golf course, we get away from the driving range, we get on the golf course. If you can miss 15% less right,

or if you can miss 15% longer than you normally would have missed, we've potentially made you better. And ultimately shooting lower scores is what we're after. Wow. So the club takes away the player error. It can. It not removes it completely, but reduces. Reduces, absolutely. That's interesting because, you know, we've all seen it. The angry golfer who bends the club over his knee and then throws it into the lake.

All the time blaming the tools and rather than himself. But you've taken the other point where we can reduce the need for you to bend that over your knee or wrap it around a tree. Absolutely. Well, no, you won't be able to do that. Now you'll have a player, like you've seen a player, like fling the club into like the water hazard. Now they'll do that and go, oh my God, I'm so sorry. Oh, please, please come back. Oh, I'm, oh my God, I'm so sorry. Oh, please, please come back.

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. So what technology is there left that you could utilize to take it to another level? Or are you at the level possibly, unless something brilliant comes along? I mean, I think there's, you know, we used to jokingly call it unobtainium, right? There's, there's gotta be some material out there that nobody's experimented with or hasn't, hasn't been created yet. So I'm stealing that by the way. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I'm stealing that. Um, you know, I think the idea it's funny when you think about, you know, everybody loves to talk about drivers, but when you think about a driver head at the end of the day, it's, you know, 200 to 205 grams of something at the end of a 45 and a half inch long graphite shaft. And so until that equation changes, which it's probably not going to change drastically, when you speak with the engineers and the designers and the people behind creating these clubs, it's basically a 205-gram ball of clay.

And they can mold and shape and adjust that 205-gram ball of clay any way they want. The one thing they can't do is they can't add clay to it and they can't take clay away. And then you start figuring out, okay, the USGA and the RNA have set rules. It can only be 460 cc big. It can't have anything that passes through it or create any open holes in it. There's regulations about where the hosel must be placed and how the shaft can go into it.

And then you've got your regulations on moving parts and how they have to lock into place and things like that. So at some point, the equation is defined for us, and it's about finding creative ways to to solve for that equation if that makes sense how do you check because like in a hockey stick you have pivot points yep do you play with those along the shaft of the golf club absolutely so the shaft companies are fantastic they they use a lot of things they call them ei curves or bend curves yeah so you can have shafts that kick higher up the shaft or lower up down

the shaft. You can have, create stiffnesses in certain areas, which will produce certain feels and certain characteristics in terms of ball flight of launch and spin. Is there anyone that you might be able to know that, you know, you've fitted for a club and you've done this whole process that we just discussed and then they saw like a dramatic change in their game professional or otherwise preferably professional because then we would know who it is or am i just being a little too big with you know the way this works you know it's it's funny you you have these mini wins and you look at um all the the people who work out on the pga tour and support for the different equipment manufacturers and every week that's

their job they're there to to do what we would call emergency surgery um you might find a player who has missed three cuts in a row and is just fed up with their driver and they're going to come to you on monday morning and they're going to say hey i need a new driver and you know time and time again they'll get a new driver they fall in love with it and they'll start making cuts or they'll, they'll have a win. So you hear stories like that every single week, um, where, you know, sometimes it's just confidence that players lost confidence in that golf club or a set of golf clubs. Sometimes it's truly finding, um, something, you know, with it, with a huge distance gain or a huge miscorrection where, you know, you've where you've got a player who's made a swing change

and all of a sudden they're not able to hit the golf club the way they used to. And you see these crazy changes where an athlete grabs a new golf club and all of a sudden their fairways statistic goes up by 10, 15, 20%. And that's the difference between them making a cut or finishing top 10 or even winning a golf tournament.

Do you have a department to study the science of superstition? We don't. We don't. But, you know, the old adage goes, you'd rather be lucky than good, right? Right. So knowing sportsmen and women... I was going to say, by the way, in medicine,

you know, sometimes placebos can be the most effective medicine you can ever prescribe because there are people who will take a sugar pill and their body cures themselves, but they think it's the pill, you know? Absolutely. I had a time, I was working with one of our players over in Europe and his wedge play hadn't been very good. And he came into the PGA Tour trailer and he said, Matt, will you take a look at my wedges? And I said, sure, what's going on? And he said, well, I've just spent an hour with my coach and I know it's not my swing. Um, I've just spent an hour with, um, it with my body and I know it's not my body. So it's gotta be the equipment that's making my wedge play not

be good. And it's just that mentality of the fact that you go through and you check his wedges and you look at them and you said, there's, there's absolutely nothing changed or wrong with your wedges are the same they were yesterday when you you were good um and so it's it's that placebo effect sometimes it's just just putting him in the loft and i machine checking him double checking him and handing him back to the player and saying you're all good and gives them that confidence to go back out there and all right take i mean that that aside which i i having been around enough, I know exactly how you feel. Has a golfer come to you and said, look, this is what I want you to do with this club?

Because they know exactly what their swing is. They know it for this particular course, this particular moment. And they've gone, that's how I want it set up. That's the solution I'm looking for in the club. Can we do that? And they've been 100% right. Or do you have to steer them in another direction? No, we've definitely had that.

We've got athletes that we refer to as almost freaks of nature because they've got that hyper touch. You've heard all the stories about Tiger being able to feel bubbles underneath the grip of his driver shaft and things like that. But you've got athletes that they're so, so hypersensitive to what they feel and do with their craft that they can give you really clear direction about what they're looking for. We talk about it all the time. You see athletes on kind of both sides of the spectrum. You see those that are very tuned into their equipment and can tell you everything about every spec of their equipment and really want to know all the details. And you see others

that just, you know, it's kind of like bat and ball, like just this is my tool and I use it to hit and I leave it to the equipment experts to help make sure it's going to do what I need it to do. And then you tend to find some of those that are stuck in the middle that tend to get a little bit lost because they're not sure which way they want to be. So the best athletes are the ones that are on either side of that spectrum from my experience how interesting because we this goes back to the race car driver chuck that is at one with the machine they know when a tire has got a couple of pounds less they know when something's on something's off and it is that magic that intuitive magic that they have with the course with the club they know everything that's going on as well as they got a really good caddy

behind them. It's about them when they go up and they start to address the ball. All right, let's move away from golf clubs and focus on where you are right now. Because Chuck and I could go onto the golf course and Chuck's far better with golf etiquette than I am. I'd turn up in my sneakers and my denims and I'd be thrown out immediately. But you're all about the golf shoes now. And without being grounded, the whole physics and rotation of a golf swing can't be there. So how much of the physics has found its way into shoe design for you? Oh, it's been unbelievable. It's been cool to take, you know take a lot of that very scientific thinking that we had with golf equipment and apply it to our golf footwear. We look at golf footwear in kind of three ways. You look at the fit of that golf shoe, the ride of that golf shoe, and the traction of that golf shoe.

And all three components really are things that are necessary that maybe your trainers or your running shoes wouldn't allow you to have to hit a proper golf shot. So you think about the way that we set the athlete up, the height they are off the ground, because when we introduce the plate on the bottom of that shoe plus some spikes, you're actually getting somebody higher off the ground. The amount of drop or offset, those are terms that people that wear running shoes would understand as well, but the difference between the height of your heel versus the height of your toes, that can manipulate not only a golfer's setup position, the positions they're able to get into during the golf swing, but also potentially the fit of their golf clubs. If you get an athlete that has dropped too low on their heels, their hands are going to sit lower and all of a sudden their golf clubs are going to be more

upright and they might hit some hooks. They're going to go under the ball, they're going to come underneath and it's going to go all over. Do you do with the shoes, the same that the soccer players do and the high end athletes do and bespoke the footwear, or is it, do you know what yours are in that box over there? You know, we've, we've gone through kind of both versions. We've got about three players on our staff right now that we, uh, we bespoke their footwear for, and it's generally out of need, not out of anything vanity. So you look at, you may have a player who's got an abnormally wide foot. You may have a player who's had an injury and may need something different. We've got some players that wear a full size difference between their left shoe and their

right shoe. Not unheard of. Not unheard of and not uncommon, but so we'll bespoke some of those. But as a whole, we've got about 95% of our players wearing shoes right out of the box. Wow. That was a big thing for us that we've made a change in the last couple of years. So what's the thinking? Because to do that, you've got to be really in tune

with the footwear and the needs and how you find that sweet spot for the broad spectrum of the shape and size that feet come in you know you got you got you got feet like Barney Flint you know Fred Flintstone you got a feet like a hobbit and then you've got this slender ballerina's foot that comes along so how do you find that area without there being a problem? It's, we do a lot of testing, a lot of consumer testing. So our journey, you know, currently right now we're working on footwear out as far as 2021. So I've looked at our summer 2021 line and we know kind of what's going to go in that, through that process, through that basically 24-month process, we'll do consumer testing with upwards of 150 consumers. And in

each one of those, we're asking them to wear it for 8 to 10 to 12 rounds. And so not only consulting with just our tour players to make sure that their stuff's right, but it's working with that variety of consumers across the globe. Because that's where your market is. Your market is the consumer across the globe, not so much the PGA Tour guys. Are you borrowing ideas on footwear from other sports? Oh, absolutely. Are you going to tell us anything?

Yeah, exactly. One of our unbelievable abilities here at Nike is that things that work in one sport may have an application in other sports. That's pretty, it's, it's very cool. The way that we've kind of set our lineup, um, we've got one area of footwear that's directly, um, built around that. We call it our icons and it's bringing shoes that, you know, like an air max or like a Roshi that you probably have in your closet, taking them and maybe changing that last 10% for what's, what's needed for, for golf, putting traction on it, putting stability elements in it and things

like that. And then we've got other areas where we may take, um, something like our, our react foam, which is, has been, um, really prominent in our running shoes right now and applying that to golf in the right spots to provide cushioning, because we spend so much of our time on our feet when we play around a golf, you know, you're at minimum four hours and sometimes upwards of five, six, seven hours if you warm up and do some of the things that you do before the round. And so, you know, we talk about a lot of times what the golf shoe needs in the swing phase of it, but it's also in the walking phase that it's incredibly critical. You think about a PGA Tour player playing a tournament, they're going to play four competitive rounds.

They're going to walk six to seven miles in each one of those rounds. They're walking more than a marathon worth of miles in a given week. And the expression you have right there, that's different, right? You don't think about PGA Tour players. But it's obvious. It's obvious, but you have to be led to that point to see, wow, that's obvious. Why didn't I think of that before?

And then you say, well, that's why we put this foam in there. That's why we structure. That's why we have to have a wellness attitude for our athletes. Absolutely. If you were to make the perfect golf shoe to swing in, it would be stiff as a board and have carbon plates everywhere and be really, really stiff. If you were to make the perfect…

And you'd have blisters on your feet by the time you got the whole 12. Exactly. It's not a walking shoe. And vice versa, if we made a really good walking shoe, it wouldn't be stable enough to swing it. So it's finding that healthy balance between the two. Wow. If you knew before, I think you'd realize you didn't know before because he's just given us an awful lot of insight, Chuck. Not just club tech, but the shoe design and where they're going.

Matt Plum, product line manager at Nike Golf Shoes. You have been a star for us. And you know what? We're going to dial your number again in the future and have another chat if you don't mind. I'd love to. Thank you, brother. Thank you, brother. Thank you, guys.

Been a pleasure. All right, Chuck. Man, that's our show. Thank you to Matt Plum, global product line manager for Nike Golf Shoes that was former Nike Golf Clubs and has moved sideways into shoe design. And I'm so pleased that we have the access to that.

And Jimmy Walker? What a great interview that was. That guy is amazing. I've never seen a golfer nerd out like that before. Yeah, I'm impressed, I have to say. And if you ever get the chance, people, make sure that you get to his website and check out his work because it's fantastic.

Oh, please do. Dark Skywalker. For those of you who weren't big golf fans before, I think you realize that there is so much science to be had and not just the physics. So I hope you've enjoyed our little trip down the fairway. It's been a lot of fun, Chuck, has it not? It has been. It has, right. This has been Playing With Science. I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. And we will be with you with a new episode very, very shortly.