| Cool Clubs Golf - Fitting Any Golfer In A Techy Climate |
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One of Cool Clubs' fitting bays in Scottsdale, Arizona |
Mark Timms is one of the most experienced and historically successful club fitters in the golf industry. Servicing top tour professionals and golf enthusiasts, his new company, Cool Clubs Golf, has selected TrackMan™ technology to take along on the journey towards the club fitting of the future. |
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Mark Timms is one of the true entrepreneurs of the global golf industry. His specialty: club fitting. With more than 20 years of club fitting experience, he has not only spawned several successful companies, but also created a cult-like following by many top tier professional touring pros. Yet, he is simultaneously a man who has made club fitting available to thousands of golf enthusiasts.
In 2000, Timms founded the renowned club fitting company, Hot Stix Golf, located in Scottsdale, Arizona. Seven years later, in July 2007, a new entrepreneurial challenge beckoned Timms. Backed by a strong investor group including Charles Schwab, Tom Siebel and former Ryder Cup captain Lanny Wadkins, among others, Timms founded Cool Clubs Golf, also located in Scottsdale. |
| Cool Clubs is headquartered in a brand new, state-of-the-art facility of approximately 10,000 square feet, offering the ultimate in custom club fitting services. The facility contains private fitting bays, a putter fitting studio, a full service production workshop, the latest brand name equipment, the most advanced diagnostic and analytical technology, and cutting-edge golf club construction services. When you walk in the door at Cool Clubs, the ambience is a professional mixture of state-of-the-art sophistication and private individual working space. |
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Cool Clubs was created to serve professional golfers seeking a competitive edge and to help the millions of golf enthusiasts who are motivated to improve their games and scores.
"Our goal is to help everyone play better golf, and we deal with all levels of golfers that are serious about improving. Standard, off-the rack equipment does not fit every player. Matching a player with a club specifically created to enhance that player's unique swing characteristics can make a huge difference in how a golfer performs on the course", Timms says.
Personnel discovering TrackMan™’s depth
A long time has passed since custom fitting was reserved only for touring pros. The discipline measuring a person's unique swing characteristics and matching them to clubs and balls that are performance calibrated to that particular swing is attracting more and more amateur golfers, from beginners to advanced players.
Featuring expert, personalized service and highly trained, experienced fitting technicians to help the tour pro or the individual golfer, Cool Clubs offers a myriad of fitting services. Examples include driver fitting, shaft selection for irons, iron fitting, and gap fitting – a classical process that goes from equipment analysis to swing performance profiling, and ending with product delivery.
Most services are done with TrackMan™, with which Cool Clubs' personnel are getting increasingly familiar. Timms adds, "The more you learn about it, the more intricate it gets. The deeper we get the more stats we want to use. Specifically, applications like finding the averages. Having the customer knock out shots and then being able to average them and replay them is very slick. All the new club delivery data like attack angle are very useful. Furthermore, after sales service and support on TrackMan™ is excellent. Better than any company we have worked with. The people behind TrackMan™ are always looking to improve and are are quick to make changes. The software updates have all run smoothly”.
According to Timms, “An important benefit of TrackMan™ is that if it does miss a shot, no reading comes up. The other monitors give a false reading. TrackMan™ just gives a blank. When we are looking at an average of a player's shots, we have absolutely no need for a false reading that can throw the results off. With TrackMan™ we get precisely what is hit and the numbers are right on. That is very important, for instance when we gap fit which is a hard workout. To go through this session your handicap should probably be under ten because you are going to hit a lot of balls. No other monitor besides TrackMan™ is accurate enough to do this with”. |
TrackMan™ trusted by the customers
Timms points out that the customers have welcomed TrackMan™ as part of the fitting process, "During a fitting, the customers don't notice that it is there. Compared to other monitors, TrackMan™ doesn't flash or make noise, basically they don't even know that it is on – it is much less intrusive. Customers trust the data on TrackMan™ as they know that all the big equipment manufacturers are using it. |
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The players I have coming in have all been very impressed. 4-5 of the PGA TOUR players that come here play around with it and are very confident with the numbers - these guys know how far they really hit the ball”.
Yet, individual golfers at all levels are also attracted by TrackMan. “In fact, one of our investors, Tom Siebel, was so impressed with TrackMan that he has decided to equip his house with a full Cool Clubs bay featuring the TrackMan Launch system. Rather than buy a simulator, he wanted a TrackMan™ because he wanted to work on his game. We are talking about a substantial investment with all the plasma screens etc…he got the whole set up. He said he has 5-10 friends who want the same”.
Being a club fitting company in 2008 is demanding, not only on the technological front, but also in meteorology. "Being in Scottsdale, we have very specific weather conditions. The ability to change the conditions on the TrackMan™ is extremely important as we have customers coming from around the USA for fittings. To be able to tailor the settings on the TrackMan™ to their location has been very beneficial to us. We had a tour pro come in to try out his 8 iron. He knew that he hit it exactly 175 yards. When he tested it on TrackMan™ it kept coming up at 168. When we changed the setting to Scottsdale, all of a sudden he hit it 175. That is how exact and flexible the system is”.
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TrackMan investment turning into profits
Despite the fact that his new business is only half a year old, Timms confirms that profits from the technology have exceeded costs, "Absolutely. Compared to the rest of the (expensive) stuff we have, it is not that bad. When you see the results, it is pretty easy to justify the expense. When Tour caliber players see the results - it's huge! We know that TrackMan™ does give us a competitive advantage in the market place. We have had people sent in because of TrackMan™ and it has certainly helped us get referrals. We try to have the best of everything and that includes TrackMan™”. |
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Cool Clubs customers enjoy that TrackMan data are projected on to a screen in the fitting bay. |
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