Having played the game of golf for more than five decades, Steve Fox has seen the evolution of equipment from almost all angles.
Still one of the better amateur players in West Virginia, Fox doesn't play with old-school clubs. But he can still drag some ancient sticks out of his attic, such as a pair of Ben Hogan woods, circa mid-1970s.
Have you heard the phrase, "He hit it on the screws?" That is used in baseball and cricket to describe long hits, but it's a golf term, and you can see why on the Hogan woods - there are literally four screws holding the face onto the club head. Hit in the middle of those screws and you've found the "sweet spot."
The sweet spot on today's drivers is larger than the entire Hogan driver club face, and it's not going to get any smaller. It's a big reason 26 PGA Tour pros average 300-plus yards per drive, and golf courses are tipping out at upward of 8,000 yards.
The Old White TPC, site of the Greenbrier Classic, is considered a "short course" on the PGA Tour at a scorecard length of 7,287 yards.
In the last decade or so, the ability to adjust a club has come into vogue, whether to add or subtract loft, or dial up a "fade" or "draw" setting. The 5-woods and longest irons are dinosaurs, long replaced by hybrids that hit balls farther and higher.
And then there are the wedges, which have become so specialized that many competitive players, Fox included, have three. Putters have become complicated, and that's just considering the grips. The shafts are a science unto themselves.
So is the fitting process.
"With TrackMan [swing analyzer], you can measure your club head speed, ball speed, your launch angle, lie and loft," Fox said. "You can get clubs fitted perfectly for use.
"I play a degree and a half 'upright' now [less loft], which I never did. Now that I'm almost 64, I've got a different shaft, a 'senior shaft,' it's a lighter shaft, which allows me to get more club head speed, which equates to more yardage.
"Back in the day, you had either stiff steel shafts or regular steel shafts. That's all you had."
If you think Fox's clubs are specialized, forget it. When the PGA Tour pros arrive in White Sulphur Springs on July 3, all hell will break loose in the realm of equipment technology.
Here is what Brooks Koepka used to win the U.S. Open last weekend:
Driver: TaylorMade M2 2017 (9.5 degrees) with Mitsubishi Rayon Diamana D+ 70 TX shaft.
Fairway wood: TaylorMade M2 2017 (16.5 degrees) with the same shaft as the driver.
Irons: Nike Vapor Fly Pro 3-iron with Fujikura Pro 95 Tour Spec shaft; Mizuno JPX-900 Tour 4- through 9-iron with True Temper Dynamic Gold X100 shafts, PW with True Temper Dynamic Gold S100 shafts.
Wedges: Titleist Vokey Design SM5 Raw (52, 56 degrees), SM4 Raw TVD (60 degrees) with True Temper Dynamic Gold S400 shafts.
Putter: Scotty Cameron Newport 2 Button Back Tour protoype.
Whew! That's six club makers and five different types of shafts, not counting the putter.
Koepka doesn't have an equipment contract, but rest assured, he didn't get this mixed set from Amazon. And rest assured, every club fit perfectly, down to that fairway wood he had cut down from 43 to 41.75 inches. (He rolled out a 379-yard drive with that club on the 72nd hole.)
Fox works the Classic as a volunteer from the West Virginia Golf Association, and he sees just how picky the pros are.
"Watching them, they are very meticulous with their equipment," he said. "You'll have either the Titleist rep, the Ping rep or the TaylorMade rep, and they'll be trying four or five different heads, four or five different shafts. I mean, they tinker a bunch."
Christian Brand has played on both sides of the equipment divide. Winner of the 2011 West Virginia Amateur and two West Virginia Opens, Brand just finished his fourth Web.com Tour event of the season. (He has two top-20 finishes, but missed his second cut.)
When golf became his full-time job, the clubs became a huge part of it.
"The difference is the amount of precision that goes into my equipment now, and the amount of knowledge," Brand said. "The way the club affects the ball, the ball flight and what it's doing, how quickly I and the guys I work with, we can tweak and change it. It's more about being able to change my equipment to a certain course, course conditions, rather than having my set bag like I would in college, for example."
Brand said he plays with TaylorMade woods and Mizuno irons, with Titleist wedges, TaylorMade wedges and Titleist ProV1 balls. He's not one to change putters, though he did so earlier this season.
He brought up another modern-day point with the wedges - pros will vary the "bounce," or how much lower the trailing edge of the club's sole is to the leading edge.
Yes, it's that technical. And such preciseness will be key at the Greenbrier Classic, where wedge shots play a more pivotal role than at some other Tour stops. The pros need the beginning of the week to figure out which 14 clubs to use.
If you're wondering, Fox estimates he has $2,200-$2,500 invested in his clubs, though he didn't buy the woods, irons and wedges all at once. The pro sets are much more expensive, as one would imagine, though many players are in sponsorship deals and don't have to foot the bill.
"My guess is the shafts they have are a lot more expensive than the stock shafts from the factory," he said. "Shafts can be very expensive. They probably have double or triple [the money] in that set of irons and woods."
Contact Doug Smock at 304-348-5130 or dougsmock@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @dougsmock and read his blog at http://blogs.wvgazettemail.com/dougsmock/.