Equipment

A deep dive into Wyndham Clark’s unique U.S. Open-winning gear setup (more than just the putter!)

Published

3 weeks ago

Jun 22, 2023

With all of the hype surrounding Wyndham Clark’s putter at the 2023 U.S. Open, it’s easy to forget he had 13 other clubs in the bag during his first major championship victory.

While I’ve admittedly written plenty about his putter myself – here, here, and even here – I also wanted to understand more about the rest of his gear. Let’s remember, Clark turned a chaotic LACC course setup and stacked Sunday leaderboard into somewhat of a final-round snoozer down the stretch with his powerful and reliable cut shot. It obviously wasn’t just the putter that separated him from the field. And while Twitter may have led you to believe the course was nothing but a birdie fest, Clark was the only player to finish double digits under par for the week.

If Clark was under the radar for the general golfing audience before (even after his 2023 Wells Fargo Championship win), he’s not anymore.

A quick look into his stats helps to show that Clark’s first major championship win was actually bubbling just beneath the surface, and he was poised to explode on the scene to the mainstream.

So far in the 2022-2023 PGA Tour season, Clark, a Titleist staffer, ranks 14th in Strokes Gained: Total, 25th in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green, 6th in Driving Distance (314.6 yards), 19th in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, and 19th in Greens in Regulation percentage (68.02 percent). He’s also ranked 5th in Club Head Speed, averaging 123.44 mph per drive. Pretty casually, too.

The guy is a ball striker, through-and-through. He’s also worked hard over the past year or so with Titleist tour rep J.J. Van Wezenbeeck – along with Clark’s coach/caddie John Ellis – to dial in his equipment to optimize his swing and ball flight.

I caught up with Van Wezenbeeck on Wednesday at the 2023 Travelers Championship (just days after the 2023 U.S. Open) to learn more about Clark’s Titleist setup and recent changes.

Here’s what Van Wezenbeeck had to say about Clark’s 2023 U.S. Open-winning setup.

Andrew Tursky: I heard that Wyndham may have made a big lie angle change with the irons about a year ago? What impact have Clark’s lie angles played on his iron game?

J.J. Van Wezenbeeck, Titleist: Yeah. He and his caddie John spent a lot of time on their swing, and we decided to move lie angles – we actually moved them twice over the last year, moving things a little flatter from where they had them. [Wyndham and John] are really good at letting ball flight dictate lie angles, so they work a lot on start lines and hitting different golf shots.

When his swing gets too fade-biased, they hit hooks on the range. When it gets too neutral, they hit big cuts on the range, and they’ll use ball flight to help with lie angle.

Do you remember what the lie angle changes were, like, one degree upright to three degrees flat, or something like that?

J.J.: I don’t think it’s even that basic…it’s been a scenario where it’s a little here, and then a lot there. Every club wasn’t the same. It’s a one-by-one situation.

It’s not, ‘I’m a one flat guy.’

Each club has its own unique lie angle to promote the flight that they want.

In general, what does shifting a lie angle flat do for a golf swing?

J.J.: Typically, it’s going to shift your start lines farther to the right for a right-handed golfer. So, as we move upright, we’re going to just shift that start line left. As we move flat, we’re gonna shift that start line to the right. And so as they were working on different things in his swing, they just wanted to get those start lines to match the patterns that he was creating.

And then with his driver, he’s not an A1 setting type guy. How is his driver set up, and why?

J.J.: Yeah, so for a player who’s predominantly cut-biased, when we first started working together, he was testing some product at the end of 2021.

He wanted some help on his heel miss, so utilizing that SureFit track, we’re able to put the weight all the way in the heel. He’s in that H2 position, so when he does heel strike it, it doesn’t over-cut on him. It helps stabilize that ball speed and flight for him.

And then can you just give people an idea of what Wyndham Clark is like on the launch monitor? What stands out?

J.J.: It’s fun to watch. His ability for a player with that speed to hit a variety of golf shots on command – there’s a few players I’ve worked with in the past that he reminds me of, because his stock shot will be kind of in the mid-to-upper 180s, with a little more spin than some of these players on the PGA Tour have. But he has the ability to hit a draw and drop his spin, and get into the upper 180s with high launch and low spin. So he works a middle-cut all the way to a high straight ball that allows him to take advantage of different holes.

So he’s impressive on the range, and he’s one of those players that we all kind of knew the skill set when you see the short game shots he can hit, the iron shots he can hit, and how well he hits a driver. It was a matter of time, and I think there’s a lot of discussion around the PGA Tour that when he got his first win, it was going to unlock a lot more.

Anything else that stands out about Wyndham’s clubs?

J.J.: Well, he plays [True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X7 shafts] in his irons. So he’s in that really heavy, really stiff scenario with his irons. He has large grips, so he’s trying to do a lot to stabilize flight. And then I think that utility-iron build in his longest iron, in a T200, you see how versatile that was around the U.S. Open for him where he can flight it off the tee, but then he can hit high soft ones that he had to use on a few of the par 3’s and into some par 5’s.

To see Wyndham Clark’s full 2023 WITB, click here!

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Andrew Tursky

He played on the Hawaii Pacific University Men's Golf team and earned a Masters degree in Communications. He also played college golf at Rutgers University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism.

3 Comments

Mike

Jun 23, 2023 at 8:56 pm

H2?

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P

Jun 22, 2023 at 10:42 pm

Yawnnnnn…// they never give us the actual stats. Face angle/launch angle/ spin loft/spin/path etc etc
Give us the stats

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Alan

Jun 22, 2023 at 5:40 pm

Other golfwrx writers take note. This is an article. And he didn’t repost anything from twitter or insta

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Equipment

Voting is live: 2023 GolfWRX Members Choice presented by 2nd Swing!

Published

2 hours ago

Jul 10, 2023

GolfWRX Staff

We’re proud to partner with 2nd Swing Golf to bring you GolfWRX Members Choice 2023! 2nd Swing has more than 100,000 new and pre-swung golf clubs available in six store locations and online. Check them out here.

The bedrock of GolfWRX.com is the community of passionate and knowledgable golfers in our forums, and we put endless trust in the opinions of our GolfWRX members — the most knowledgeable community of golfers on the internet. No other group of golfers in the world tests golf clubs as frequently or as extensively, or is armed with such in-depth information about the latest technology and gear.

On that note, we just launched our 2023 GolfWRX Members Choice awards, and the polls are now open.

We want to hear from you, not just with a vote but with your comments too!

Please vote in the Members Choice categories below!

And don’t forget to comment with the reasoning for your choice!

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Equipment

GolfWRXers put the Full Swing KIT’s accuracy to the test

Published

4 hours ago

Jul 10, 2023

GolfWRX Staff

Last month, four GolfWRX forum members traveled to The Grand Golf Club at the Fairmont Grand Del Mar in San Diego, California, to test the Full Swing KIT launch monitor and to see how it stacks up against other launch monitors. If you’re not familiar with the Full Swing KIT, development began when Tiger Woods requested a launch monitor he could trust on the range as much as he trusted his Full Swing simulator in his own home. Later, the KIT earned Tiger’s seal of approval and has been seen with him at every tournament he’s played in since its release.

Check out the video below to see if the KIT can earn the seal of approval from our four WRXers — @zap311, @double or triple?, @hatrick11, and @SwingBlues — just like it did from Tiger Woods himself.

GolfWRX members on the KIT’s accuracy

zap311: “The Full Swing team seems obsessed with accuracy when it comes to the KIT – The team talked about how this product officially shipped about 18 months ago and they are already on firmware release #20. They said they are regularly releasing updates (overnight via WiFi) to continuously improve accuracy and performance. That is pretty awesome and it’s nice to hear that they are not a company that “ships it” and moves to the next thing. I think they are on the right track since I saw virtually no differences in the data when testing vs. GCQuad and Trackman today.”

double or triple?: “In some cases the difference was less than half a degree on launch and less than 50 rpms on spin.”

hatrick11: “The differences were statistically nonexistent. I think it’s hard to believe for a lot of people when you think about the huge price disparity, but I can’t state enough how close the Full Swing was to trackman every single time, for each of us.”

“Outside, the data is just really really accurate. I know my numbers and know this particular range very well and the KIT was spot on all day. I also had some very variable quality golf balls in the bucket I hit and there was really only one spin rate in the whole session that had me raising my eyebrows at all.”

SwingBlues: “The GolfWRX Full Swing/WRX Experience showed Full Swing KIT produce numbers the same as the GC Quad (GC4) and the Trackman4. Dollar wise, both LMs are easily north of KIT, so this is HUGE to stand up there with the bigger boys on the Podium. For me, it seems more “apples to apples” to compare KIT to GC3. My own testing validates what we saw at the Experience. It shows critical data points like spin, carry, ball speeds are dead on or almost dead on for 40 yards and up on both GC3 and KIT.”

More on the Full Swing KIT

zap311: “The versatility of viewing data is impressive – Depending on usage, everyone has different preferences for viewing data. You have on-device, phone, tablet, monitor, smartwatch, or audio/headphones. I’m pleased to say that Full Swing covers all of these. You can use the app on iOS devices (they said Android is planned for the future). This includes viewing your last shot on the Apple Watch with a few options and turning on audio playback of your preferred metrics following each shot. I’ll post screenshots of this later. You can also choose between 4 data points or 1 data point on the device itself. It was easy to use the app to customize the top 4. For example, I was able to quickly change from launch angle on irons to swing path on driver.

“The KIT was very easy to use – Once you spend a few minutes learning the app and settings, it is very simple to select a club, line up the target line, and fire away. You don’t have to use a level or a laser to line up. KIT uses the built-in camera to tell you where to line up within the app or on-device screen. I was also able to boot up the KIT in less than a minute and drop it down on the tee box for our on-course trial today. Because of this simplicity, I can see it being more practical to bring to the course…

“The Full Swing team really thought through usability for the KIT. You can see up to four data points on the device’s OLED screen. You can see all 16 data points on your iPhone/iPad along with a video replay of the shot, you can view one primary metric from your Apple Watch, and you can enable audio playback for any of the 16 data points. For me, this was a dream as a full iOS user. One other feature I like is that you can star a particular shot to save it. You can also send shot data + the video recording to your coach if you want.”

double or triple?: “I was able to meet the teaching pro at the range I’m using for testing – PGA teacher/member Ryan Kolk. He and his team have 4 units amongst themselves and use them both personally and with their students during lessons. Ryan spent time dialing in his knowledge of the range balls vs proV1x (gamer) to better understand the FSK and he believes the consistency is there with the FSK and within trackman and GC/Foresight models. His preference is to use FSK while testing shafts and new product before using them in his personal playing bag which as a GolfWRX member is 100% appreciated. For his better students, he believes the information like Face to Path and Club Path that FullSwing Kit offers is great to help them understand what their swing is doing and use that information to better themselves.”

hatrick11: “It’s nice to know I can get super useful practice sessions in at my house, and can do in in ~20 min stints; with two little kids at home I can’t just go out for frequent or lengthy range sessions, so this is super valuable and I think will help me keep my game from degrading and allow me to spend my limited free time enjoying the occasional round with friends. In particular with the KIT, as opposed to the cheaper monitors or the other “mid tiers” like GC3, seeing path and face-to-path data is the key item that makes my practice sessions useful…when I am grooving it my path is almost always between 0-2* out to in, with face control being the main thing I need to work on. When my game goes sideways I start coming more in to out, and combined with face consistency being an ongoing issue, that brings the bad left miss into play. Previously I have struggled getting real use out of net practice, because the feels don’t always match reality. This data and video evidence really helps keep me honest, so it was great to see that I was eventually able to get that piece dialed in with KIT.”

SwingBlues: “One feature I am really starting to like is how easy to see the video of each shot. My buddy was not hitting it well, we went to the video and we could see the takeway was too far to the outside.”

“Using the app, it will display all 16 data points. Below is an example of one of my iron shots. Pretty impressive data captured by KIT. On KIT itself, the launch monitor display can be configured to show a single data point, or it can show a grid of 4 data points where the golfer choose which ones to display!”

Head over to the thread for more comments, reviews, and future updates as our members continue to test the Full Swing KIT. Don’t forget to become a member today for future opportunities like this, plus product member testing and giveaways!

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