PGA Tour's 'maestro' turns metal into magic in minutes

By 9:30 a.m. Tuesday inside the TaylorMade equipment trailer, parked within lob wedge distance of the practice range at the Quail Hollow Club, Wade Liles had already made 10 drivers.

That's 10 drivers.

Those big metal-headed golf clubs that, in the right hands, can launch a golf ball bazooka-like from here to Fort Mill.

Liles made them very fast.

"For practice rounds like today, a lot of the players like to tee off early," said Liles, who sports a scholarly look with his neat goatee and dark-rimmed glasses. "Yesterday, because of the Pro-Am, things were a little slow."

Dubbed the "Maestro of Metal," Liles can build a new driver from scratch for one of the PGA Tour pros in less than 10 minutes and often does, sometimes more than once.

On Tuesday, he built one for Dean Wilson. Wilson took it to the driving range, hit it a few times, didn't like it and brought it back. Less than 15 minutes later, he had one he liked better.

"The players really appreciate what we do," Liles said, as he applied the grip and checked the alignment on yet another club.

Tuesday was a routine day for Liles and his club building partner, Henry Luna, who mostly handles irons and putters. Known as the "Wedge Wizard," Luna can build a set in 45 minutes. He had a fresh set leaning against his work bench Tuesday. He'd already made sets for Kenny Perry and Briny Baird on Monday.

The drawers under Liles' work space are filled with every driver head TaylorMade makes. In a rack in the corner, there's any kind of shaft you can name or want. He could make something like 450 different clubs.

On Luna's side, there are grinders and cabinets full of grips.

See these guys and you can get a new club quicker than a burger and fries at McDonald's.

While they work their magic for TaylorMade, others in trailers bearing the names Callaway, Titleist, Nike and Cleveland are trying to do the same. They've all been chasing TaylorMade, at least when it comes to drivers. Liles and Luna work for the company that sports the number-one driver on the tour. More than 50 tour players are using some version of the club.

Liles cranks out The Burner, made for the grip-and-rip crowd, and The SuperQuad for players who like a little more control.

"Built a lot of them lately," Liles said.

The tour pros don't just buy a set of new clubs to start the season and go from there. It's an ongoing process. Some would change clubs by the swing if they could.

That they change often or need a new grip or a club head tightened or a new shaft keeps Liles and Luna in spending money.

Liles went to work for TaylorMade at the main plant in Carlsbad, Calif., right out of high school because he "needed a job." He's been in the trailer for eight years. Luna worked in the factory too and was with Callaway for a time.

It's a nomadic life. There are 42 tour events and they'll be in the trailer at 36 or 37 of them, arriving at the site, like this week's Wachovia Championship, Sunday and staying until late Wednesday afternoon.

The only drives they get to make are those between stops. Both have Class A driver's licenses, allowing them to pilot the big rig. Luna does 80 percent of the driving. Both play golf, although Liles prefers fishing. They just don't have a lot of time when there are clubs to be made and pros to be pleased.

An average day for the duo is 25 drivers and two sets of irons. An average week has 150 clubs leaving the trailer.

And it's down to a science.

In the small room at the back of the trailer where there's a TV for video games and a place to sit down, there's a computer database with the club preferences for every pro swinging a TaylorMade club.

"If a player comes in here and says, 'Remember that driver I was swinging last year?,'" Liles said, "we can pull it up."

And the players, as soon as they swing a club, know if it's right.

Liles put a driver on a scale that measures the swing weight and balanced it. He pulled a $20 bill out of his wallet and placed it on the club head. The scale dropped.

"I don't know what that weighs, couple of grams maybe?" he said. "But if it's off that much, they know."

When Liles builds a driver for John Daly, he adds weight to the toe.

"He wants to hit it as hard as he can and not hit it left," Liles said. "A guy like Retief Goosen is more standard."

Luna says Goosen will even come by and work on his own irons.

"We give him a pair of safety glasses and let him grind away," Luna said.

But Luna said if a player just tells him what he's looking for, "I can make it."

They even go to the practice range.

"I'm no teacher," Liles said, "but I can watch a guy swing, watch his ball flight and help him. If he's hitting everything to the right, we can make the club to help him hit it straight."

Golf equipment has come a long way in the last 30 years, so it stands to reason how they're made would too. Players are better and so are their tools.

"A player has to have confidence in what he's using," Liles said. "If we didn't do a good job they wouldn't keep coming back."

And they certainly wouldn't win.

Liles and Luna, even though they're not around when the tournaments finish, often watch them on TV. They love it when one of their clubs is in the hands of the winner at the 72nd hole. Mike Weir won The Masters a few years back. Goosen won the U.S. Open twice. Sergio Garcia has won and sent champagne afterward. Scott Verplank won last week.

It's not as good as taking home the trophy or pocketing the winner's check, but it's a pretty good life.

"Yeah, it's all me," said Liles, laughing, as he went to work on one more driver.

Provider:
Knight-Ridder / Tribune Business News / Herald, The (Rock Hill, SC)