Day 1 at the Seniors Open Championship

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for the John Letters Tour Truck. While the open was a fantastic event for us, we were busier looking after the media than we were players. It’s a major championship week, so players tend to be ready with their equipment already.

The Seniors Open at Walton Heath however has been truly manic. With the best golfers in the worlds over the age of 50 descending on Walton Heath golf club it was always going to be our busiest week of the year. The senior’s golfers grew up using John Letters equipment and trust that we can make clubs that will perform for them under the pressures of Tournament golf. If the Master Model was good enough for Gary Player and Lee Trevino, it’s good enough for them.

As the Seniors Open was our first event on the Senior Tour this season, it was the perfect place to catch up with John Letters Staff professional Sam Torrance. Torrance has been using the Master Model irons since the beginning of the season, and the Tour Black wedges since last year, but we had some new toys to try with him, and we were going to see what we could get in play this week.

We showed Sam the limited edition Master Model Tour Black irons and it was love at first sight. “Gorgeous” was his first comment. After testing with a variety of steel shafts including his current Project X 6.5 shafts, Sam settled with the new Nippon Modus 3 shaft. “Perfection” was his second comment. The new black head was getting a great reception from everyone that saw them. It’s an identical head to the standard Master Model, but with its dark finish, everyone mentioned how much smaller it looked at address. Expect to see these in the bags of a few players in the coming weeks at Seniors events, with a dozen sets made up for players including Barry Lane.

It was also the first time we had shown the Sam the final version of the Master Model Tour Black Driver. Integral in every stage of development, Sam had hit the first unmarked prototypes as far back as September last year. The traditionally shaped 460cc head features a sleek black PVD finish, plasma welded Beta-Ti face, and a one degree open, but optically square face angle that better players are looking for. The standard driver features an Aldila RIP Beta shaft as standard, but as you can imagine of someone of his ability Sam’s specs were far from standard.

Knowing what Shafts Sam has played and got on with we built a variety of specs to try, including the Fujikura Motore Speeder VC7.1, Aldila Voodoo XVS7, the Aldila Voodoo XNV7,  Project X 6A4 and Aldila RIP 70 x. While Sam loved the look of the head, and felt that the 11 degrees of loft was correct for him, he couldn’t settle into a shaft. He wanted a little more launch and a touch more spin. He currently uses a Matrix Ozik TP7 X flex so that’s what we are going to try next. He was a bit tired after all this testing so we let the poor guy sit down.