"We Push Through Challenges" Talking Design With Titleist's Marni Ines

*In Partnership with Titleist*

In the golf industry, I find golf club designers and engineers to be some of the most fascinating people to talk to because they offer a unique perspective into how the clubs we use are conceptualized and then brought to life.

One of those people is Marni Ines, the director of iron development for Titleist, who has helped to bring many iron series to life over his time at the company, including the most recent T-Series. And, what makes iron design so interesting, and also a challenge, especially for someone like Marni, is that you have to design products to work across the spectrum of golfers from tour players to regular golfers.

Now, in the case of tour players, they generally don’t like change for the sake of change, which is why Marni and his team work so hard to not just design something new, but to make sure that what they deliver offers noticeable improvement. This is even more important when talking about models like the T100 and T150 - two of the most played irons on the PGA TOUR, because if they don’t perform, they don’t go into play.

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"In the case of the new T-Series line, there were a couple of goals," Marni said about the T100. "The first was to increase long iron launch and peak height, and then there was improving spin from the first cut and in slightly wet conditions in the mid and short irons."

Marni and his team achieved both of these goals with the T100 by adding a muscle channel to the T100 (a technology brought over from the T150), and by overhauling the groove design of the shorter irons to be more aggressive and help the ball maintain spin from less-than-ideal conditions.

When speaking in more detail about the iterations of the groove designs that had been tested in the past Marni explained that no stone remains unturned.

"We have tried (all kinds of variations), including spin-milled grooves in some of our short irons. In some cases, we found that some players might spin it too much, and so we really look to design a new groove for T100 in the short irons that provides similar spin from the fairway, but increased the spin from the rough."

Marni continued

"This was achieved through lots of robot testing, along with some player testing, although it's really tough to do player testing because it's hard to get a consistent amount of grass behind the ball and all that, so we have a test that we do with our robot and some simulated rough material that we put on the golf ball along with water to help use guage that (performance). So when we take it out to tour players and see that increase in the conditions, we know we've done our job."

It goes to show that no matter how far simulations and computing have come, golf and the elements involved in the game are difficult to predict, which is why practical testing scenarios are so important.

Listen to the entire Gear Smart Episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.