Club designer Dean Knuth
has sold a quarter of the 400 High Heat drivers he has made.
The way Dean Knuth figures it, the foundation of his
innovative golf driver goes back to those dreaded Soviet submarines.
In the late '70s, when he was a young man studying
antisubmarine warfare in the Navy's postgraduate school, Knuth learned
a lot about how certain metals interacted with other materials.
He also discovered a chilling truth: That during the
Cold War, the Soviet Union had developed a titanium that was far
superior to anything the U.S. had produced. The Soviets were building
titanium subs that were extremely high performance, and very hard to
find.
“The Navy was pretty scared,” Knuth said.
Some three decades later, this all strikes Knuth as
rather humorous, considering he's been working with Russian technicians
on a far more whimsical and peaceful project: building a better golf
club.
Knuth, a Bonita resident, Northrup-Grumman engineer and
former handicap chairman of the U.S. Golf Association, has used his
military and engineering experience to produce a new driver, dubbed the
High Heat, that has some golf addicts talking, even if the general
public has no clue it exists.
The buzz reached higher decibels a couple of weeks ago
when Knuth's Panda Golf driver (pandagolf.com) got raves in a story by Sports
Illustrated golf writer Gary Van Sickle. An excellent player and
someone not easily swayed by hyperbole, Van Sickle reported he used the
club for 15 rounds in a January trip to Florida.
“After thawing the Pittsburgh frost from my backswing,”
Van Sickle wrote, “I picked up 10 to 15 yards off the tee.”
Van Sickle, who had borrowed the club from a friend,
immediately purchased the High Heat for himself.
After the story, Knuth sold 30 drivers, at $399 apiece,
in a week. “That's more than I had in five months,” he said.
When people try the driver, they invariably buy it,
Knuth said. A member of the Century Club, as well as the Royal &
Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, Knuth, 60, played in the pro-am of
this year's Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines, and he sold the driver
out of his bag to a Qualcomm executive in his group.
Knuth said 10 people in Scottsdale, Ariz., including
entertainer Glen Campbell, bought the driver after one of their friends
talked it up.
“That's the really neat thing. When someone hits it,
they immediately recognize it has a great feel,” Knuth said. “It
doesn't sound like a cracked oil can. The ball just really flies off of
it. It's exciting to see people's reaction.”
As the major club companies have reached the USGA limits
of “bounce” off the driver, they have turned to other innovations,
including the square head and interchangeable shafts. But Knuth
believed the driver face could still be improved to add distance, while
keeping within the USGA's rules.
He said he has achieved his goal with four aspects he
has patented: parabolic lobes that “tune” the frequency of the driver;
the strong Russian titanium used for the driver face plate; the process
of converting the titanium to sheet metal; and the way the driver is
built to reduce spin rate.
The tuning of the driver was critical, Knuth contends,
because as driver heads got bigger, the frequency (or vibration that
pushed the ball off the face) went down. Knuth was able to increase the
frequency with his lobe design and the titanium.
Because the Chinese-forged titanium most club companies
use wasn't strong enough for his design, Knuth worked with the Russians
to produce a titanium that could be pressed at 70 tons per square inch
and then laser cut. The polished face also helps reduce spin rate,
Knuth said.
So by now you're probably wondering: Why aren't
thousands of these drivers being made and marketed by one of the major
club companies? Knuth said he has had those discussions, but he sums up
the general answer as: “We've already spent millions in research and
development; we're not interested in outside technology.”
One large company, Knuth said, wanted him to sign a
nondisclosure agreement that stipulated that after the very discussion
of the technology, it would become that company's property.
“I can't agree to that, so we never met,” Knuth said. “I
can only hope something will work out in the future. It sure would be
wonderful. I think it would be a win-win.”
Knuth began this adventure because he has a passion for
golf, for helping people improve, and a fertile imagination, but he
would like to at least make his significant investment back. Without
big marketing dollars for advertising or playing pros to play the High
Heat, though, he has to accept, for now, selling the clubs out of his
home office.
He had 400 made, and there are 300 left.
If only he could play golf in about seven foursomes a
week, he said with a laugh, “Then I could probably clear out my garage.”
Tod Leonard: (619) 293-1858;
tod.leonard@uniontrib.com
