Cobra Director of Tour Operations Ben Schomin is about as respected a rep as anyone on Tour. That’s as a fitter, as a person, as a professional, as a father, as a friend, etc. He’s no doubt one of one.
My relationship with him started in 2018 when I first started working with GolfWRX. I remember the first phone call I made to him to convince him to come on my then Gear Dive Pod.
“What can I do for you sonny?”
A term he uses a bunch, and one that I have adopted myself. Within seconds, I was disarmed due to Ben’s laid-back nature and instinct to just be of service. For the past eight years in the industry, he has been one of the main resources for advice on sticks, career and just someone I love chatting with.
This video was special for me because working with the likes of Aaron Dill (Vokey), Adrian Rietveld (Taylor Made) and in this case Ben, gives me a chance to show you what makes these guys so special as fitters and what kind of human beings they are.
Three Things To Learn From Fitting With Ben Schomin
Fittings Aren’t Ball Speed Contests
This is the one that I think separates the good from the great. There were definitely setups Ben handed me that were faster overall than what I landed on, but Ben, being an incredible observer, knew — and listened — that regardless of the numbers, I wasn’t confident with the look of one driver or another.
Some fitters would have sold me on the numbers, but he didn’t. He made the pivot and maximized the head I felt comfortable hitting. The thing about fitting for speed is that the player still needs to go out on the course and play golf. The player needs confidence in the look, which will translate into confidence on the course. The speed has more opportunity to manifest itself over time with that tactic than with having the speed in hand and having to “make the driver work” on course. OPTM X was a driver I instantly responded to, and although it took some work to get there, Ben knew that, based on my reactions, the X would give me my best shot at good golf.
Ben thinks beyond the fitting
This is a real thing; it’s easy to create a vacuum in a fitting and solely focus on performance that day. One of the things that all great fitters do — especially on Tour — is project into the future. A good fit builds guard rails everywhere to ensure that the mishits actually help you vs. the flushers, which, in any case, will always help you, but a miss hit will not. Put more simply: Raise the floor, and the ceiling will follow.
The OPTM platform is definitely a floor raiser overall. POI is a real metric that will become part of the R&D ecosystem. Is it already? Probably in some form, but making it the load-bearing wall of your design will no doubt become the priority. Efficiency is what makes a great club. It’s a combination of three things: downrange dispersion, a consistent playable miss and speed. For example, on the Cobra Truck, Ben and James Posey will lean toward a shorter, more controllable build vs. a stock or longer build. You can cheat speed with longer builds, lower lofts, etc., but these guys do not. Is this same practice done on other trucks? Of course. But if you look at Cobra Staff players’ specs, most drivers are at 45 or shorter, and there are also a lot of shorter fairway builds, etc.
