Fully Equipped: Kevin Chappell explains why he signed an equipment deal with a club fitter

True Spec Golf, a brand-agnostic club fitter and sister company of GOLF.com, recently announced that it has signed PGA Tour winner Kevin Chappell as its first PGA Tour ambassador.

What does that mean, exactly? Well, Chappell sat down with GOLF.com’s Fully Equipped podcast to provide his explanation of the deal and why it was attractive to him.

In the past, Chappell has experienced different sides of the coin when it comes to equipment deals. For the last four years, Chappell was an equipment free agent, and he previously had an equipment deal with Nike Golf before the company left the hard goods industry in 2016. As Chappell explained on the podcast, he values the freedom to use the 14 best clubs for his game, rather than being tied to just one brand.

“The idealistic world would be having someone that’s truly agnostic, that has a knowledge of every piece of product, whether it’s grip weight, to shaft profiles, to how a scoring line affects ball flight,” Chappell said. “You can check all the boxes and have one person doing it in a safe environment, and with the ultimate goal of finding the 14 best clubs for you. As soon as I kind of realized that True Spec could do that, I went up the chain at 8am Golf and True Spec and said, ‘Hey, I’m interested, what do you guys think?’ And they jumped on board.”

Chappell says that, aside from the top players in the game, there’s more money to be made from PGA Tour event purses than from one-brand equipment sponsorships.

“Our purses aren’t going down,” Chappell said. “We’re in a pandemic right now and we’re still playing for the same amount of money we were, and I think it’s going to go up…we’re playing for a lot of money, and why wouldn’t I play the 14 best clubs for me? I can make way more money; for 99 percent of us who play professional golf, we can make way more money on the golf course than we can off the golf course. There’s that 1 percent, let’s call it 10-15 guys that can make more money off the golf course. But for 99 percent of us, you have to have your tools sharpened and ready to go, because that’s how you’re going to make your living.”

Enjoy the video snippet of Chappell’s explanation at the top of this page, but don’t forget to tune into the entire Fully Equipped episode too! Chappell, along with his True Spec fitter Tim Briand, goes deep into his testing process and tells a funny story about how his gamer putter got into the bag. Part 2 of the Chappell interview is set to be released next week, as well, so make sure to look out for that on Thursday.