As you may have heard, Steph Curry is something of an elite athlete — with an emphasis on athlete.
For starters, he is unquestionably one of the greatest shooters and most prolific scorers in the history of professional basketball. The two-time MVP and three-time NBA champ is also a two-time scoring champion, and owns the NCAA record for three-pointers made in a single season. Curry the basketball player is responsible for shifting the way the game is played, and has served at the forefront of the league’s three-point era.
But Steph Curry is not just a basketball player. He’s an athlete, meaning he isn’t just a great shooter, he’s also gifted with a series of natural skills — skills like coordination, balance, agility, explosiveness and even focus. These are skills that make Curry a terrific basketball player, yes, but they also make him skilled at other sports like golf, where he is a scratch handicap.
But, as you already know, golf is quite different from basketball. Sure, Steph Curry can be a great player with any ball and hoop, wearing any pair of shoes. But even for all his athleticism, Steph Curry wouldn’t be nearly the same golfer with hickory sticks as he is with the latest and greatest technology, as he learned on a recent tour of Callaway’s Carlsbad, Calif. facilities.
A video released this week by Callaway shows Curry and teammate Damion Lee going through the club-making process, from the complex materials used to make golf ball cores to the imaging process Callaway uses to ensure variable thickness in its driver heads and faces.
In one scene, Curry and Lee get a close-up look at the company’s ball launcher, which blasts golf balls at high speeds in order to understand the trajectory, drag, and other ballflight characteristics. The video even takes a look at Callaway’s high-tech putter fitting, with a slow-motion camera and robotic setup showing the seven-time all-star the perfect fit for his game based off several key data points.
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As Curry sees repeatedly throughout the video, even the slightest shift in material, design and consistency can lead to massive changes in performance throughout the bag.
Ultimately, the video highlights many of the key components that make club creation a high-tech, high-cost endeavor for equipment manufacturers. For Curry, the video shows the importance of precision, even for those who have already earned the title of “athletically gifted.”