Pros can usually get get whatever golf club exists anywhere, whenever they need it.
For some like Phil Mickelson, they can also get whatever club doesn’t exist yet too.
Mickelson still carries around a nearly exact replica of an old Ping Eye2 lob wedge he had Callaway make him because he liked Callaway’s grooves. He showed the wedge to GOLF’s Dylan Dethier during an episode of Warming Up last year.
On this week’s GOLF’s Fully Equipped, GOLF’s new director of gear, Johnny Wunder joined the show and explained how Mickelson’s Callaway version of the Eye2 wedge came to be. Wunder came to GOLF this month after four years working at Callaway and said he got to know Mickelson “pretty well.”
Phil Mickelson taught me 10 lessons in 30 minutes. Here they are
“So he went and brought a Ping Eye2 into Callaway and he said, ‘Can you recreate this?'” Wunder recalled. “So they MIMed (Metal Injection Molding) this guy— and I got pictures of it— He’s got a forged Ping I2 prototype wedge and I guarantee it’s 99.9% of the way there. I don’t even know if he uses it anymore, but it’s the coolest. So I’m on the PGA two years ago and he had it in for the first time and I was walking down the range and he goes, ‘Dude, you gotta see this thing.’
“And I put it down and I’m like, ‘Did they really do this for you?’
“Yeah, yeah they did it.”
Wunder said the Callaway PM grind Mickelson used for years when he was on staff with Callaway was essentially a recreation of the Ping Eye2 sole. But the unmarked Eye2 prototype for Mickelson was truly one of a kind.
“But sometimes you see stuff like that in this job, you’re like, ‘That’s probably like a $25,000 wedge,'” Wunder said.
For more about Wunder and his new role with GOLF, listen to the full Fully Equipped episode here or watch it below.
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