Henry Luna has met and built golf clubs for some of the game’s greatest players ever. Arnold Palmer. Annika Sorenstam. Even his heroes, Chi-Chi Rodriguez and Lee Trevino.
So naturally, I was next in line.
“It’s easy nowadays,” Luna said Thursday as he explained all sorts of peculiar ways he used to maneuver clubs to build them just right for PGA Tour pros.
Luna is a PGA Tour truck driver and technician for Parsons Xtreme Golf (PXG); he hauls his massive big rig, complete with a 42-foot collapsible trailer, across America to about 25 tournaments each year.
He’s one of about 13 drivers on Tour, each with one of the major golf equipment companies.
But before we go inside this truck packed with thousands of dollars worth of golf products, let’s back up to how we got here.
Luna can only do his job custom-building this PXG 0311 Gen6 driver once the club fitter has done theirs.
Club fitters help a golfer find the equipment that best suits them. Think of it in terms of buying a nice new suit — you’d better have it tailored or what’s the point? The same goes for golf clubs, whether you’re new to the game or hit it like a pro.
Just that simple step can boost the game of many amateurs, unknowingly dragged down by the random clubs assembled in their golf bag, off the rack or via hand-me-down without testing with a professional.
“The shaft is favoring a high shot, and they’re like, ‘I always hit it way too high,'” said AJ Partenio, formerly the head pro at Walnut Creek Country Club in South Lyon and now the fitting team leader at PXG Detroit. “But their shaft is a high-launch shaft. So they have no idea when they just grab one off the shelf.”
The PGA of America’s equipment guru recently estimated being custom-fit can improve the average golfer’s score by four or five shots per round. The whole idea is to make the game easier and more enjoyable. (Now that’s it how you grow the game, Phil.)
“Golf’s a really hard game,” Partenio said. “So to go out there and play with just a driver off the rack, it makes the game harder.”
Partenio watched me pound a few slices with my “gamer” driver toward the hitting bay’s roughly 9-foot high screen at PXG’s indoor facility in Troy. Using data from the Trackman system, he identified how we could improve — yes, besides overhauling my swing.
I saw some better results minutes later with a new driver head, armed with a low-spinning shaft and a few other tweaks from Partenio. That brings us back to Luna.
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After working the Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit Golf Club on Monday-Wednesday, he had his sleek truck — black paint interspersed with a subtle camouflage pattern — set up in the parking lot Thursday morning, offering customers a rare opportunity to have their clubs built on the spot. The rest of the time, the order is sent to the PXG facility in Arizona, where the clubs are assembled and shipped to the customer.
The truck’s trailer is packed with machines, tools, equipment, drawers, boxes and more. He pulls open drawers full of golf club heads — drivers, irons, rescue clubs, wedges. Bushels of shafts are laid out on the table. In short, it’s a makeshift factory inside a 42-foot trailer. But in here lies the key to unlocking the talent you see each week from the best golfers in the world.
Luna is the truck’s sole occupant: He drives the truck from city to city in time to accept the requests of PXG’s 11 Tour pros through Wednesday afternoon. He works with PXG’s player rep, who flies in for tournament week and helps work with the 8-10 PXG players on site. Then Luna, typically parked near the driving range, packs up and leaves for the next destination before play even begins Thursday morning. He tries to get a round of golf in his new city or at least explore.
In Detroit, Luke List needed a new 8-iron and US Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson asked for a new driving iron. Luna said the players like to watch him work at his pop-up paradise, sitting at the table on couches and chatting it up. A TV buzzes in the background as he works — it is tuned to the Golf Channel of course.
“A lot of (golfers) are standoff-ish at first — ‘Who’s this new kid?'” Luna said. “So it takes a while, just with anybody, especially at the professional level to trust you with (building) a club that’s gonna change their life.”
Luna can build anything in his trailer. He got his start in the industry 25 years ago, gripping about 1,500 clubs per day on Calloway’s production line in Carlsbad, California, and worked his way up. He learned milling, welding and every aspect of club building from some of the best in the industry — such as wedge savant Roger Cleveland — with stops at Odyssey putting and TaylorMade. He went to truck driving school and has been touring for about 20 years. PXG picked him up a few years ago.
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He takes me through the process, which only lasts about 15 minutes, mostly to allow the driver head time to set after being glued to the shaft: It’s a mixture of measuring and cutting that can only be learned with hands-on experience.
After he slides the grip on and gets a final weight confirmation on his scale to be sure the specs are exact, he gives the club his own official little waggle “to make sure it’s up to my par.” Then off it goes to the customer.
A few hours later, he’s off to Illinois for this week’s John Deere Classic in Silvis — repeating the process for the pros once more.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: What it was like to be treated as a PGA Tour pro for a day