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Nakashima Golf's HTEC utility driver can be adjusted for loft, lie, face angle, and internal head weighting, among other variables. Nakashima's removable-hosel technology allows the club to be fine-tuned to a golfer's swing and preferences. John Nakashima built golf clubs in his garage for 20 years before deciding to launch his own line. |
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“The next revolution in golf is how well a person can be fitted to their equipment,” says club maker John Nakashima.
At his first stand-alone studios, which opened recently in Kansas and Northern California, customization is the name of the game. There, Nakashima’s “swing doctors” measure the weight and frequency—the shaft’s flex—of your current driver, and then, in an hour-long hitting session, clock your swing speed, ball speed, launch angle, spin rate, and several other variables on a state-of-the-art launch monitor. Only after testing out several permutations of their 18,000 possible driver combinations—five dozen heads, including drivers, fairway metals, and utility woods, matched with hundreds of top-rated shafts, from the Mitsubishi Diamana favored by Tiger Woods to the Fujikuras most used by the pros—will they sell you a heavy-hitter fit to your exact specifications in loft degrees, cubic centimeters, and grams. The result? A made-to-measure club that produces farther tee shots, longer roll distances, and more forgiveness for your swing, whether you’re a seasoned pro or just a weekend warrior.
This dedication to quality has helped Nakashima’s company grow explosively, although the brand’s success is still a bit humbling to the 49-year-old Stockton, California, native, who’d spent decades building clubs in his garage until he spotted an unexploited niche in the industry a few years ago. “I was making these clubs, and all the shafts in the world are available to anyone,” he says. “But there really wasn’t anything available to the custom club maker in terms of a quality club head from both a technological standpoint and an image standpoint for the country-club golfer.” Recognizing an opportunity, Nakashima, a top-ranked collegiate bowler who’s owned a custom bowling-accessories company since 1983, spent the next two years researching club manufacturing at metal foundries in China, Taiwan, and Japan.
Finally, in 2004, he launched his first line of meticulously milled, if standard, titanium driver heads and steel irons, all of which are assembled and re-inspected in their destination city, not in Asian factories like the majority of wrenches from other club makers. But, Nakashima says, “our hosel technology, HTEC, is what really sets us apart.” He’s referring to the driver he released in 2006, which employs a removable hosel—the jointlike component that binds the head to the shaft—hewn from aircraft-grade aluminum. The removable hosel allows golfers to reassemble their clubs with any shaft and precisely adjust the lie and face angles on Nakashima’s vacuum-cast and plasma-welded driver heads to what he calls the “it-doesn’t-get-any-better point.” He can even tweak the swing weight using a set of screws that attach the hosel to the head. “I could assemble a perfectly fitted driver in less than one minute,” says Nakashima.
To realize the full potential of this novel and critically acclaimed technology (which was accepted under United States Golf Association regulations in January) Nakashima opened the studio in Wichita last December and another in San Jose in March. “Our company is not intended to be a big company,” says Nakashima. He compares his stores to clinics where a doctor gives a diagnosis: “You’re coming in to my place to get your prescription, which is the club.”
“We fit guys in our studio better than a professional gets fitted on the PGA Tour, and that attention to detail is something you don’t get in the mass-market world of golf. Every possible thing on that driver we can change,” says Nakashima. “I’m getting older and older, and I keep hitting the ball farther and straighter.” Other golfers (including myself, having tested the 440c driver last year) and competitors have obviously reached the same conclusion. Callaway and Nickent are developing their own versions of adjustable-hosel drivers in light of the recent USGA ruling, and Nakashima is planning to open franchised studios in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Florida, and Canada within the year. “The big picture for us is worldwide representation,” he says. “We currently do business in more than 20 countries, but the thing that I believe is going to change the way people buy golf clubs are these studios. I could see hundreds, if not thousands, of them around the world.” If his customers truly gain an average of 20 yards on their ball with his clubs as Nakashima claims, that projection doesn’t seem too farfetched.
Michael Slenske is a New York–based writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Men’s Journal, and Best Life.
Photography Courtesy John Nakashima
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