Our first stop during PGA Merchandise Show week last January was at Edwin Watts Golf Shops in Orlando.

Brian LoGrasso, manager of the Turkey Lake Road Superstore, was kind enough to sit down with us for a few minutes to talk about:

• Life during the week of “The Show” when the entire golf world meets in Orlando
• New products available in 2016 including the Ping G Series, TaylorMade M Family and Callaway’s XR line.
• The importance of being custom fit for this new equipment

You can view our interview below or listen to the audio version on Soundcloud, on the GolfBetter Podcast page of our website, or subscribe free on iTunes.

Tom Brassell:     We are at the Edwin Watts Golf Super Store on Turkey Lake Road, here with Brian LoGrasso. Brian, thanks so much for joining us. Man, it is great to have you.

Brian LoGrasso:   Thanks for having me.

Tom Brassell:    Tell us what it’s like once a year when you have like the Super Bowl of golf come to this town because the PGA Merchandise Show is this week. What’s that like from this perspective?

Brian LoGrasso:  It’s great. You get to meet a lot of people from all over the world that come to see the biggest show in golf, see everything that’s new, everything that’s hot for the next year, and a sneak peak to hit a lot of stuff that you haven’t seen yet.

Tom Brassell:     Great Segway, what’s new and what’s hot? What’s the buzz going on in the Super Store right now?

Brian LoGrasso:   New Ping G series launches in a couple of weeks. They had a home run last year with the G30 and it’s even better this year. Taylormade M1 which launched in the fall is doing very well and M2 coming to follow. A lot of new stuff, Callaway has some new drivers, very aerodynamic co-engineered with Boeing which I think will be very good, hot, long, we’ve hit them already. They’re pretty impressive.

Tom Brassell:  Let me ask you a fallacy and you hear this a lot. People think because the restrictions USJ puts on a club that you can’t buy a better club today than you could, what I’ve got in my bag five years ago. Talk about that and certainly there’s some examples to prove that’s totally false, right.

Brian LoGrasso:  You know I’ve hit some of the best drivers I have ever hit in my life in the last six months. I mean they are really just, all they have done is issued a challenge to the manufacturers to step it up a little bit and to us at retail from a fitting perspective. I mean you’ve got now more shaft options than you ever had available and most companies are offering of them at no upcharge. With Taylormade they’ve got almost 30 different stock driver shafts at no upcharge. Callaway is in the same ballpark. Mizuno with their irons, the same thing. They’ve opened the door to fine tune the equipment a lot more and have it not cost you any more to do it.

Tom Brassell:     Well it’s a salad bar of options and that even makes it more importantly to come in and get custom fit because you are really not going to know what you need and we are sitting in the fitting area. Talk about the importance of being custom fit.

Brian LoGrasso:  I think it is every bit as important as finding the right club. Head is getting the right combination of shaft, loft, lie and all of that. You can’t really walk into the store knowing what you want unless you’ve hit it. It doesn’t take that long. We’ve got some of the best launch monitor equipment available. Hey, it might take a half hour of your time and it makes a noticeable improvement in your game.

Tom Brassell:   Brian, thanks so much for joining us. It’s a busy week for you. It’s a busy week here in golf in Orlando. Thanks man.

 

Brian LoGrasso:  Oh, thanks for having me. Again, great to see you guys.

 

Tom Brassell:     Great, thanks.