Callaway Tour Truck

Golf Monthly talks to Callaway Tour Truck Technician Paul Monks to find out about the ins-and-outs of being a part of the Callaway team.

Golf Monthly talks to Callaway Tour Truck Technician Paul Monks to find out about the ins-and-outs of being a part of the Callaway team.

Tell us about your role on the Callaway Tour Truck…

My part of the business is on the Tour side, looking after the players and making sure that from an equipment standpoint, they have everything they need to go out there and play their best golf.

The truck is set up in three sections, not including the driver’s cabin itself! There is a conference suite at the front that acts as a business hub.

Then there is the reception area where the players each have their own locker that stores all of the players’ soft goods for the week – things like caps, gloves and towels.

Finally, at the back of the van you’ll find the workshop where we have everything we need to build or adjust the clubs we give to the players.

What’s the strangest request you’ve had?

The strangest request I’ve ever had was at the Open at Carnoustie, when Nick Faldo split his thumbnail and asked me to glue it back together.

That was probably the most nerve-wracking job I’ve had to do, I certainly didn’t want to glue all of his fingers together.

What’s the busiest part of a tournament week?

Our busiest time of the week tends to be a Tuesday, as we try to meet all the requests that have come into us before the tournament.

During that period it’s a bit like a chef’s kitchen in here – organised chaos! The orders get shouted down the room and if you aren’t concentrating, mistakes can happen.

So to help, above the worktops we have a quick reference guide for each of our players. These just tell us some of the key measurements and preferences so that we can build clubs as accurately and quickly as possible.

What are the differences between what the players use and what we can buy?

The differences would be very small, if any. Looking at Alex Noren’s irons, these would be exactly as what you were able to buy.

The only difference in terms of irons would be that some guys’ clubs need the shafts slightly longer, and so I would order in some heads that are eight grams lighter.

Finally, the shafts that we offer to players might be a little different. The shaft producers manufacture to tight tolerances, but they will often hand sort the ones we receive on tour to be sure that a 70-gram shaft is exactly spot on.

What’s the process of getting a player like Alex Noren into a new driver?

Well we know everything about his previous model – length, loft, flex, centre of gravity.

So we will get the product ahead of the player and build up a few different versions and the specs we build here will depend on what the new product is designed to do.