Sport: Sweetening the Sweet Spot

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Courses are longer and sleeker, knickers have given way to bellbottoms, balls are livelier and travel farther, hickory staffs on clubs have been replaced by stainless steel or expensive graphite (up to $2,000 per set). Those are the obvious changes in golf since the game was first played in Scotland some 500 years ago.

Less visible improvements in equipment have contributed even more dramatically to lowered scores. By thickening the base of club heads, manufacturers have concentrated their weight as low as possible — adding power to even a duffer's swing. But for the final balancing of clubs — necessary to give a set of irons uniform "swing weight" — manufacturers until now have had to load the bottom of the shaft with bits of lead. Now Shamrock Golf Co. of Los Angeles has devised a technique for placing that additional weight in the club head itself — right at the "sweet spot" where metal meets ball (see cut). Shamrock leaves a hollow slot in the head, then fills each iron with a precisely measured slug of lead.

The Shamrock line was designed by Golfer-Engineer Ken Rogers, a wily links veteran who set 20 course records in the U.S. and holds three engineering degrees from Stanford. Rogers, 67, never did well in tournaments because "I got so nervous I'd throw up"; high-stakes private matches are more his thing. His Shamrock clubs, he says, are going to give golfers the loft that has been missing from their long irons. "I've finally developed the club I've dreamed about since Bob Jones gave me my first set in 1930."