Mizuno Play Famously Experience (CH3 on page 3, Luke Donald on page 4, Jonathan Byrd + Stacy Lewis o

[JaxBeachNole]

Little known fact: Mizuno is latin for "greens in reg"

[tickyboy]

Highly anticipating my 800 pros arriving... drooled over the 825 pros at the store yesterday... Mizuno is on to something great!!!

[Scott@84]

Congrats! You are right up the road from me(I have the golf center in Eighty Four) and a fellow Mountaineer, even better! Pete's a great guy but a huge Pitt fan so give him some crap next time you see him. Enjoy every second of it!

[WVP]

[quote name='Scott@84' timestamp='1364604377' post='6723289']
Congrats! You are right up the road from me(I have the golf center in Eighty Four) and a fellow Mountaineer, even better! Pete's a great guy but a huge Pitt fan so give him some crap next time you see him. Enjoy every second of it!
[/quote]

Hey Scott. I'm actually at your place more than a few times a year but it's always your brother there. Glad to see the weather finally breaking....

[Scott@84]

[quote name='WVP' timestamp='1364607979' post='6723645']
[quote name='Scott@84' timestamp='1364604377' post='6723289']
Congrats! You are right up the road from me(I have the golf center in Eighty Four) and a fellow Mountaineer, even better! Pete's a great guy but a huge Pitt fan so give him some crap next time you see him. Enjoy every second of it!
[/quote]

Hey Scott. I'm actually at your place more than a few times a year but it's always your brother there. Glad to see the weather finally breaking....
[/quote]

Nice! Maybe next time I will be there. Congrats again, enjoy the ride!

[WVP]

OK, so here's my fitting experience. FYI, this was all in late February/early March. The fitting was on Feb 22nd, so a week before Doral.

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I meet Mizuno’s Pete Kohelis at my local Golftec the following evening after the longest Friday workday in the history of the world. So full disclosure, I had went temporarily insane for a few hours when I found out that I was getting set up with Mizuno clubs. My brain flashed “Mizuno. Grain Flow Forged” over and over again and I was daydreaming about MP-H4 or 825 Pro irons, T4 wedges and basically everything Mizuno forged. Thankfully (for my HC) it was made clear beforehand that the campaign is for “Team JPX” and as such it would be for their full JPX line. But this is the craziest part of the story – I was 100% honest to god about to purchase the JPX 825 irons before I had even heard of this promotion. I had done my research on all of the 2013 products, narrowed it down to a few contenders and hit the top contenders extensively. To me the JPX 825 is the best performing and best looking GI iron out there, and I had felt that way before I had any affiliation with Mizuno.

So Pete sets up the Foresight Launch Monitor and gets the Mizuno Swing Optimizer hooked up while I warm up a bit. I was extremely excited to get on the Swing Optimizer as I read so much about and really wanted to find the right shaft for my swing. Never had a chance to test more than one or two shafts in one session, and honestly I didn’t know what my 6 iron speed was (it’s my 180+ yard club typically). So Pete hands me the 6-iron and I try to put 3 smooth swings on it. Loads it up on the computer and gulp, 72 mph swing speed? I’m a healthy, mostly athletic 30 year old and while not tour long I’m not a short iron player. What the heck? I’m at the absolute bottom of the cool chart they use to show how you match up to their staff pros. So OK, I swallow my pride and the system recommends:[list]
[*]Dynalite XP R300
[*]Project X 5.0
[*]Dynamic Gold SL R300 (not positive this was my 3[sup]rd[/sup] but we tried it)
[/list]
Never played a regular flex before but again I’m fully trusting the system here and trying to have no bias at all. I hit all 3 of the above and a few others and the PX felt the best by a mile but I feel as if I’m overpowering all of the shafts a bit. And my swing speed quickly got up to 80-82 mph consistently, so it seemed my 3 test swings weren’t a true reflection of my swing. We move on to the different S300 offerings and PX 5.5 and the Project X 5.5 was incredible for me. I’m more a hitter of the ball and everything about these felt great. I had never hit a PX shaft before and I was sold. We tried the KBS one more time and the KBS Tour stiff was my second pick. Very different shafts though. We kept the PX 5.5 in the wedges and went with my preferred 54, 58 setup in the JPX wedges. Went to the lie board and ended up 2 degrees up on both irons and wedges. I must say, it is absolutely amazing to keep tweaking shafts and get the feel better and better until it’s perfect, and then getting the proper lie angle for your swing. The difference in feel and performance from start to finish is nothing short of incredible. If you are going to buy new irons and don’t know your specs, you must go through a process like this and get dialed in.

We spent a ton of time on the irons but pushed on to the woods. Like Mark Crossfield said, these are the best looking woods Mizuno have ever released. They look as good in person as they did in the release pics thread last fall. The JPX 825 driver is a lower spin head. Pete was confident that the stock Fujikura Orochi Blue (55g) would fit me well and he was right – good strikes with the 9.5 head were getting 14 degree launch and spin in the 2400-2500 rpm range - done. Really great feel to this driver, I haven’t hit as many drivers as most WRX’ers (and this was the first Mizuno driver I’ve tried) but it’s the best feeling driver I have hit. For the 3 wood, we went with the same Orcochi Blue shaft (60g) which I like to do when possible. And the 3 wood is stock at 42.75” so that was good for me as I’m not a big fan of the 43.5” 3 wood trend.

I went with two hybrids, 19 and 22 degrees. I’ve always played a 22/23 degree hybrid and lately I’ve been using an 18 or 19 degree hybrid as well instead of a 5 wood. For the hybrids we went with the Fujikura Orochi Red in stiff, which is an 85g mid launch hybrid shaft. And -1/2” for both as I prefer my hybrids to play close to the length of the irons they replace. The Orochi Red shafts are stout! Heavier and lower launch than the Orochi Blue, they're a great hybrid shaft.

Last but not least, the grips. Had to go with the Mizuno branded black and blue NDMC – perfect match for the black and blue JPX colors (and also the Project X shaft labels). +2 wraps. Basically a dream setup. Thank you, Pete and thank you, Mizuno. Pete emailed the specs to Iver that night and it was time to play the waiting game!

[WVP]

A few quick pics of the setup, more to come:

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[WVP]

And a quick preview of what's to come!

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[Tom D]

Wow! Congratulations on the great experience, keep the updates coming.

[HR Dave]

Cool promo, only change I would make is a marketing one. The CEO looks like well, not the most intelligent guy to put it nicely. Other than that great idea and kudos to the dumb looking guy with the good idea.

[Sidetracked]

Wow what an experience! Can't wait for the next updates.

[golfware]

Nice. Congrats on the experience. Very cool.

[WVP]

OK, so after the briefing and the fitting, the next week was filled with planning and prepping with the production company. Hotels, flights….making sure I was caught up as much as possible with my work commitments (luckily I had the vacation days left). We went over the theme of the videos and some of the ideas they had for the scenes we’d be filming. On Friday in our last correspondence before my flight on Monday, the production company dropped the bomb and told me that I was basically going to spend half a day with Luke Donald on the upcoming Tuesday. Whoa. WHOA. The original thought was to not tell me so I’d be naturally surprised (shocked) but they thought it was better to give me a heads up so I wouldn't me a nervous wreck. That maybe helped a little….or not….haha… FYI, I had to say who my favorite pro was and why in the original video interview and Luke Donald was my guy. So between that and the fact that I was already planning to buy these irons, Mizuno was a perfect fit for me.

I pushed through the weekend and took off from frozen Pittsburgh for 80 degree Miami on Monday morning. There was a delay in Charlotte and it was at the gate where I found 3 WRX’ers heading to Doral for the WRX trip (QMany, Togatown22 and golfpromt). I saw 3 guys smiling like kids on Christmas Eve, one with a Travis Matthew hat and another in Dunning so I took a shot and introduced myself. Very cool guys and all four of us were en route to once in a lifetime experiences mainly thanks to this website. A few minutes later our plane arrived and we took off for Miami.

The first exposure to the Doral resort was just surreal. I get out the car and to my right Chris Wood is jogging in from a gym workout. Bill Haas is standing there. And Nick Watney walks right by me. This is literally 8 seconds after I stepped out of the car. At that point it becomes crystal clear that this is going to be a crazy couple of days. I see the 3 WRX’ers checking in at the exact same time and then another star sighting: HipCheck himself! I turn around (and see John Merrick) and we all arrange to catch up for drinks after dropping our bags in our rooms (another Watney encounter there). A half hour later I am heading to the putting green with HipCheck to meet another WRX legend, Greg Moore.

Getting able to meet Rob and Greg was one of the coolest parts of this trip. Tons of great stories and insight to how WRX operates. Richard and Ryan of course are the WRX founders but Rob, Greg and Zak are driving the bus these days. It was obvious that they take their roles seriously and are dedicated to making the site as good as possible. Very surreal to be discussing the forums and have Greg pull his phone out to call Zak to talk about a thread on the site. The other WRX’ers on their trip showed up (bu11dog and Chappie) but I had to run to get cleaned up for dinner. After a quick shower, I got in the elevator and when the doors opened again, bam, Nick Watney was standing there with this staff bag. Not my typical Monday.

Dinner was my chance to meet Iver from Mizuno and the marketing and production teams involved with the Play Famously campaign. After so much interaction and planning beforehand, it was a relaxed environment and I felt like I knew the team pretty well already. We ate at the Mesazul Steakhouse at Doral which is the main restaurant on site. Doral is unique in that everything is very central and it seems like everyone involved with the tournament is circling around at all times. HipCheck stopped by the table and said hello, the guys from the TMAG event ended up being a few tables over, and I recognized some of the Callaway tour guys walking in. Great dinner and a really good experience meeting everyone but we had a 6AM start time the next day so that was it for me. Luckily after a few Manhattans I was able to get some sleep….

[WVP]

Here's a few of the pics I took with my iPhone.

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That was all I had time to take unfortunately, but from here on out I will be posting some great professional level pics that were taken over the following two days....

[rozey]

[quote name='WVP' timestamp='1364846719' post='6738693']
Luckily after a few Manhattans I was able to get some sleep….
[/quote]

Nice write-up. It would have taken more than the Manhattans to get me to sleep any night on that trip.

[sactown_golfer]

Really loving this thread

[Sidetracked]

Can't get enough of this thread. This has been one of my favorite threads. Sounds like you were the right guy for this gig.

[lvmike]

What a tremendous story and a great experience! We'll be following you and make sure you take time to breathe it all in! Congrats!

[philsRHman]

This is excellent. Congrats.

Question: Does this affect your amateur status? Not sure where the cutoff is for gear and freebies before you lose it and I wonder if terms like "staff" will make this different than a simple contest win when you get a full bag of equipment, etc.

[jbbates]

What a cool experience. Great thread.

[Par-A-Medic]

I most definitely jealous of you my friend. I love my mizzys. I can only imagine this was a lifetime expierence for an avid golfer. One of te coolest contests I have seen. Congrats.

[Kadin 25]

Very Cool! Congrats!!

[prorobo]

Nice start to your adventure! Can't wait to hear more about it.

On a side note, did you crop your iPhone photos to make them squareish like that? All of mine are 16:9 and it's annoying.

[swanry30]

I love this marketing campaign - probably the most unique and well thought out that I've heard of... Congratulations and look to follow this thread for more info!

[Dscvrr St Louis]

WVP...DUDE!! This is sick as it gets!! Love the thread..keep it coming!! Man, what an experience!! LOVE IT!!

[Ajlepisto]

Really cool! Mizuno makes great clubs.

[chrispkreme]

I am so jealous! I submitted my application a good 2-3 weeks ago, fingers crossed for the next selection

[Big Ben]

Super cool, sounds like you had a fantastic experience, Mizzy JPX has always had a top shelf legacy in Japan and quite honestly I was happy to see it hit the States...BB

[jokerusn]

Awesome, dude! This sounds amazing! Looking forward to hearing more.

[WVP]

[quote name='prorobo' timestamp='1364872918' post='6741641']
On a side note, did you crop your iPhone photos to make them squareish like that? All of mine are 16:9 and it's annoying.
[/quote]

I used to be tech savy but I think I've been passed by! So no editing.... I took those pics with the phone horizontally, transferred them to my computer and hit "attach files" in the post!