Bobka brings illustrious golf background to 2nd Swing

By Drew Mahowald -- 2nd Swing Staff Writer

Larry Bobka has been building and fixing golf clubs for nearly 45 years. And during that time, he has worked with thousands of golfers, ranging from beginners to -- quite literally -- the best golfers in the world.

Throughout his illustrious career, Bobka has served as a golf club professional, teacher, advisor, club designer, and club fitter. He has made several stops during his journey through the golf industry, and his successes at each have earned the respect of the most recognizable figures in the sport.

During the summer of 2019, Bobka joined 2nd Swing Golf as an advisor and master club fitter, bringing his world-class experience, knowledge, and service to the award-winning club-fitting staff at 2nd Swing.

Bobka was forced to learn the ins and outs of golf clubs from a young age. He was highly successful as a competitive junior golfer, and he also had a tendency to show his frustrations, which his father took notice of.

“I actually got into working on golf clubs because, at the age of 15, my dad decided that I either had to stop throwing them or learn how to fix them,” Bobka said, laughing. “So I learned how to fix them. And it just turned into a passion.”

Over the next decade, Bobka used his knowledge and skills to become a club professional at the course he grew up playing in the Chicago area, and he began teaching and providing lessons to golfers. It was during this period in his career that he began to realize the importance of equipment.

Bobka says he remembers several lessons where he would recommend what he thought was the proper swing change or a new technique for a student, and he or she wasn’t seeing the improvement on the golf course. Then, he considered the equipment.

“That’s where I started to get into building demo bags of different drivers and different clubs to see how they worked for people,” Bobka said.

Bobka soon realized he had a unique ability to build golf clubs to fit the needs of a player’s swing. In the 1980s, he was ahead of the curve. Rarely were people thinking about shaft flex, shaft weight, or sole grinds when picking out a set of golf clubs -- and rarely was anyone educated on how much those elements can affect a golf shot.

It didn’t take long for others to realize Bobka had a special talent. In 1984, he joined Wilson Golf, where he worked as a liaison to communicate with tour professionals to make sure their equipment requests were received. He would often build a tour pro’s club or make an adjustment to a tour pro’s club himself.

During his tenure at Wilson, Bobka quickly learned that some of the best players in the world are very intricate about the clubs they’re playing, while other pros will take the clubs out and ask few or no questions.

“Hale Irwin always played ‘69 Staff irons, and he would go find them and we would strip the chrome off and grind the weight down to his perfect swing weight and that was exactly the head he had to play,” Bobka said. “Whereas somebody like Payne Stewart, when he came on staff, would look at a new set of irons and say, ‘these will do. I’ll just make them work.’”

The varying levels of intricacy from tour professionals meant Bobka was always on his toes and ready to answer the call when he was needed. Meanwhile, his task of building, adjusting, and recommending clubs for tour professionals also gave him a brand new lens to watch golf broadcasts through.

Tour professionals routinely trusted Bobka to not only build their clubs, but they also took his advice on other recommendations, whether that meant building a brand new club or making a small tweak to another.

For Bobka, this meant some added nerves when Wilson pro staff members teed it up on the PGA Tour, especially after they had recently made a change to their equipment.

“The average fan won’t think about that perspective,” Bobka said. “But it was true back then and it still is now, my mindset is that it isn’t human error with those guys. They’re the best in the world. It would be on me to make sure that club works.”

After a short period with UST Golf Shafts, Bobka joined Titleist in 1995 and found that the nerves of watching the tour professionals he worked with didn’t change.

In fact, they were only exaggerated. After all, he helped build a set of irons for Tiger Woods.

Following the 1997 season, Woods made the transition to Titleist, which meant discarding his combo set of Mizuno MP-29 and Mizuno MP-14 irons that he used to win The Masters.

Woods contacted Bobka and said that he liked the way the sole of the Hogan Apex irons played through the turf. So Bobka worked with legendary golf club designer Terry McCabe to design the 681 Forged irons, which included a sole similar to the historic Hogan Apex irons with a center of gravity positioned slightly higher to help manage Tiger’s ball flight.

Bobka says working with Woods was great because he provided exactly what he wanted in terms of feel and aesthetics.

“He was involved in that he knew what he wanted to feel and what he wanted to look at,” Bobka said. “He didn’t want to look at a lot of offset. He needed more bounce in his golf swing. So these things helped us out a lot.”

Bobka says he joined Woods for several range sessions to make sure the 681 Forged irons were dialed in. And according to Bobka, everything we’ve heard about Woods in his younger days is true, specifically when it comes to his athleticism and swing speed. He was different.

“To that point, I had never seen anyone with that much speed under control,” Bobka said. “You see people with speed, but he was really the guy that had speed at the time and it was well under control.”

During the process, Bobka says his nerves didn’t necessarily have to do with his ability to build the irons for Woods or even Woods’ ability to perform with them. Bobka knew he was going to win a lot of golf tournaments.

He says the pressure he did feel was from playing his part for Titleist, and that getting Woods into a set of irons was a big deal for the company.

“It was pressure from the standpoint that Titleist is a family,” Bobka said. “The sales reps, the R&D team, everybody was excited to get him into something right away. But it’s a process, especially with somebody like him where if you’re going to do it, you want to do it right.”

Bobka laughed. “Would it be in the time frame you’re looking for? Probably not.”

Clearly, the irons that Bobka and McCabe put together for Woods proved to be effective. The Titleist 681 Forged irons were in Tiger’s bag from 1998 through the 2001 season. During that span, Woods won five major championships, including the “Tiger Slam” when he was the reigning champion of all four major titles after he won The Masters in 2001.

Overall, Woods won 23 events on the PGA Tour from 1998 through 2001. From 1999 to 2001, specifically, Woods won 22 events in 65 starts. Additionally, Woods became arguably the best iron player on the planet during this stretch. He didn’t rank worse than fifth in greens in regulation from 1999 to 2001 and finished the 2000 season in the top spot.

So about those nerves Bobka had felt watching pros he had worked with after an equipment change? They didn’t last very long with Woods.

Bobka remained with Titleist until 2014 in a similar role, working with members of the tour staff to build equipment and make necessary adjustments. He also worked closely with Scotty Cameron and Bob Vokey as they hand-crafted putters and wedges specifically for some of the best players in the world.

Since his time with Titleist, Bobka has served as the VP of Operations at Argolf, a putter manufacturer that originated in France, while the company opened a division in Jupiter, Florida. While in Jupiter, Bobka reconnected with a number of professionals and began teaching and fitting a large group of students.

Bobka has been working with 2009 U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover since 2016, specifically on his putting and short game. In 2019, Glover earned his first appearance in the Tour Championship in 10 years and had his best year putting, in terms of strokes gained against the field, in eight years.

Over his nearly 40 years in the golf industry, Bobka has worked with some of the best players, teachers, and club designers that the game has ever known. His extensive background in equipment and fitting has provided an excellent resource for players, both professionals and amateurs, to go to for advice.

“It meshes well, and you understand what you have to do for somebody under the gun,” Bobka said. “And at the same time, I learn something every time I work with somebody because every golfer is different.”

The golf equipment landscape has certainly changed throughout Bobka’s legendary career. Not only are there more new models available every year, but the adjustability and custom options available present several advantages golfers didn’t have decades ago.

Meanwhile, fitting technology has also progressed. Bobka says he used to study a golfer’s divots to gather data for fitting and making the right adjustments for clubs. Now, launch monitor technology such as Trackman has made all kinds of numerical data available to golfers as soon as they make contact.

While all the technology and data can become complicated, Bobka brings a fairly simple perspective to 2nd Swing, despite years working tediously with tour professionals.

“At the end of the day, it’s about the art of the golf swing,” Bobka said. “It doesn’t matter if the specs are consistent or matching as long as the ball flies or rolls the way it should.”

Bobka joined 2nd Swing after he traveled to the Twin Cities area to work with Glover for the 3M Open. He says he enjoyed the area and he looked deeper into what 2nd Swing was all about and found that it was a great place to pass on some of the knowledge he has acquired over the years.

“I’m excited and everything I’ve seen since I’ve been here has been extremely positive and extremely motivating,” Bobka said. “You can really see the passion for golf in this company.”