WITB: Erik Van Rooyen’s Unique Driver Journey

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0:00 Intro
0:23 Talk about your journey into this NEW Elyte driver
0:50 Your decision to play the standard Elyte driver
2:24 Shot 1 (Driver)
2:45 What is your typical driver ball speed?
4:17 Shot 2 (Driver)
4:29 The Elyte 10x face provides a tighter spin window, how does that help you?
5:27 Shot 3 (Driver)
6:06 Do you have a fairway finder shot?
6:49 Shot 4 (Driver)
7:40 Shot 5 (Driver)
8:03 Chrome Tour golf ball
8:23 What has the Chrome Tour golf ball done for your game?
9:33 Show me your full send driver bomb
10:26 Shot 6 (Driver)

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[Music] Woo! Now we’re talking, bud. We got something to talk about later on. We do. Nice. 182 ball speed, 315 carry. That’s the one, right? It’s kind of cold, too. I haven’t really warmed up today. All right, Eric, you’ve had a fun journey to start this year with drivers. Yeah, really fun, actually. So, let’s talk about I want to talk about the history of how you got to where you are today with this elite driver. Yeah. So going back 3 4 years flash standard model played it all through the year. Paradigm played it at the start of the year. Standard model and then in Mexico you remember at uh at Vant got into the triple diamond. Got into the triple diamond. Picked up some ball speed. Y played triple diamond the rest of that year. All last year played triple diamond. We show up this year in Hawaii and we’re back to a standard head. Tell me what you’ve seen with this head in relation to going back to like last year. So AI smoke triple diamond. We’re now on the standard elite head. Tell me about that journey. I think the first thing that caught my eye with this was the way it sits on the ground. You know, you know, I’ve got a funky setup with the flat cog and then N minus one. Um, but it’s something that caught my eye with the way it sits on the ground. I like to turn it right to left, but I also, you know, occasionally want to fade it. M um and for some reason I looked at it and it was just like it’s like this is home you know um played it at Sony drove it great phenomenal kind of went back to the triple diamond there at AMX and um was it Cognizant or maybe the week before um week before I believe you put it in on the weekend so Mexico again vida back where it all started right um put it in on the weekend and haven’t looked back drove it great at Cognizant number one in strokes gained at Cognizant on a golf course that if you’re not driving it well, you’re not playing well. Good driving. Yeah. Yeah, it’s good. So, yeah, that’s uh the cool thing that we’ve seen with Elite this year is that the standard model is keeping up with triple diamond and ball speed. They’re very very comparable where in the past there was some compromise. You know, you had forgiveness, but you might lack a little bit of ball speed. So, through the new shape of and uh with the 10X face, what we’re finding is guys are not having that big, they don’t have to make a decision. And do I want forgiveness or do I want speed? We kind of brought it in to one model. Space of both worlds. Yeah. Show me a couple. Okay. Love that shape. Love that. 175 2400 on the spin. We can crank that up a little bit. Yeah. It’s early in the day. Yeah. Tell me on the golf course your cruising speed 76 77 you know weekends get you’re in the heat. You know what it what is funny about that is I see throughout the week um come Saturday morning all of a sudden on the range I’m cruising at 120 180 ball speed. Um, I don’t know if it’s a little bit adrenaline factor, um, or what it might be, but without even trying, you know, club head speed goes up, ball speed goes up. Um, it’s been pretty cool to see. Yeah. One thing I noticed uh, at Sony was you had just shown up off season. Yeah. You know, and sometimes for some, you know, that’s a kind of a break, you know, knocking the rust off kind of event. You had had the Triple Diamond at home. you had been using it, practicing with it. Showed up there. There was a little bit of left miss, a little bit of right miss. We threw that head on there and Fee looked at me. He’s like, “Dude, it was Wednesday.” Yeah, it was literally and and it was it was in the bag. Yeah. Straight away, which I think is killer because again, you drove the the heck out of it. Dude, um historically, I’ve I’ve not been one to want to really tinker. Yeah. No, you once you’re set, you’re set. And um I mean I think that shows just how good this head is. It’s awesome. Yeah. So I mean I mean there’s a lot of great players that use that head. Yeah. You included. Show me some top end speed. I want to see the uh that 180. Okay. There we go. Close. 78. Love the spin rates on that. So, with that 10x face, the one thing that I’ve noticed that everybody has come back and said is their high end and their low end seems to be a lot tighter than it was in years past. So, the high on the face, the low on the face, the toe, the heel, they’ve noticed a big difference in spin being a lot. It’s a tight window. Yeah. Yeah. What does that mean for you on the golf course during a PGA Tour event? you now having a driver that has such a tighter window thanks to the 10x face. What does that do for you when you’re playing in a tournament? Well, when we’ve got days like this where it’s gusty, um I I want to hit a low one. I know it’s not going to fall out the air. Um if I want to hit the high bomb draw, it’s going to stay up. The fade isn’t going to balloon on me. Um that windows tight just gives me so much control. Yeah. Yeah. Let me actually uh let me try and hold it into this right to left wind. So, the draw that was a draw is 2300. We’ll see what this says. And that’s money. Yeah. Just under 3,000. Yeah. A lot easier to plot a golf club around. You guys play a lot of dog. There’s a lot of bunkers strategically placed on the PGA Tour that, you know, it’s a it’s a hard carry or there’s an obvious, you know, you have to lay up short of that bunker or it’s becomes a much harder second shot. So, having tighter spin windows gives you guys more trust that you can carry that bunker even if you mis hit it or if you high on the face and get the tumbler, it’s not going to run out and go too far. Show me a you have a a swing or a shot that hole gets a little tighter. You got to hit driver. Mhm. So, a little bit of a fairway finder. Little fairway finder. A little lower one. Tell me, walk me through that. Tell me what you uh what you’re thinking about. How how do you bring the flight down or however you Sure. Um first thing, I think it’s pretty obvious that, you know, tee it down a little bit. High tee encourages to kind of hit up on the ball. Lower tea helps me cover it, bring the flight down. And then it it also depends on the shape of the hole where the the trouble might be if I want to draw it and fade it. Um, generally with the lower one, I like to hit a little squeeze fade. Ball goes back a bit. I open up the stance and it just comes out a nice window. Okay, so ball’s back, stance is a bit open and um the setup kind of takes care of everything really. Nice. So for you, it’s not a not necessarily like a different golf swing. It’s just the setup helps produce the lower flight. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. Um the only thing that’s different is I’m feeling a bit of a fade um in the swing, but window wise, it’s all sets up. Okay. It’s all set up. I’ll try one more. See if I can turn that over. It’s not quite the seawe stinger, you know, but we all have our limits, right? And um but yeah, if we’re talking fairway finder, this is kind of the the shot that I’ve got in play. So windows quite lower and um you know runs a bit more. I could caddy that. All right. So the other half of this uh equation is we got a great driver this year. The windows are tighter. Controls been amazing. Again, first off uh the T strokes gain at Cognizant. Yeah. Uh it’s proven itself to be a great driver. The other half of this is golf ball. Sure. So, the amount of money that Callaway’s put into R&D to developing a golf ball that has the tightest spin we can possibly have for you guys so that you can be your best. Tell me about what golf ball has done. So, you’re in the chrome tour golf ball. So, tell me about this golf ball. What What have you found in it that And we can even get away from the tea. Go green side. Go irons. Tell me about golf ball and what it’s done for you. Yeah, if we go green side, I was I was looking for something, you know, sound and feel plays a big role um in what we do when it comes to the things that really require touch, putting chipping. Um I was looking for something with a with a certain feel of the face, not too clicky, but not too spongy either, kind of in the middle, still with good spin rates around the green. You know, flighting wedges so key, especially when it’s windy. Having the ability to do that all comes down to the ball and and I mean that ball does it for me. Yeah. And then you’ve been in a Chrome Tour version since we came out. We’re now in the 24 version. You’ve never really I don’t know if we’ve ever ball tested. I’ve not varied since that ball came out. I’ve not varied much. And I think it comes down to what I said earlier like when I’ve got something that I really love. I don’t want to think I know what it’s doing. There’s there’s a sense of um trust and confidence in it. I just know exactly what it’s going to do, what the window it’s coming out, the spin it’s coming out with. Um, high soft one, a low checky one or a high toe driver. Um, there’s trust and faith. Let’s see another. So, show me the bomb. Okay, downwind par five. All right, no trouble. Send it. Full send. So, um, a shot I’ve been working on hasn’t quite come in play yet, but there’s a feel that I’ve been working on with my coach where I’m almost throwing a kettle bell over my left shoulder. Um, ball goes up and it’s a high fade. Um, and the reason the kettle goes over the left shoulder helps me get up on the ball without sort of trying to fall back on it. Um it’s a high bomb one that you know is a 300 yard carry on a bunker. One that’s going to carry 305 or 310. So um ball teed up slightly higher. Ball position goes up. It’s going to give you the height. You want the angle of attack up on it. And yeah, let’s just let it rip. And that’s it there. 182 ball speed. What are we doing? 315 carry. What are you trying to show off? That’s the one, right? It’s kind of the bomb. I’m kind of cold, too. I haven’t really warmed up today. Awesome, dude.