SuperSpeed Golf: A Brand Story

Back in the fall of 2014, SuperSpeed Golf sort of burst onto the scene with notions of gaining speed, and let’s be honest, who doesn’t want to be faster. More speed, in a general sense means more distance and more distance means….well you remember the commercials: “Chicks Dig the Long Ball”.

Nearly anyone that started with SuperSpeed Golf would gain speed after their first session. These were the rumblings, or maybe the claims, and they stood out like a late night infomercial talking about hitting it further and straighter with some newfangled driver that someone conjured up on a napkin. This wasn’t a scribbled paper idea though, and came from science and testing and low and behold, the golf world jumped in.

Now here we are, with new year’s resolutions fresh on our mind, wanting to get faster, better and right in front of us could be the way to achieve both. Where did it come from? When did SuperSpeed Golf become a near de facto system at the professional level and in the hands of over 100,000 amateur golfers? It is time for another Brand Story and this one is pretty fascinating as it is something we reviewed five years ago, and if you missed that you can find it here.

Early Working with Luke Donald

Where did the idea and business come from? Kyle Shay offered some insight.

“Prior to owning SuperSpeed Golf, Mike Napoleon owned and operated a golf academy company in Chicago called Catalyst Golf Performance. Kyle Shay managed the physical training and rehab portion of the business. The model for this academy was quite different from typical golf academies in the market. We ran a membership based program and managed all aspects of our player’s games. This included golf instruction, fitness training, nutrition, mental game, on course performance, and equipment fitting. The concept was to put PGA Tour like coaching teams around amateur golfers. This business was quite successful, peaking with 3 locations in Chicago and one in Dublin, Ohio. During this time, we had a great team of experts working together at this academy. We were also very closely tied to the team at the Titleist Performance Institute.

This concept was new to the golf instruction world, especially in the Chicago Area where most coaches just sold hourly lessons like they had done for many years. We had a detailed assessment process that involved 3D motion capture, Trackman analysis, equipment analysis, and a full physical screen. This allowed us to create specific programs for our players that helped in every aspect of their game improvement.”

Early Demo Day

Obviously ahead of it’s time in terms of instruction and physical aspects to the game, SuperSpeed Golf was still not yet a thing. Kyle Shay expands.

“The first inspiration for SuperSpeed Golf came at the 2012 TPI World Golf Fitness Summit. Here we attended a presentation by famed baseball/football coach Dr. Tom House. He presented concepts he had been using to help Major League baseball pitchers increase arm speed by throwing different weighted balls. He finished the presentation with thoughts of applying this concept to golf in a very rudimentary way. Tom is famous for coaching both baseball pitchers such as Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson as well as NFL Quarterbacks such as Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Dak Prescott. After this, we began working on the application of this concept that Dr. House called Overload/Underload Training with our players at Catalyst. After our research, we coined the term Overspeed training and defined it as “Making the body move faster than normal during a known motor program in order to increase the expected reaction speed to that motor program.” We felt this was more descriptive of what was actually happening during the training.

We developed early versions of protocols and basic prototypes of what became the SuperSpeed Clubs in the early part of 2013. We had access to the best technology around including Trackman and full body 3D motion capture systems. This allowed us to do a lot of research into the effects of this training on our players. We saw the amazing results that overspeed training was having with our clients at Catalyst not only in the academy with our tech but on the course. We saw the opportunity to help the entire world of golf hit longer drives and shoot lower scores just by applying the relatively straight forward overspeed training system we had developed. We formed SuperSpeed in 2014, sold off the Catalyst business to work on SuperSpeed full time, and have been changing the game as the leading voice in swing speed training ever since. We’ve since gone on to research and develop additional training systems with the same goal of helping golfers optimize their swing speed.”

The company, despite being formed, wasn’t exactly off and running as of yet. Like anything product related, this is about the time prototyping is done and with the claims that would later be made, this might have been the most crucial step in this entire process. In a general sense, this stage of business building is typically done with design and then creation, followed by testing to make sure your goals could be validated. Kyle Shay explains how SuperSpeed Golf went about this.

Original SuperSpeed vs Today's version
Original Prototype vs Today’s Version

“We did a number of initial studies before landing on the final SuperSpeed Golf Training products. The first step was determining the exact weight breakdown of the system compared to a player’s driver.  We tested prototypes as light as 50% lighter and as much as 50% heavier. We broke up the test groups, which each used 3 of the prototype clubs and found that the optimal weight distribution for the system would be approximately 20% lighter, 10% lighter, and 5% heavier in that order during the training protocols. We also were very excited to see that nearly 100% of the players in this initial testing gained speed during the 6 week test period. The players in the group with the 20%/10%/5% gained the most speed at 5.2%. This 5% gain has remained fairly consistent in all of the research and testing that has been done over the years on our products. This includes 3rd party university studies and our own internal testing.

We also tested early on a players preference between using a design that had one club with adjustable weight and the 3 club system. We found that when players had to adjust or change weights on the club during the training that there was a significant degradation of the quality and speed of the swings during the protocols. We found just grabbing the next club was inherently easier for the player and reduced the difficulty of actually doing the protocols. We have always been interested in keeping this training as simple and easy as possible.

We haven’t made much if any changes since the beginning to the 3 club overspeed set. The original used to be a dull metal look at 46 inches. The only changes we made were to make the heads shiny looking and reduce the length by an inch. The weights are CNC milled.”

Over the years, I have explained my reasoning behind the failure of most training aids. It falls into two buckets. Either poorly made to the point of breakage or so incredibly frustrating for golfers, that they give it up before it can help. SuperSpeed Golf is neither of those things and that is what makes the journey at this point so interesting. Any golfer can pick it up and if their claims are true, any golfer will find success with it.

SuperSpeed Golf on the range

With any new product, especially from an unknown, getting players to understand the benefits can be incredibly challenging. Prototypes in hand, SuperSpeed Golf was tasked of getting this “new idea” into the hands of golfers and figuring out the best way to go about that. What type of resistance was met when bringing SuperSpeed Golf to the masses? Kyle Shay explains how they went about it.

“When we launched in the fall of 2014, speed training for golf was not popular or mainstream. While there have always been long hitters on tour it was never talked about as the extreme advantage as it is now.  To get a buy-in, we concentrated heavily on coaches and green grass facilities driving from state to state with trunk loads full of SuperSpeed sets meeting with as many PGA professionals, coaches, and golf clubs as we could. Some days we would stand on a driving range during a demo day and not a single person would stop by our demo station. But we were able to gain significant momentum during these trips, often getting a personal referral to another country club or golf professional nearby leading to more and more new accounts and customers.”

Going back to 2014 and the time in which they were launching, data devices such as Shot Scope and others that made it easy for golfers to understand what is happening in their game were not available. Personal launch monitors were not available. The data of distance being better for every golfer was really not readily available to the point of discussion. This led to some questions from golfers about distance versus accuracy.

Fortunately for SuperSpeed Golf, they were prepared. Perhaps prepared isn’t even the right word, because they have spent years presenting data and studies on the positive differential between hitting the ball longer vs. straighter. It has been discussed for a number of years on the THP Forum as well because the data is overwhelming on distance being the number one equalizer.

Other questions existed such as would SuperSpeed Golf ruin someone’s swing or my personal favorite, won’t more speed just make a golfer hit it further into the trees or out of bounds? Genuinely neither are the case, but it takes time to build that momentum to the point of gaining golfers’ interest. The craziest part of the questions? Data shows SuperSpeed Golf should increase one’s overall speed, but that better accuracy comes with it.

In nearly every brand story we do here, a lightning in a bottle moment takes it from idea to “oh, we have traction”. For this one, that was an evolution and climb. Kyle Shay explains.

“We began seeing a lot of early traction on tour. An Australian Tour player named Clint Rice visited our Catalyst location in Chicago looking for some help with his game and fitness. As a result of our assessment of his swing mechanics, body, and statistics we quickly determined the biggest thing holding him back was a lack of club head speed at only 106 mph with the driver. We took him through an initial SuperSpeed session and got him up to 113 mph that very first day. He was sold. Clint continued to train with SuperSpeed as we recommend all of our users to do. Over a year period he qualified as an alternate for the US Open and reached a comfortable 119 mph completely changing his game. 

We had a number of big name tour players using our products early on including Phil Mickelson and Billy Horschel. These players would get caught on TV using SuperSpeed on the range at tour events including the Masters and posting about speed training on their social accounts. Horschel actually purchased the product off the website in mid 2015 and posted multiple videos of himself training with it in his home.”

Billy Horschel using SuperSpeed Golf

How much has this taken off at the tour level? Nearly 2/3 of the active tour players all over the world are using SuperSpeed Golf. As a company, they simply stopped counting as they literally created the category speed training and it is steeped into nearly every level. Jon Rahm was shown using it during his climb to number one and now current number one Rory McIlroy ordered the full package off the website for himself as well.

This isn’t the company touting a staff full of players, in fact the opposite. Golfers ordering on their own because they have seen the results from their peers. Because of the demand, SuperSpeed Golf has a rep on tour working with both men and women with the system.

Of course when there is demand, the next step in the world of golf are knockoffs. In the case of SuperSpeed Golf, that started with people making something in the garage, to full on companies touting identical benefits, despite not really having the same background. We asked Kyle Shay to describe how the company handles that part of this process.

“In many ways, before SuperSpeed, many golfers and coaches wanted to get more speed and had little or no idea how to accomplish this. There were training aids for years that were some type of heavy club or resistance system. These aren’t necessarily bad, they just don’t really train speed. We were the first to make real speed training a mainstream area of focus for golfers and were the only player in this new space for many years. For that we are very thankful. We also understand that success in business breeds competition. We are happy that there are some other products in the speed training space now that meet specific needs of some players. We have seen a number of systems that are a single club version that is adjustable to do all three weights in one club. We have had an internal debate for years about releasing our initial, similar design. We haven’t because we know the three club version is more effective to do the training. There is a small market here for players who travel a lot or need the single club version for some reason. We just feel that the 3 clubs will always work better for the majority of the market. We have also seen systems come out with slight variations to our training protocols. We have always put a heavy emphasis on our training protocols as a way to differentiate us from most other training aids. We feel that our content here is still superior to anything else on the market. Everyone wants to try something slightly different to distinguish themselves. Honestly, subtle variations are fine and really won’t affect the overall performance of the systems. The systems that don’t do any non-dominant swings are crazy though. Overall, we are happy to see some competitors in the speed training space. The more people we get talking about speed in the swing just feeds the fire for everyone involved.”

It is an interesting dynamic there, because from a technical sense he is right. The more people talking about speed from the swing, the better off everybody is. Does that make it “right”? Obviously the consumer decides that and so far they have stuck with SuperSpeed Golf as the innovator in the space.

SuperSpeed Golf Squeeze

As brands grow, and do so rapidly like this one, innovations take place through all kinds of feedback. While the brand is nearly synonymous with the three pieces shown above from early prototype to current product, that isn’t the only product that they make. Recently they introduced the SuperSpeed Squeeze and if you missed our short preview, you can find that here.

This brings us full circle to the present, but any forward thinking company is always looking into the crystal ball. What does the not too distant future hold for the company. Nobody better than Kyle Shay to expand on that.

“We have lots of exciting things going on in the future for SuperSpeed. We have a number of new products in development that will be hopefully ready for the market over the next couple years. We are also about ready to re-launch our SuperSpeed Certified online program with a bunch of updated content and live certification workshops. To assist us with the Certification and speed research we brought on Dr. Tyler Standifird who is a professor of biomechanics. With all his research grade university technology, he has been very helpful in gathering laboratory data on our current products, helping to fine tune our protocols and assisting in creating new products. These items keep us busy with the task of constantly finding the best and most effective ways to help players increase speed.”

SuperSpeed Golf current demo day

We have a lot more coming from SuperSpeed Golf including some forum testing that will take place, putting the system and all of the brand’s products in the hands of THPers. For more information on any of the products or science behind them, make sure you check out their website at www.superspeedgolf.com.

Stay tuned to the THP Forum for how you could be a part of our forum testing coming up soon.

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