For the second installment of his Gear Dive podcast, our Johnny Wunder talked with Ben Schomin, Tour Operations Manager for Cobra-Puma Golf.

Schomin talked about his path to working on the Tour, and shared stories about building clubs for everyone from J.B. Holmes to Rickie Fowler, to Bryson DeChambeau, to Lexi Thompson, to the Great White Shark himself, Greg Norman.

While you should absolutely listen to the full pod, for those of you who are more textually inclined, here’s a crib sheet from an excellent “dive” into Cobra’s maestro of tour equipment’s work with longtime Cobra staffer, Rickie Fowler.

Schomin discussed the addition of tungsten plugs to Fowler’s iron heads.

–Fowler begins tweaking his equipment for the Masters around the beginning of the year. However, they’re constantly “making sure the wedges are dialed. Fowler puts a new lob wedge in play every six to eight weeks.”

–Fowler always puts a new lob wedge in play the tournament before a major so the grooves are sharp and he’s used to the club by the time the major begins.

–“Last year for the U.S. Open, on the Monday of…he ended up putting a Cobra Forged CB 2-iron in play.” Fowler had said the rough was so thick, he wouldn’t be able to hit his 5-wood out of it. He also felt because of the speed of the fairways, the club could function as a great driving iron.

–Regarding preparation, Schomin says, “As much as we do on the front end…months out, there’s still the chance, the possibility, that three days out, there may be something else we need to work on.”

–Fowler first switched to shorter lengths in his irons before going with shorter shafts in the rest of his clubs. This is the fifth or sixth season Fowler has played shorter-than-conventional-length irons.

–“How it came about: We were at Riviera, and we were sitting in the locker room, and he had mentioned…trying a shorter iron.” Fowler said he thought he might be able to control shorter clubs better and flight the ball lower more easily. “Being able to control the flight overall was what had him thinking.”

–“There are some inherent difficulties with shorter clubs…the weight needs to increase,” Schomin says. So he put a run of test clubs together for Fowler to try. Schomin used the same True Temper Dynamic Gold X100 shaft in a number of 6-irons: straight in, soft-stepped, bringing weight to get it to D3, leaving at D0.

–They did a “blind taste test” at the Medalist. After extensive testing, Fowler narrowed the field to two clubs, and then picked one from there. The iron he picked is the same length he continues to play: X100 soft stepped, half an inch short. He went with D0 swingweight (although he has since changed to D3).

–“He ended up winning Wells Fargo with those irons, and he put them in the bag permanently. He played with that set the whole season. In the offseason, we were working on putting a new set of irons in play” at which point Fowler decided he wanted to go back to a heavier swingweight, which required adding six or seven grams to the head.

–They’ve essentially been making Fowler’s irons the same way since (adding tungsten plugs to the head). Cobra removes six to seven grams of steel from the iron’s head and fills it with 12 to 14 grams of tungsten.

–“It’s actually a really, really involved process,” Schomin says. The company has an in-house machinist who works on the irons, and it takes a whole day just to do a couple of irons. “It’s a pretty precise operation.”

–Schomin indicated there’s a set of irons for Fowler in the Tour truck. Rickie has one at home, and there’s one at Cobra HQ.

–A couple of years ago, Rickie was struggling with a 3-wood he had loved up until that point, he was like, “Dude, I gotta do something. I’ve lost confidence in my 3-wood.” At that time, Fowler’s 3-wood was 42.5 inches. After Fowler repeatedly pured a 42-inch 3-wood Schomin built for him, he put it in the bag immediately.

–With the 5-wood it’s the “same deal.” A 5-wood is typically 42-42.5 inches, but Scomin built Fowler a 40.5-inch 5-wood with added weight since Rickie wanted something between a 5-wood and a hybrid. “It’s a golf club that has a lot of utility.”

–Last year, prior to the Honda, Fowler spent Monday and Tuesday testing a shorter driver. “He was striping it…then he goes out and wins the golf tournament.”

Schomin talks about his work with Rickie Fowler from around the 18 minute mark to around 28 minutes in the podcast. As mentioned, he addresses his work with a number of other pros and talks about his route to building clubs for some of the game’s best players.