For the past decade, Todd Daigneault immersed himself in almost every facet of golf: playing as a professional; teaching; selling; and his specialty, club making.
The great irony of his chosen profession is that as a child Daigneault grew up loathing the sport.
“I grew up in a golf family,” said the owner of the Prove it Golf shop in Wethersfield. He recalled how his father, mother, brother, uncles and aunts all played in Chicopee, Mass., where he was reared.
Daigneault viewed himself as a hockey guy, until he ravaged his left leg while playing for the Worcester State College team in 1996. After six years of working odd jobs, including a home business building guitars, Daigneaut drove his brother Ben — now a golf pro — to Myrtle Beach, S.C.
There, Daigneault decided to play a round of golf at a public course, abutting the ocean. He experienced a defining moment — one most duffers would appreciate — of hitting his 9-iron about 130 yards and sticking it to within three feet of the flag. He flushed it, to use the golf vernacular. And now he was hooked on the game.
“A light bulb went off,” Daigneault said. “It was like, wow, this is actually a really fun game.”
Golf quickly became his passion, moving from avocation to vocation. He played or practiced every day. Mostly self-taught, he read everything about the game, talked to professionals, watched videos and began taking apart and putting back together his golf club heads and shafts. This son of a building contractor has always “been a tinkerer, someone who liked to take stuff apart and put it back together. And the first thing I did when I started to take golf seriously was to learn how the clubs were made.”
His scores started improving to the point where he became a scratch golfer, meaning he needed no additional strokes to handicap his score on a PGA-rated golf course.
Daigneault worked as a repair and fitting specialist at a local golf shop franchise from 2004 to 2011. There, he learned how to run a golf business, engage with customers and gain intensive and extensive experience in golf club repairs. Four years ago, he and wife Amanda decided he should branch out on his own.
Daigneault says his expertise as a club maker and a teaching pro gives him a unique platform from which to serve clients.
“Your teaching pro is going to ignore the clubs and fit your swing to the clubs,” he said. “If you go to a retail store, they’re going to ignore your swing and fit the clubs to your swing. I can do both.”
Business is mostly word of mouth and, he says, it has been steady. He does the club repair work for many of the country clubs in the area. Custom fittings comprise 60 percent of the business, with repairs and lessons taking up the other 40 percent. Over the years, he has fitted thousands of golfers at all levels, including professionals.
Most golfers can improve their game, he said, if they remember three things:
• To make sure their clubs are sized to fit their swing. He gives the example of the customer who simply could not hit his driver or 3-wood. He ended up trying, sizing and liking two hybrid clubs (a mix between a club and iron) that each went further and straighter than his driver.
• Establish realistic expectations about how they and their clubs should perform.
• Practice — without becoming mechanical or robotic with a game designed to be fluid and “artistic.”
He is not an advocate of pounding dozens of golf balls on the practice range to improve your game, but rather working on core strength, swing mechanics, consistency and the inner psychology of the game.
“Golf, for better or worse, is a competition against yourself,” he said. “So the golfers who succeed are the golfers who understand that. They have the perspective to say, I missed that 6-footer (putt), big deal. Next hole, I have a chance to score better.”
Golf is a game about tempo and temperament. The ones who are paid to make a living, for the most part, keep their composure when things go astray. Amateurs, Diagneault said, should do the same.
“If it’s your job to play well, then you can worry,” he said. “If it’s your job to play golf for fun — have fun.”
Stan Simpson is host of “The Stan Simpson Show”, which airs Saturdays on Fox CT — and online at Foxct.com/stan.
