Oceanside is in many ways the quintessential coastal California town: palm trees, sandy beaches, iconic wooden pier jutting into the Pacific, the state’s Surf Museum. It’s also home of the Titleist Performance Institute, making it an idyllic spot not only for the hang-ten crowd but also the wannabe single-digit, scratch and plus-handicap set.
The facility’s mission since its 1997 inception has been straightforward, if hardly simple — namely, to provide the most advanced golf equipment, evaluation, testing and education facility anywhere. The 33-acre site, as pristinely kept as a five-star resort, conducts Tour-quality clubfittings, does unparalleled ball and club testing and boasts three absolutely pure fairways, a fitness center to live for and a 3D motion-capture studio. What’s being captured? Data from thousands of golf swings, from Titleist staffers like Max Homa, Will Zalatoris and Danielle Kang to regular Joes and Janes in order to study how the human body functions throughout the swing. That means a swing that functions correctly and efficiently, as well as uncov- ering how it doesn’t, with the potential injuries that can result.
“Our main objective at TPI is to educate golf industry professionals and the playing public on the importance of the body and how it relates to the golf swing,” says TPI cofounder Dave Phillips. “We have thousands and thousands of data points that we’ve accumulated over the past 20 years and know golf- ers will benefit the most from a healthy and efficient body.”
If you can make the trip, TPI is worth an in-person visit PDQ for clubfittings and golf fitness evals. This being Cali, the place that brought us the phrase “tech hub,” it’s worth noting that TPI is also just that. The main TPI R&D facility is a nerve center that branches out worldwide, with fitters in every market and a network of 20,000-plus TPI-certified professionals in 63 countries. So if you can’t get to Oceanside, you can still access an ocean’s worth of TPI institutional knowledge.
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