AUGUST 2017 _ http://www.popularmechanics.co.za 71
Crivelli is a big hulk of a guy with arms
like rolled phone books and a too-tight
baseball cap on his melon. He’s leaning into
the act of wolfing a sandwich, pacing in
front of a folding table, urging people to
take some free tees. “It’s the only tee you’ll
need this year,” he says. “It’s unbreakable.”
Crivelli acquired rights to the design after
a friend in Phoenix came back with several
of the tees after a trip to Sweden. “He gave
me one,” Crivelli says. “And I used it for
years. You can’t break it. It’s a two-piece
construction.”
“I called these guys up in Sweden,” he says,
pointing to his skinny Scandinavian partner,
also manning the table, “and we attained
the rights to the western hemisphere.” He
has other stories, too. Chemotherapy. Heart
trouble. He is frank. And blunt in his
honesty. People stop and listen. He is the
mayor of inventor’s alley. Passersby wish
him luck.
“People look at me here and they think
what they think,” he says. “But they don’t
know that what I liked best about this tee
is that this is a very green product. In just
one season, it replaces hundreds of wood-
en tees, thousands that just break after
one use. That’s why I like it
so much. It’s green.”
He grabs a bottle of water
and stops a woman in a CBS
Sports jacket. “You need to
try one of these,” he says. “You only need
one and I’m going to give it to you.”
Elsewhere in the hangar, Cobra rolls out
its new drivers. The vocabulary of the sell-
ing year is established. TaylorMade names
Tiger Woods a member of its Playing Pros.
Odyssey representatives fan out to explain
the microhinge mechanics of their new
putting face; this is an idea that makes
sense to me, incidentally. The putting-face
insert is covered with tiny metal inserts
fashioned to lift the ball off the flat surface
of the green. Damned smart, it seems to
me. I’m a lousy putter, but I start dropping
the rolls at a rate I’m not used to. It makes
me look forward. The inserts give the ball a
slight loft at impact, making it easier to
roll. Putt after putt, I find myself
wanting to show someone what is
happening.
Optimism. Hope. This too defines
you as a golfer. It makes you want
to talk.Better still, Wilson puts its
new D300 driver in the
hands of anyone willing to
take a swing. And on this sec-
ond day, that’s me. It’s light-
er than anything I’ve swung this week and
comes with an amped-up ability to increase
swing speed by using a series of interchange-
able weights and loft adjustments, imple-
mented using a small spanner. Handing
all these adjustments over to a lousy golf-
er feels a little like letting a 15-year-old
install a nitrous oxide system on your
father-in-law’s new Toyota sedan, but it’s
legal. And the D300 is fun. And I can see
results, even on the virtual driving range.
I’ll buy one, I think. This one might do the
trick. I’m thinking I can sneak in a little
range time tonight. Maybe a round before
the plane. When optimism sets in, a golfer
is carried forth, towards the game itself.n the morning of my third and
final day, as I park my rental car,
the Convention Centre flops
once again at the far end of eve-
rything visible, big as a real city. A
Ferris wheel looms. I stand outIt’s hard to say what makes
one ballmark repair tool better
than another, but there are
always guys in golf shirts
ready to talk it through.O