| General Fiction posted January 29, 2023 | Chapters: |
...55 56 -57- 58... 
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The team creates a prototype of the golfing suit.
A chapter in the book Some Call It Luck
Some Call It Luck - Chapter 57
by Jim Wile
| Background A brilliant and beautiful but insecure, nerdy young woman befriends a going nowhere older alcoholic caddie. Together, they bring out the best in each other and collaborate on a startling new invention |
Recap: After getting her master’s degree, Abby goes to work as an actuary at an insurance company. She has two children, and her boss, Leroy, welcomes her back each time after she spends a year at home with each child. Her boss retires and recommends Abby for his replacement, but the company hires an outsider who treats her poorly. She eventually quits.
She stays home with the kids for a few years but eventually wants to return to the workforce. After a lunch with E.J. who encourages her, she soon gets a call from her old boss, Leroy, who has taken over as interim manager of the actuarial department because Abby’s previous boss washed out. Leroy asks Abby to come back and take over for him as the new manager. Abby talks it over with Kenny and decides to go back.
After a year’s time, Abby has the place running smoothly and has earned the respect of all her employees, but she begins getting restless as the challenge of the job is no longer there for her.
Dana Griffin (nee Padgett), who was Abby’s chief tormentor all through grade school, finds herself in Altoona, Pennsylvania. She is a good golfer and joins Kettle Creek Country Club soon after moving there. While practicing one day, she sees a young redheaded girl practicing as well who reminds her of a young Abby. She then reminisces about her relationship with Abby back then and how poorly she had treated her.
Dana is invited to have lunch and play golf with a woman she met on the practice tee. At lunch the next day, who should show up to have lunch and play in the foursome but Abby, who is also a member at Kettle Creek. It’s been 20 years since they’ve seen each other, and although they are cordial, they are also rather cool towards each other. Dana learns from the other ladies in the group how successful Abby is at her job and how good a golfer she is, having won the ladies club championship the previous year. Dana finds out that the young girl she saw practicing on the range is Abby’s daughter, Claire, who seems to be struggling with the game.
Abby relates how her daughter, Claire, is having trouble learning the golf swing which leads Abby to the idea of a new invention: a golf suit training aid that will swing for you to give you the proper feel of the swing. She tells Kenny about it, and they decide to invite E.J. and Eddie over for lunch and to bat the idea around.
A continuation of the chapter: Abby Payne - June, 2004
And that’s how it all began. I should mention that E.J. had married Susan about two years ago, and they lived just up the road in State College where E.J. taught computer science at Penn State. Kenny and I had gotten together with them often over the past few years, and Susan was part of the group now who came to lunch that day.
They were all intrigued by the idea of the suit and were almost instantly on board. There was one important question that we talked through, though: Would people spend the money it was likely to cost for something they soon wouldn’t need after their swing had become grooved? Kenny assured us that people’s swings gradually change over time, due to physical changes in their bodies, age, and just unknowingly falling into bad habits. That’s why golfers always seem to be experimenting and tweaking their swings. The suit could be used as a refresher to get the proper feel of the swing again. That seemed to satisfy the group.
E.J. would do the complex programming based on the algorithms he and I would develop together. We decided to start with a prototype that Kenny and Eddie would be responsible for engineering and fabricating.
For the first few weeks, I sat and did research on my own. As the thousands of solenoids would act as a group, I needed to study group theory and soon got immersed in such things as Frobenius groups and composition series. But I needed someone to bounce ideas off of. E.J. had a fairly strong background in mathematics, so we began getting together on weekends, when he wasn’t working, to go over ideas.
“Okay, Abby, give me the broad picture of what we need to do here.”
“Have you ever seen a flock of birds, or a murmuration of birds, to be precise, take off at the same time and fly in a coordinated manner, changing direction together all at once?”
“Sure. How do you think they do that?” E.J. asked me.
“There are various theories about that. Some think it’s a rudimentary form of telepathy. Others think it’s like a chorus line where each bird sees their nearest neighbors act, and then they time their own moves accordingly. But how they do it is not as important to us as the simple coordination that is necessary to make it happen.”
“And that’s what we have to achieve with our thousands of solenoids,” agreed E.J. He thought for a moment. “But do you picture it as more of the telepathic theory that sends the correct swing message all at once to all the solenoids, or will it be more of the chorus line theory, where each solenoid is responding to what is happening with its neighbors?”
“I think it has to be both. The correct swing is pre-programmed, which urges the wearer to swing a certain way, but the suit has to be able to respond to any deviation from this if the wearer overrides the correct way.”
We tossed around ideas for several hours. E.J. had to admit that much of the mathematics was above him, but he told me he would try to come up to speed on such areas as geometric group theory and vector spaces.
Over the next year, E.J. and I continued to meet for a few hours most weekends, developing the mathematics and the subsequent algorithms he could then apply his programming skills to. I never would have succeeded in this without his help, and he developed as much enthusiasm for the project as me. When we finally got the programming in place, we were ready for Kenny and Eddie to apply it to their plans for the construction of the suit.
Over the next two years, it was a true collaboration between the four of us, and after thousands of man hours and tens of thousands of dollars, we now have a working prototype.
It works like this: First of all, it’s parameter-driven and designed to be totally adjustable to the person wearing it. Before putting it on, you have to enter your height, weight, body type, age, physical condition and answer a number of other questions to assess your current skill level.
Future models will be able to calibrate the device for you after you first take a few practice swings in it, but for now, you have to manually input much of the data.
You also need to tell it what percentage of a full swing you wish to use; there’s a little dial on the side for that. If you can estimate the carry distance of your shot correctly, you can input that instead, and the device will cause you to swing the proper amount, but it assumes you are using the correct club for the shot. Even if you were built like Tiger Woods, you wouldn’t be able to hit, say, a 9-iron 250 yards.
There are safety considerations built into it, though. For example, Claire would not be able to input a carry distance of 250 yards because, with her size and body type, there’s no way she could hit the ball safely that far, even with her driver.
The golfing suit fits over your arms and torso, as far down as the bottom of your knees. That way, it can train all your golfing muscles to get you to swing on the correct plane at the same tempo and timing on every swing.
The suit is made of stretchable fabric, worn under the clothes, and is one-size-fits-all for now, with future plans for small, medium, and large sizes. Hand-sewn into the suit are the several thousand tiny solenoids, which “urge” you to swing the correct way.
We patterned the “ideal” swing after Kenny’s, since his tempo, timing, and consistency are beautiful to behold and very effective. Future models will allow you to set the tempo or speed of your swing to match your natural tendency. And even newer versions will enable you to adopt the pattern of different professional golfers, assuming they give us permission to measure their swings.
The suit is for training purposes only and could not be legally worn during, say, a tournament, as Rule 4.3 in the Rules of Golf is very strict about prohibiting the use of training aids.
I could talk about all this for hours, but I won’t relate any more details. The prototype is just about ready to be tested by someone outside the design team, and Claire is going to be our guinea pig. In fact, the launch is scheduled for later this week.
It still has a long way to go before I could consider marketing it, but that’s the eventual goal if it proves successful. Time and hard work will tell.
(7 more chapters to go)
Abby Payne: She is intelligent and beautiful, yet shy and awkward with most people her age, having been picked on quite a lot while growing up. She worked at the snack bar and as a waitress at Brentwood Country Club during the summers where she met both E.J. and Kenny, who is a member at Brentwood and became her boyfriend and eventually her husband.
E.J. Budrowski: 18 years older than Abby, he is an alcoholic with a traumatic past (an abusive father and a mother driven to suicide) who is a caddie at Brentwood CC. One day he finds a dirty old golf ball on the edge of a pond that seems to have unusual powers, for he makes two holes-in-one with it. He and Abby become friends when she encourages him to take up both golf and bridge again after long layoffs. He finally quits drinking and returns to college at age 40 and earns a degree in computer science. Eventually he becomes a professor of computer science.
Dana Griffin (nee Padgett): Grew up with Abby back in Butler. She is a bully and teased Abby unmercifully all the way through school. Coincidentally, 20 years later, she finds herself living in Altoona, where Abby lives, and joins the same country club as Abby.
Kenny Payne: Abby met him briefly at a frat party in her senior year and was intrigued by him, then she sees him again when he walks up to the snack bar several months later. He is a mechanical engineer and is tall, good looking, and an all-around nice guy. After less than a year of courtship, he marries Abby.
Eddie Phillips: A young member at Brentwood known for his extremely good putting and ability to hustle his opponents. Eddie is friends with Abby and beats Kenny in the club championship with a miracle shot. He and Kenny become best friends after that.
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. E.J. Budrowski: 18 years older than Abby, he is an alcoholic with a traumatic past (an abusive father and a mother driven to suicide) who is a caddie at Brentwood CC. One day he finds a dirty old golf ball on the edge of a pond that seems to have unusual powers, for he makes two holes-in-one with it. He and Abby become friends when she encourages him to take up both golf and bridge again after long layoffs. He finally quits drinking and returns to college at age 40 and earns a degree in computer science. Eventually he becomes a professor of computer science.
Dana Griffin (nee Padgett): Grew up with Abby back in Butler. She is a bully and teased Abby unmercifully all the way through school. Coincidentally, 20 years later, she finds herself living in Altoona, where Abby lives, and joins the same country club as Abby.
Kenny Payne: Abby met him briefly at a frat party in her senior year and was intrigued by him, then she sees him again when he walks up to the snack bar several months later. He is a mechanical engineer and is tall, good looking, and an all-around nice guy. After less than a year of courtship, he marries Abby.
Eddie Phillips: A young member at Brentwood known for his extremely good putting and ability to hustle his opponents. Eddie is friends with Abby and beats Kenny in the club championship with a miracle shot. He and Kenny become best friends after that.
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