Philip Talamonti was on the tee line during practice at the Mastercard Colonial. The man who spoke was a golfer, but not just any golfer. He was a Texan well-known for his impressive game and multiple top-ten finishes on the PGA Tour. A golfer whose "secret" advantage was about to be shared with PGA pros around the world. Talamonti nodded, smiled and continued spreading the word about spine orientation. At least, that's how the story goes.

As the president of Strategic Shaft Technologies, the company founded by clubmaker Dick Weiss, Talamonti has thus far traveled to eight PGA events with a specially designed Tour van to inform and educate the pros on what many custom clubmakers already know about spine alignment.

Both men are on a mission. But it's not an impossible one. Already nearly 40 Tour pros have spine-aligned their clubs, more and more original equipment manufacturers (OEMS) are warming up to the process, and Talamonti predicts that more than 50 percent of the Tour players will have spine-aligned clubs before the end of the season.

"Reaction has been phenomenal from those players who have tried it," says Talamonti. "Although we are dealing a little bit with a lack of understanding about what the process is, a lot of those players truly do not know what we are doing. It's an educational process and that's why we thought it was imperative that we not only expose them to the technology, but to have a trailer out there that they could walk into and actually see the process in a laboratory environment. After all, seeing is believing."

The SST tour van gives the pros a chance to see firsthand the aligning process which Talamonti and Weiss refer to as 'Pure' or 'Puring,' terms that reference the 'Plane of Uniform Repeatability' and involves shaft stabilization through the use of state-of-the-art golf shaft analyzing equipment which Weiss specifically developed along with noted engineer and golf shaft expert Howard Butler of Golf Science Consultants.

According to the SST philosophy, every manufactured golf shaft remains as unique and individual as a fingerprint, and no shaft is perfectly round, straight or stiff despite modern manufacturing capabilities.

"It is a fact that all shafts -- steel and graphite -- have some degree of spine," says Tom Wishon, chief technical officer for Golfsmith. "This is because it is impossible to make a shaft which has perfectly symmetrical bending properties all the way up, down and around the shaft for the prices demanded by the consumer. Therefore, no shaft bends the exact same amount under the exact same force in all directions."

Wishon explains that by identifying the inconsistencies of the shafts and installing the shafts in the clubhead so that their effect is neutralized by proper orientation toward the target, the shaft will bend exactly on the same plane as the golfer's swing. If all the shafts in the set are likewise spine matched, he says the golfer could have the most consistent bending throughout the set.

According to the U.S. Golf Association, the spine-matching process is allowed only if the spine is placed in a neutral position so that orienting a shaft caused the shaft to perform as if it were symmetrical. While there is no precedent, SST research indicates that the neutral positions are at 3 o'clock (facing the target) and at 9 o'clock (directly away from the target) as indicated by comparing the shaft to a clock when the club is in the address position. Any other position of the spine with respect to its installation could be considered illegal by the USGA.

The science behind spine-orientation first gained industry-wide recognition with the release of findings from an independent study which showed that test golfers experienced between 20 percent and 60 percent improvement in their percentage of on-center hits after spine orientation.

"The fact that every single golfer in the study came out with on-center improvements, and the golfer with the least amount of improvement was at 20 percent was pretty significant," says Wishon.

That significance has not been lost on the professional golfers who seek every possible opportunity to improve their winning advantage. With the recent introduction of spine-aligning technology to the PGA Tour, LPGA and European Tour, many pros have realized that the golf shaft aligning process could quite possibly revolutionize the way in which golf clubs are made and assembled. In their first three weeks, Weiss and Talamonti have 'pured' the shafts of more than 25 percent of the exempt PGA Tour players that tried the process.

"We're out there to work with the players and their equipment," says Weiss. "We're working collaboratively to get this process plugged in with the players. We consider ourselves out there providing a service and a technology to the players. The tour van does not do any assembly or dismantling for the players, because many OEM vans are present at the Tour locations for that expressed purpose."

Currently, SST has nearly 40 players on the regular Tour using shafts which have been aligned, and those numbers are escalating quickly.

"We've had one of the most important golfers in the game come out and say what a tremendous difference shaft puring has made in his game, but because we're not paying any of the players we have trouble using their names," Weiss says.

Despite the lack of public name-dropping, the Florida businessman and clubmaker proudly notes that three of the top 10 finishers at this year's MasterCard Colonial were playing spine-aligned shafts. The interest among tour players is growing rapidly, he says, and he hopes to have spine-aligned shafts in the hands of more than 50 percent of the Tour players by the end of the year. According to Weiss, once players try spine-aligned shafts, they will probably never go back to unaligned shafts.

Among some of the more notable names on Tour using spine-matched shafts are the 1998 PGA Tour Comeback Player of the Year Scott Verplank and two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw.

"I believe there's something to spine-matching," says Crenshaw. "As professional golfers, we're out there with equipment every day and there's so much to try and so much information to digest. But spine-aligning makes sense. You can tell a lot of difference in a shaft's flex and feel."

Crenshaw is one of the many PGA Tour pros that welcome the new technology. Using a spine-matched True Temper ProFit graphite shaft in his 3-wood (X-flex), the 1999 Ryder Cup captain and 26-year Tour veteran confirms that he can feel a distinct difference with the spine-matched wood and plans to spine or 'pure' his complete set of irons.

"I feel like I've been hitting the strongest part of the shaft," says Crenshaw, "and the strongest part is leading that shaft through the hitting area."

PGA Tour player Scott Verplank agrees. The two-time All-American from Oklahoma State is currently playing a mixed set of irons made up of Golfsmith's Tour Cavity Forged and Forged blades assembled with UST Tour Weight graphite shafts (extra stiff). The entire set was spine-matched and, thus far, the Dallas native is number one in driving accuracy and he has hit 67.7 percent of greens in regulation this year (through the Buick Classic), which is an increase from the previous year and he is currently 23rd on Tour.

"I think my shafts are more consistent with the spine-matching process," says Verplank. "They are more consistent with the way they flex and the way they kick because of the process."

The 14-year Tour veteran explains that graphite shafts provide him with a smoother impact, a smoother kick and less vibration than steel shafts. But he has always been bothered by an occasional shaft that felt differently from the others in his set despite frequency matching.

"By spine-matching," he says, "it makes all of your shafts react similarly. A lot of people may think that spine-matching is better for woods, but for me, I think that it's good for irons too because it makes them more consistent.

"Overall, my iron play is good. I'm in the top 25 on Tour so I'm hitting the ball better than most of the guys."

Verplank's recent success is just one example of the achievement of SST and of how the puring process has made tremendous inroads into a Tour that is traditionally resistant to change or to new ideas when it comes to equipment. In fact, to have more than 40 PGA Tour players adopt and support a new product in less than six weeks is practically unheard of in recent history.

But there are still obstacles for SST to overcome. Weiss explains that, despite his company's best efforts in the last few weeks, there are still some professional golfers who do not fully understand the shaft-puring process. Many players, he says, hear about puring and then consult with the shaft manufacturer that has supplied them with their equipment. Because of this tendency, SST is also trying to educate the original equipment manufacturers as well as the players.

"Every pro player who has hit a golf club after the shaft has been aligned has loved it, and reactions have been positive across the board," says Weiss. "But because SST is the new kid on the block and introducing a new technology that is not yet in the mainstream, some people misinterpret and misassociate the 'spining' term."

Weiss explains that his shaft puring process is not simply an indiscriminate search for weld seams. Approved by the USGA, the spine puring process accurately pinpoints and diagrams each shaft's most predominant spine effect which can greatly help a clubmaker.

"This affects every club that's out there and at every level of play," says Weiss. "But by positioning the shafts spine in a neutral position, clubmakers can eliminate equipment induced mis-hits for their customers and then make every one of their customer's clubs their favorite.

The sophisticated computer analysis equipment created by Weiss's engineers shows a shafts false Planar Oscillation Plane (POP) on the print-out, and then specifically shows the correct Principal Planar Oscillation Plane (PPOP). With such information at their disposal, the clubmakers' secret advantage is out. The SST Tour van is scheduled to visit I 1 out of the next 13 PGA events so clubmakers cannot expect to keep spining or 'puring' to themselves for too much longer.

Today, the secret of spine-matching is out. And the PGA pro with the 'secret advantage' at the Colonial now has plenty of company.

State-of-the-art computer technology created by Strategic Shaft Technologies and licensed to GolfSmith locates imbalances within a golf shaft and generates a printout of the shaft's pre- and post- spining oscillation to clearly illustrate the correction of the shaft's asymmetry.