The reality TV show on Golf Channel tasks 11 teams with designing Wilson Golf’s next driver for 2017, with the winners taking home $500,000. Celebrity judges, including former Chicago Bears linebacker and avid golfer Brian Urlacher, will assess the teams’ designs.
Kevin Neitzel and Kyle Hanquist, current Ph.D. students in aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan, make up one of 11 teams on Golf Channel’s reality TV show competition “Driver vs. Driver,” Michigan Live reported.
The show began October 4. The task before the teams is to design Wilson Golf’s next driver for 2017. Not only does the winning team take home $500,000, but the driver also will be sold at retailers starting next year, Live reported.
Neitzel describes the show as a combination of Shark Tank and Chopped, as the teams present their designs to celebrity judges, including former Chicago Bears linebacker and avid golfer Brian Urlacher, Live reported.
The U-M duo believe their engineering background is an advantage, as the other teams have varying experience. “When Wilson hires people to design their clubs, they’re usually engineers,” Hanquist said. “In the golf industry today, aerodynamics is a huge factor. Not only being engineers, but aerospace engineers, I thought this was the perfect competition for us.”
The winner will be announced in the seventh and final episode of the series on November 22. The show was filmed from October 2015 through July 2016 at the Wilson headquarters in Chicago. The contestants are not allowed to share the results before the show airs, Live reported.
As the field narrows, the contenders will gain access to the innovation hub at Wilson. Engineers from the company will help the contestants refine and perfect their idea for maximum performance, Live reported.
Neitzel caddied at the Country Club of Jackson (Miss.) for years before playing on the golf team at Hanover-Horton High School. “We’re not the best golfers in the world,” Neitzel said. “We understand a lot of the problems golfers have and we try to use our expertise to try to solve it.”
While their design will aim to reduce drag for a faster swing, their club is optimized for being stabilized to square up the club head for consistent contact, Live reported.
“When you look at golf commercials, every driver tells you you can hit it this much further,” Hanquist said. “If that was true, you’d be hitting it about two miles by now. So we figured we’d go after a different approach, and that’s to hit it not only further, but straighter.”
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