Boehmer, who currently resides in Dallas, didn’t grow up dreaming of being a club tech. He didn’t pick up a club until the age of 27 and only did so to help close sales deals during an 18-year run in the oil and gas industry. When computers started to encroach on his turf in the late ’80s, he left the oil fields for a second career. With an interest in golf, Boehmer figured he’d work as a course marshal to be around the game until a friend pointed him in the direction of a golf shop.
“I went to the shop and they only had one job left: assistant manager,” he said. “They asked me if I’d done club repair before. I told them I built clubs all the time, except I’d never even regripped a club in my life. They asked me if I spoke Spanish. I said, ‘Yeah, I’m fluent.’ But I couldn’t even speak a lick. So they hired me.”
Six months after he talked his way into a job in 1990, Boehmer could speak Spanish well enough to sell a set of clubs. And with Ralph Maltby’s “Golf Club Design, Fitting, Alteration and Repair” acting as his bible, he started building and repairing clubs.
Over the next decade, Boehmer would become part-owner of San Antonio–based Golf Solutions, the first indoor computerized fitting center in Texas. Work was going smoothly until a bookkeeping issue made it untenable for Boehmer and his partner to continue on together.
In 1999, he walked away from Golf Solutions, destination unknown. One hour after his departure from the company, he received a phone call from the LPGA. Their regular club tech had suffered an injury and they were looking for a two-week replacement. He’s been out on tour ever since.
Boehmer’s unique route to the LPGA fits perfectly with his quirky personality and unconventional building style. Having learned the craft mostly on the fly, it’s not uncommon for him to take chances.
“There’s stuff that I do that’s not really in the technical manual,” he admits. “I’ll go in-between flexes with shafts and stuff like that. I’ll tip it when you’re not supposed to tip it. It’s stuff I know will work.”
Boehmer’s outside-the-box thought process has endeared him to numerous players, including Dori Carter, who stopped by the truck during a recent LPGA event in Rogers, Ark., to have Boehmer perform a loft and lie check on her irons. Boehmer throws each club on a loft and lie machine and inspects the numbers closely before pausing on the 6-iron.
“Six-iron going left on you?” he asks.
Carter confirms it has been going “low and left,” which leads Boehmer to make a half-degree adjustment to the lie angle. “Shouldn’t do that anymore,” he says matter-of-factly.
Carter has been working with Boehmer for nine years and, even though she currently carries a mixture of Callaway and Titleist products, relies solely on him to service her equipment.
“He’s given me grip tutorials and made me smarter about my equipment,” she says. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else with my clubs.”
Boehmer relishes the opportunity to make the women who walk through his door each day smarter and more informed when it comes to their equipment. It’s one of the reasons he fought to get a TrackMan on the truck for players who don’t have access to one due to the $25,000-plus price tag.
“The game has gotten very technical,” he says. “That can be a good thing, because it can make you smarter when it comes to your equipment. It can open a dialogue that allows us to work together to figure things out if something is amiss with a certain club.”
Boehmer is in mid-thought discussing TrackMan when a player pops her head through the door. She’s driven 14 hours through the night to make it to Pinnacle CC for the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship only to find her car won’t start.
“Any chance you have a spare set of jumper cables?” she asks.
Within minutes, Boehmer quickly changes hats and goes from club tech to auto mechanic and walks out to retrieve his cables. When you’re owner and operator of “PaulMart,” you need to be ready for anything.
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2019-09-13 10:28:21Z
https://www.golf.com/gear/2019/09/13/lpga-club-repair-tech-paul-boehmer/
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