Renaissance Man Goes From Symphony to Accudistloft Aero-Tees…and What’s Next?
By Bob Koczor
Golf Today Magazine- February 2009
Rare is the “Renaissance” kind of person in this world.
Even if you’re fortunate enough to meet one and get to shake their hand upon meeting them, you may well walk away to the next person at the conference or exhibit, never knowing the vast background and accomplishments of that special person.
I met one several years ago at the PGA Show in Orlando, Florida. His name is “Vinny”.
So, what’s Venanzio (“Vinny” to his many friends) doing in the Golf Industry and with so many other things going on in his life, devoting so much money and so many years towards the creation of the perfect tee?
A tee?
Yes, and it’s called the Aero-Tee with Accudistloft.
The Aero-tee features three prongs as a surface for the golf ball you’re about ready to drive. You want less resistance; as if the stationary golf ball is being hit as it lays on a film of air. No resistance or at least the least resistance possible.
Several years ago, the determined and inventor-minded Vinny came out with the original Aero-tee. This was not the perfection that Vinny had sought, and he could have called it quits-after all, “it’s only a tee” his friends said.
Vinny had done research with Golf Labs Gene Parente. “I was the leader, “ Vinny said. “I was the first to study golf tees with the Iron Biron. Then, other tests were done on the tees. So my company was a pioneer in the sense that I was researching a part of the golf game that was previously given little or no importance.
Since the original Aero-tee came out, a dozen other new tee companies followed suit on the principal of diminished surfaces. “All variations on a theme,” Vinny says. “They all must have read my patents!”
What Vinny had done was not only reduced platform size, he also reduced resistance, drag, airflow, and used favorable aerodynamic principles toward making a perfect tee.
Unabashedly, Vinny says, “Yes, I was a leader in addressing all the shortcomings of the wooden tee. I addressed such principles as ball chemical structures (cores), dimple configurations, trajectory studies on the golf balls, drivers’ weight distributions, aerodynamics of all kinds, airstreams, speed, feedback systems, centripetal and centrifugal forces, etc.”
The point of all this is that Vinny, unadulterated Renaissance-like, didn’t give up. He researched the material for the perfect tee and brought a focus to the tee used by millions of golfers every day. “I brought the tee to the forefront from which others took notice and created a stream of designs to the Patent Office.
“Yes, whereas Dr. Grant (a dentist) given the first off the tee the first golf tee, and Dr. Lowell, also a dentist, improved the tee from which the variant the wooden tee, these tees were mere platforms for the ball”.
“Mine came to the forefront with, not only a better platform, but with successful aerodynamic principles in mind. So I did take it all to the next level. I feel that my Aero-Tee still holds all the original thoughts of design and aerodynamics, but also advanced research into the present day materials of choice”.
Dupont Company solved the challenge Vinny had with the original tee, the tees, proved to be too stiff to Vinny’s liking. He wanted a variable flex because of the tee’s unique design. “So I addressed that as well by choosing a material that allows both resistance to fracture, and elasticity of elongation without deforming, and not jeopardizing the benefits of the superior aerodynamics of the Aero-Tee.
After a complete treatise on the importance of height placement and muscular memory feedback on tees, Vinny choose to color his tees according to the height desired...all red for the long drivers, all blue for the short tees. “This offers golfers peace of mind and repeatability and consistency. I included indents that allow a golfer to have relative sites to place their fingers on my Aero-Tees. I think that if the fingers are placed over the tee, placing the fingers on the sides acts as a tripod effect.”
“What better way than to have your fingers touch the ground when you have to place the tee to your intended depth?”
“Now, with my Aero-Tees, larger golfers with big fingers can place the tee in the ground with the ball in their palm.”
What about Aero-Tees’ biodegradability?
“Yes, it meets all modern standards of green, green, green…meaning you pick it up and put it back in your pocket. We are the only company that started the ‘keep our greens clean’ concept. We addressed this early because we had partnered with a company that would recycle the material into another use.
“Aero-Tees are green friendly,” Vinny said. I just had feedback from a golfer in Hawaii who said he used one of my tees for three complete rounds of golf and cleaned it off and put it back into his pocket.”
“No trees were cut down, no broken tees laying all around the driving boxes.”
“Golfers need to take responsibility and keeping our planet green, and I’ve done my share.” Vinny said. “Now I’m not making a statement that under all conditions our tee won’t break, but I am saying that compared to wooden tees, the Aero-Tees should last longer.”
Vinny’s new generation of Aero-Tee’s are called “Accudistloft” tees, named as such from the earlier results from Golf Labs that the tee provided excellent accuracy, distance and loft.
“Golfers will remember that Accudistloft Aero-Tee because it denotes a tee which takes into account all the aerodynamic principles that benefit the accuracy, distance and loft.”
Vinny who composes music is down to earth enough to understand that all golfers will not like the Aero-Tee. “That’s understandable, for we cannot please everyone and we do not expect to. Some golfers are reluctant to change, as are people in general. They become comfortable and change creates stress for them. Knowing people as I do, that’s okay. Change is not for everyone.”
Vinny heralds the new Accudistloft Aero-Tee as a team effort, as well, with congratulations to the Dupont Team USA; Ricarte D. Rivera, Applications Development Rep; Luis G. Rodriguez, Program Development and Marketing; and Coreen Lee, Senior Tech Specialist, and to Howland Tool & Machine, Ltd, with special thanks to Bruch W. Wilbur, President. Last but not least, in the prototype development efforts was Neal B Barnes President of Endeavor Designs, Inc.
A true Renaissance man does not have to grab the spotlight as he directs Beethoven’s Egmont Overture. The spotlight will gravitate towards him as a maestro and the inventor of the Aero-Tee.
Note: Article has been shortened from the original.
A history of firsts
At sea, over the airwaves, and in the kitchen, region boasts sturdy tradition of cutting-edge innovation
By Manny Veiga
Globe Correspondent / July 3, 2008
Florence spurred the cultural growth of 14th-century Europe. Silicon Valley has produced many of the major advances in computer science over the past half century. And Boston's southern suburbs? Well, the region may not be as well known, but it, too, has given its share of important innovations.
The South Shore can go toe-to-toe with any region in the world in terms of major developments in human history, according to Bob Krim of the Boston History and Innovation Collaborative.
From the disposable safety razor - dreamed up in the late 1890s by King Gillette while he was staying with family on Nantasket Beach in Hull - to the idea of creating a chain of doughnut stores, starting with the first Dunkin' Donuts on Route 3A in Quincy in 1950, the region has led in a variety of "firsts."
It probably comes as no surprise to area residents that Dunkin' Donuts, started by William Rosenberg, is the world's largest doughnut chain.
"The South Shore has been pretty important as an area that has accomplished major breakthroughs that have changed the nation and the world over the last 300 to 400 years," said Krim.
The history of regional firsts began with the marine industry.
In the 1700s, the North River, which runs through Hanover, Scituate, Pembroke, Marshfield, and Norwell, was recognized as one of the top shipbuilding sites in the world. North River ships were known worldwide for their quality, built with iron ore found in surrounding marshes and from pine trees in nearby woods.
The Columbia, built in Briggs Shipyard at Hobart's Landing in Scituate, was the first American vessel to circumnavigate the globe, in 1790.
The United States Life-Saving Service began with Hull farmers who would jump in boats at the sight of a shipwreck and row out to help drowning sailors. The group became a US government commisioned service in 1889, and then became the US Coast Guard in 1915.
The Fore River Shipyard in Quincy built US warships and submarines. In 1957, Fore River laid the keel on the USS Long Beach, a guided missile cruiser and the world's first nuclear-powered surface combatant.
Farther west, an engineer named William Otis did his part to shape the New England landscape - literally. From his Canton workshop, and with help from Paul Revere's town copper mill, Otis developed a sophisticated steam shovel that would help level the hills south of Worcester so a rail bed could be laid.
Otis Shovels were also used to fill in the Back Bay area of Boston.
Along the shoreline in Marshfield, Reginald Fessenden, once a protege of Thomas Edison, made his landmark achievement on Christmas Eve in 1906: He succeeded in transmitting the first radio broadcast, from his radio tower on Brant Rock.
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Fessenden would transmit signals from the tower in an attempt to send radio waves across the Atlantic to Scotland. His program - mostly just Christmas carols - finally found an audience that Christmas Eve when it was picked up on ship radios that were normally used for relaying Morse code.
Fessenden would go on to develop sonar for ships and submarines and was at the cutting edge of radio transmission and communication in the early 20th century.
Two decades later, a diagnosis for syphilis became one of the region's contributions to health and science.
Dr. William Hinton, a native of Chicago and a son of former slaves, came to Boston to attend Harvard Medical School. He graduated in 1912 and stayed in the area, moving to Canton and working in Boston hospitals. He taught at Tufts University and later would become the first tenured African-American professor at Harvard.
In 1927, Hinton changed the face of modern medicine by developing a test that would diagnose syphilis, which at the time was among the top scourges in the United States. His accomplishment earned him international acclaim, and the state labs in Jamaica Plain were recently named in his honor.
In the 1930s, Ruth Wakefield of Whitman cooked up another big South Shore innovation: the chocolate chip cookie.
"Not every invention is one that people think others will want," said Krim. Wakefield thought her cookie was one for the reject pile. She had been experimenting with recipes using Baker's Chocolate, which was America's first chocolate company and was based on the Milton-Dorchester line.
One day she ran out of Baker's Chocolate and instead, as the story goes, started dropping semisweet chocolate morsels - ones she received as a gift from Andrew Nestle - into the dough. Thinking that the morsels would melt into the batter and make a chocolate cookie, Wakefield was surprised to see the chips keep their shape. She at first considered the cookie a flop, but others disagreed.
She sold her first tollhouse cookie in 1937 and worked with Nestle to create a brand that has earned an enduring place in American food culture - not to mention our kitchens.
The spirit of innovation continues today, although it will be up to history to judge the value.
Golfers would probably applaud the contribution of Dr. Venanzio Cardarelli of Plymouth, inventor of the Aero-Tee golf tee.
The polycarbonate tee - its tooth shape is fitting, given that Cardarelli is a dentist - allows air to pass under the ball, improving accuracy, distance, and loft, he says.
Cardarelli came up with idea "just by making observations," he said.
He watched the flight of the ball off wooden tees, studied golfers' abilities to maintain consistent swings with the ball at various heights, and took a number of anatomic and physical observations into consideration.
Cardarelli's tee - perhaps the most significant innovation since the tee was created in 1899 by another Boston-area dentist, George F. Grant - has been approved for professional use by the United States Golf Association.
Cardarelli says he will release the next wave of Aero-Tees, made with of an even more durable material, this summer.
Manny Veiga can be reached at zmv818@gmail.com.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
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