Over the Green

Fall is the time of year club manufacturers start the introduction cycle for the coming year. I know it seems early but in the world of golf retail the buying cycle leads the golf season by several months. As a measure of how it has changed over the years, new club announcements used to be reserved for the PGA Merchandise Show held annually in January. Now with the shortening of product life cycles due to more intense competition, the computerization of retailing as well as club design, we continue to see earlier and earlier introduction dates. In the past couple of weeks here is a sampling of items brought to market.

Mizuno Golf
MP-53 irons for better players with a CNC milled back cavity in the 3- through 7-irons so the weight saved could be pushed out to the perimeter. The 8-iron through wedge use the company company’s more traditional Solid Power Bar configuration plus a 360 degree grind on the back cavity allows for a thinner top line. MSRP and street price (at least for now) with steel shafts is $899.99 and with graphite $999.99.

Wilson Golf
Wilson may have been the equipment played by the winner of 61 majors over the years but they are hardly on the consumer radar now days after years of making substandard product and coporate manuverings worthy of an Oliver Stone movie. The brand is being played by one hig profile tourster, Padraig Harrington with of course three majors, but Wilson still lacks total redemption in the eyes of club purchasers. That could change with the new FG62 muscle-backed forged irons, the better palyers version of the FG Tour irons out last year that were so well received.

TaylorMade Golf
The Corza Ghost mallet-style putter was an instant hit for TMaG, a company not know for putters, especially after Justin Rose won two times in a month using one. The newest Ghost is an extension of the line in a a blade called the Rossa Daytona Ghost and designed with the help of Dave Stockton, the hottest putting instructor on the PGA Tour. The Rossa Daytona Ghost carries a street price of $129.

Nike Golf
The latest irons are more of the iron line named the VR Pro Combo, aimed at good players who want to take advantage of the benefits of perimeter weight placement. The 3- and 4-irons have a large cavity pocket which transitions to a split cavity in the 5-, 6- and 7-irons and finally to a blade design in the 8- and 9-irons and pitching wedge. Not avialable until the end of November they will carry a MSRP of $1, 079.99 with steel shafts only. A 2-iron as a special order is $134.99.

Maruman
Maruman has been trying to build a presence in the American market and now expands their offerings with the Shuttle series of clubs beginning with the i4000 driver employing the company’s idea that accuracy is more important that raw distance. The stock shaft is 441/2 inches or as much as 11/2 inches shorter than some others. However the club that caught my attention has a name that harkens back to the past, the i4000X Brassie. The Brassie is an alternative for those who are “driver-challenged” and who like fairway woods. The Brassie has 13 degrees of loft, as much as 4 degrees more than the typical driver in the weekend warrior’s bag plus again a shorter shaft.

Bushnell
The new Yardage ProXGC+ from Bushnell takes all the technlogy used in their award-winning previous didtance measuring decvice models and combines it with a pre-loaded database of 16,000 U.S. courses thereby removing the problem of having to download new courses. At a retail price is $299.99 the XGC+ seems like a good choice for those looking to upgrade a present DMD or for those buying one for the first time.

Yes! Golf
Yes! is bringing out three new putters in December priced from $300 to $600. The Naomi is a cavity-backed blade with a tungsten back, the Courtney is another cavity-back blade but made from stainless steel and the Jennifer is a center-shafted mallet with a high resistance to twisting. Yes! has been making really good putters with their patented C-Groove technology for years but received a lot of attention with Jim Furyk using a used model he found in a club barrel for $39 to win the FedEx cup in Sept.

Hit it longer
Golfsmith International Holdings, Inc., (NASDAQ: GOLF) is an aggressive marketer with 75 stores and an extensive Internet business has expanded their drive towards getting more players to be custom fit with the “15 More Yards Guarantee.” Basically, if you get fitted for a new driver at Golfsmith and you don’t see a 15-yard increase in distance you get an in store credit equal to the driver’s price.

Louis’ clubs
Until now you couldn’t play the same clubs that Louis Oosthuizen used to blow away the competition at the British Open but PING has solved your dilemma as part of a multi-product announcement for summer. The S56 irons ($127.50 per club steel shafts) and Tour-S Rustique wedges ($130 each in steel shafts) are now available.

Aerodynamic ultralight
Adams Golf (NasdaqCM:ADGF) adds the Speedline 9064LS and 4G Ultra-Lite drivers to their stable. Billed as the fourth generation aerodynamic technology the drivers are said by Adams to be the longest yet due to their head design which creates less drag and turbulance therefor increasing club head speed and distance. The Speedline 4G Ultra-Lite in regular flex ships starting Aug. 15 with a suggested retail of $479.99 and the DFS (distance fitting system) version of the Speedline 9064LS ships Aug. 10 with a SRP of $479.99.

The debate about the distance the best players in the world are hitting the golf ball seems for now to be on hold. In the entire world the number of professionals and elite amateurs who pound the ball past 300-yards is certainly less than 1,000 and but even that small a number have caused the USGA to adjust the rules of golf.

First it was the about the driver face coefficient of restitution followed by club length and moment of inertia. Then it was ball’s overall distance which resulted in the new standards to rein in how far the ball travels when struck by a trained athlete landing on fairways groomed so as to allow the ball to run like it did on greens 50 years ago. MORE…

TaylorMade Golf has the habit of putting a club on the market and then shortly after, if it proves successful, introducing a tour version (designated by the initials TP).
This is case the new Burner Superfast TP was preceded by, you guessed it, the Burner Superfast. Drivers in general have gotten larger of course and somewhere along the line someone figured out clubhead speed could be increased by making the head more aerodynamic, the premise of both the Superfast and Superfast TP.

>>To read the rest of this story click on the title “TMaG Burner SuperFast TP driver” in Latest First Look Reviews above.

A lot of golfers felt a twinge of sadness when the venerable club manufacturer MacGregor bit the dust after spending its’ last years traveling down a tortured path of mismanagement and misfortune.

The company which started making clubs in 1897 had for several decades produced the clubs of choice for the best golfers in the world. Those who played MacGregor seemed like a Hall of Fame roster. Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Jimmy Demaret, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and dozens of other premier players all won with MacGregors at some point in their careers.

However by the end of the twentieth century MacGregor, having been sold in the late 1960’s by the founder’s family to Brunswick Corporation was then sold and bought and sold and bought by a succession of other owners including Jack Nicklaus, finally wound up in the portfolio of a private investment company run by the flamboyant and passionate Barry Schneider. Schneider vowed a restoration of MacGregor Golf to its’ glory years but was unsuccessful due to a failure to market clubs capable of catching the public’s attention and other management missteps. MORE…

Endorsement contracts employing commentator David Feherty and well-known touring pros Camilo Vellegas. J.B. Holmes, Ian Poulter, and Jason Gore are part of the deal for Puma to purchase Cobra Golf from Acushnet Company, parent of Titleist and Foot-Joy. The endorsement contracts were included in the sale which is expected to be completed this spring. Price of the deal was not disclosed.

“With the sale of Cobra, we have the opportunity to devote all of our resources to the global growth of our industry-leading Titleist and FootJoy brands,” said Wally Uihlein, Chairman and CEO of Acushnet Company. “At the same time, Cobra is a strong brand with a heritage of innovation, and we wish the quality associates guiding the brand future success. Golfers and our valued partners will remain the key focus throughout the impending sale and we are confident that our customers will continue to be serviced to our high standards.”

Puma, which bills itself as a sportlifestyle company is based in Herzogenaurach, Germany and has an apparel endorsement contract with the PGA Tour’s hottest rookie, Rickie Fowler. This will give them a kick-start into the golf equipment business since Cobra has a well thought of line of drivers, fairways and irons.

Nike Golf has enjoyed some success in the past year with the Victory Red (VR) irons so for the 2010 season they are extending the line to include two drivers, a fairway wood model and a hybrid club.

A difference for this new season though, is the absence of Nike’s primary (and highly paid) spokesman Tiger Woods, not that the world’s number one ranked golfer spent a lot of time pitching specific Nike equipment. It was Nike’s skillful use of Woods’ image which has been a big reason the company was able to climb from literally nowhere, starting as a non-golf company, to its present number four position in equipment sales behind Acushnet, TaylorMade Golf and Callaway Golf. MORE…

Adams Golf is getting a small jump on the rest of the golf equipment makers by announcing their newest line of drivers and fairways prior to the PGA Merchandise Show which kicks off Jan. 28th in Orlando, Fla. Actually this isn’t a big deal since the next 30 days will see all the companies beating the drum about why their latest is greatest.

The new clubs from Adams, the Speedline FAST 10 driver and Speedline FAST 10 fairway woods, are extensions of the Speedline brand that has been around for two earlier generations. More…

In trying to find perspective about the effect of the USGA new groove size restrictions on mid- and short-irons, which for touring professionals becomes law with the 2010 season, a prediction or two are in order this being eve of a new year when predictions, forecasts and resolutions are as traditional as a hangover New Years Day.

It is unfortunate, given the USGA believes there is a problem caused by touring pros driving the ball further, that the best method to solve this injustice is to constrict the equipment rules for everybody. This approach has the potential to hurt recreational golfers by taking away the ability to create sufficient spin on certain shots, particularly from the rough, so that balls will come to rest on the putting surface.

This is a classic example of wrongheaded thinking by the USGA but in fairness the rule change doesn’t have full impact for years plus the overwhelming majority of amateurs can’t hit greens either from the fairway to say nothing of the rough, and most of them use 2-piece golf balls for extra distance. This type of ball doesn’t spin as much as tour-level balls so a grooves change probably won’t make a measurable difference.

Prediction: Weekend players who view the sound and fury as ‘much-to-do-about-nothing’ will feel they have one more reason to look at the USGA with reduced respect. This whole topic isn’t something they care about and in fact is actually about some mystical goal the USGA has of reducing professionals driving distance because it’s making “great courses” (which Mr. Average will never play) obsolete.

Real world golfers love to see pros bust it 300-yards, make birdies from the trash, and don’t compete anything but local events. This is not exactly the profile of the folks who run the USGA and to prove the point of the low level of concern or involvement by recreational players in what “Golf’s Ruling Body” does, thinks or opines, everyday golfers don’t even keep an “Official Handicap.” Only a small percentage (around 20%) of U.S. golfers have a USGA handicap and a far smaller number play in USGA sanctioned competitions.

Prediction: Touring pros will compensate for less effective grooves and the public will only occasionally, very occasionally, be aware of any difference in a shot’s outcome. Among those compensations: use a ball with higher spin characteristics softer cover or both, increase short iron loft, and use irons with a roughen surface between the grooves.

And oh yes, leave the driver in the bag, hit 3-wood off the tee which of course is exactly what the USGA wants them to do.

A word of caution, beware of TV commentators who as the new season gets under way, make a big deal about this, as in, “Boy, that was a flier,” or “That ball didn’t hold but probably would have with if he had had the old grooves.” They don’t know any more about this than you do.

Bettinardi Golf
Bettinardi Golf is known for its high quality CNC milled putters priced at the upper end of the putter price spectrum and sold only in green grass shops plus a few custom fitting locations. For next year a Country Club (CC) Series model has been added along with the 2010 BB Series.

The CC (MSRP $325) is a satin nickel finished, heel-toe weighted blade that can be customized with the club, organization or school logo. The BB series ($275) has five models all with black nickel finish. The models include: BB1 – traditional heel-toe weighting; BB8 – heel basis position milled in for more toe hang; BB25 – blade style with single flange; BB26 – center shafted heel-toe weighted with no offset; BB32 – face balanced pear shaped mallet with double bend shaft.

Since splitting last year with Mizuno Golf Bettinardi has worked at reestablishing its presence in the minds of American golfers. Said company founder and CEO Bob Bettinardi, "We are eager to re-establish our brand presence and provide an authentic golf experience with unmatched products fully made in the U.S.A. and we’re equally committed to catering to the golfer and customer who wants the best of the best.”

S-Blade Putter
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New to the U.S. this European company has a patented design for a spherical radius putter face – think bulge and roll – so the face is convex from both heel to toe and sole to top edge. The company, Spherical Blade LLP, says this creates a better top spin roll with skid immediately after impact. MSRP is $190 but they are having an Internet sale for the holidays offering 20% discount.

Slotline
The mini-conglomerate Dynamic Brands (Bag Boy, AMF Golf, Burton, Datrek, and Miller Golf) has resuscitated the venerable Slotline Golf brand and offers the SSi-600 Series of putters for 2010. Each of the three series models have a cast and milled stainless steel body with a milled aluminum face insert and two tungsten sole weights plus the well known slot and line alignment aids.

“The introduction of the 600 Series reinforces our commitment to establish Slotline as one of the premier putter brands in golf. Based on independent testing, it appears the 600 Series is already being well received by the consumer,” said product manager Chad Lehr. MSRP is $199 but street price is $180.

Nike
Following up on the introduction of the VR irons, Nike Golf in February will have the VR STR8-FIT Tour and the VR Tour drivers (MSRP $480).

The VR STR8-FIT Tour makes use of the adjustable STR8-FIT Face Angle Technology allowing selection between 32 face angle positions both shot shape and the “look” at address. The more traditional VR Tour driver is not adjustable and has a smaller pear-shaped head with a longer hosel.

Both models utilize Nike’s Compression Channel technology and according to Tom Stites, Director of Club Creation, “The Compression Channel technology takes the rigidity out of the sole and provides more flex in the heel. By adding this technology, we have made the VR drivers more forgiving for the better players when they miss it in the lower zone of the heel.”