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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2009 (Part 8)

Recession Strategies

by Leith Anderson

By the time this article comes out in early January 2009, the drumbeat will be intense for the PGA Merchandise Show – the annual convocation of the golf industry held in late January in Orlando, Florida.

I’ve made the trek for the last eight years – looking forward to meeting face to face with the guys that I normally only talk to on the telephone and by email. That’s the time to spot the surprises and find out how the new equipment – most of it by then now out for several months on the various world tours – is being accepted. The “winners” for 2009 will be emerging.

Recession is nothing new to the golf industry. Most of the old timers will tell you that after the go-go 90’s, business collapsed at the beginning of the millennium. Since then there have been dozens of programs launched to bring new players into the game and help current avid golfers get more enjoyment from their investment. Nevertheless, all of the measurements of growth continue to decline. The core statistic is the decline in rounds played.

On the equipment side, storm clouds are gathering. If golf equipment is a zero sum game, the losers get zero. MacGregor seems to have suspended operations. After Barry Schneider spent a reported $50 million to try to revive the venerable brand, the company was taken over by Greg Norman and the secured lenders in 2008. Norman took the title of Chairman. In November 2008 the field sales force was fired and the COO Reid Gorman chose to leave the company. Norman was not answering press inquiries. The hearsay report from the street was that the only serious potential buyer was Barry Schneider – a curious quest for redemption. As Yogi said, “Déjà vu all over again.”

MacGregor’s situation is sad – the last of the great old names to bite the dust. Callaway – presumably reluctant to spend marketing money to sustain two brands – is winding Hogan down. Meantime, Wilson is never seen in the US unless Padraig Harrington is in the field. It would be ironic if the third of the “big three” from the 50’s and 60’s is revived as a European brand under the ownership of a Finnish company. Maybe the lesson is that golfers have short memories and no patience for any but the most heavily marketed brands with the largest stables of Tour players.

It is becoming axiomatic that you can’t prosper with a specialized company focusing on putters, wedges or even just irons any more. The business landscape is littered with dozens of companies that have tried to cultivate niches over the last fifteen years and failed to gain airspeed. You’ll find a comprehensive list in Barney Adams’ book The Wow Factor. Meantime, I continue to root for the “little guys” that are still fighting the good fight: Scratch Golf, KZG, SMT, Infiniti and the newcomers like Sleek Golf – the newest of the dreamers with a new putter idea. In an intense recession, the little guys need extra help. Try to find something to buy that doesn’t come from a giant, uber-rich multi-national conglomerate.

But rich or poor, the golf industry can’t get by with zero income for the next year. We all need to figure out how we can make informed choices – spending money prudently - that will continue to support the game that we love.

Stretching Your Golf Budget

There’s no reason to crawl into a hole and wait for the storm to blow over. There are plenty of things that you can do to nurture your golf game and equipment obsession without spending a boatload of money.

Do Your Homework on the Internet

Even though I have subscriptions to Golf Magazine and Golf Digest, I find myself down at the cigar store a couple of weeks early each January to pick up the annual Equipment Review issues. Each year, it becomes more frustrating. I’m always looking for a new club that might work better for me. But by the time I plow my way through the rating scheme and personalities of the testers and then look at the rankings, it is perfectly obvious that you can’t really use the information for much more than a new product catalog.

What if “market buzz” doesn’t mean a thing to you? What if you only care about performance – and only performance at your own index level? If so, you’d better get used to reading between the lines. The cynical assumption is that rankings are ordered by advertising revenues. It’s hard to doubt that advertising doesn’t matter to some extent – but in fairness - the last few years some component clubs that would never dream of advertising in the major magazines have edged their way into “honorable mention” status. When you see KZG or Wishon win a category, you’ll know for sure that advertising money doesn’t matter, only truly independent testing and judgment.

I rely on the Internet for my current information. The only problem is the amount of time it takes. There are several key websites. Getting fully acquainted with any one of them takes hours. Not only do you have to read the material that’s published, but you have to get to know the most prolific posters. Some have hidden agendas that color their comments.

Over the years, I have followed most on the online golf forums. My long-time favorite has been Golf Equipment Aficionados (www.4gea.com). GEA tends to be a blue-collar crowd with an emphasis on “do it yourself”. There is a moderately active swap shop where members buy, sell and trade cheaply. The up-and-coming website is a S.F. Bay Area native – GolfWrx (www.golfwrx.com). It seems to have a relatively sophisticated membership with active and professional management. I find myself logging in there more regularly. If you’re in for entertainment you shouldn’t miss Bombsquad (www.bombsquadgolf.com). BSG is unabashedly proprietary, commercial and temperamental. They tolerate no criticism of their business – punishment is a “lifetime ban”. It is the ultimate “love ‘em or hate ‘em site. The upside is that they seem to have backdoor access to “Tour Only” products and set retail price records. A highlight was the custom set that they sold for $24,000 and detailed with pictures. If you want to read about the high end, BSG is your site.

Internet surfers with an interest in club making should check out two new sites: the Clubmakers’ Guild (www.clubmakersguild.com) and the Association of Golf Clubmaking Professionals (www.agcpgolf.com). The sites are largely visited by clubmakers who ask and answer endless questions. If you’re looking for a steady education, you can get it on the Internet.

Join a Club

One of the best values in the S.F. Bay Area and many geographies around the U.S. is the “Mens’ Club” associated with most municipal golf courses. The politically-incorrect single-gender designation is old news. Most clubs now admit female members who like playing with the boys. The Palo Alto Golf Club has done that for years.

When you join a club, you get prime-time weekend rounds with no effort and everyone is on their best behavior. You don’t spend all day on the course and you make some new friends while you polish up your competitive game. It’s a good way to make your less-frequent rounds “count”. You might even win a few bucks back.

Volunteer

If you’re close to a golf course that supports the First Tee, they’re always looking for help. A few hours on the practice tee or a round or two playing with the kids - helping teach golf etiquette and playing the game the right way will give you a lot of personal satisfaction and contribute to the growth of the game.

If there is a tournament nearby, you have another opportunity to volunteer. You get to see the pros up close and personal and there’s usually a payback in the form of a free round on the tournament venue. It’s very interesting to play a course that’s been set up for the pros.

Practice Makes Perfect

While rounds played statistics are going down, “buckets sold” numbers are increasing. Activity at area driving ranges is up. Maybe players are trading a round or two a month – and the five or six hours that it takes to play – for a quick hour and a bucket of balls at the range.

You can do better if you’re willing to get up early or stay late. Most courses offer very good incentive deals for early morning rounds starting out on the back nine. I prefer to practice on the golf course. That’s where you get a natural grass surface and targets that let you see what the ball does when it comes down. I don’t see much difference between going to the range to bash balls and going to the health club and lifting weights. I never liked weight lifting.

If you’re planning to really improve your game, the best way might be to find someplace you can practice your short game. Then, get a set of wedges and treat them like a chef treats his knives. It takes a long time to learn how to hit wedges from all different lies and turf conditions, at all different trajectories and spin rates and all bunker sand characteristics. If you wanted to set a meaningful goal for yourself, it could be to wear out a wedge in a single season. The grapevine says that Tiger wears out three or four sand wedges a year. Don’t try to beat Tiger’s record – settle for wearing out a single wedge.

Blueprint Your Clubs

“Blueprinting” is the detailed measurement and testing of a set of golf clubs including length, flex, weight and balance. Irons are measured for loft and lie. Drivers and fairway metals are measured for actual loft and face angle.

I am surprised by how many golfers come into the Golf Lab for a fitting who have no idea of the specifications of the clubs they’re playing. By now, practically the whole golf world knows that you can’t tell how stiff a shaft is by the letter that designates flex. But there are more serious questions. The most important is club length.

Despite the fact that PGA Tour players favor drivers that measure 44.5”, most drivers that are bought “off-the-rack” are longer. Nike set the “standard” length record this year with 44.75” and a hefty “high D” swing weight. Most of the other brands followed suit. Unless you are a very strong player with a very good swing you are sacrificing both accuracy and distance if your driver is too long and too heavy.

All of our experience in fitting drivers points to lighter shafts and heads for longer drivers. If you play the kind of golf course that penalizes “catastrophic misses” with your driver – the first place to look is the length and balance of your driver.

The same goes for the length of your irons. If you are playing graphite, there is a high probability that they also were built “over length”. Not only that, most graphite iron shafts are coming out very soft these days. The belief that most players fit themselves “too stiff” has resulted in an opposite reaction. Players choose more flexible shafts and manufacturers change their flex, using softer shafts in the clubs they build. The result is that a high percentage of the re-shafting business at the Golf Lab today is for stiffer, not more flexible shafts.

The essence of testing and comparing golf clubs for feel and performance is to know what you’re playing with in the first place. Then, and only then, comparative testing makes sense. Don’t waste your time hitting clubs without knowing what they are.

Buy Used – Is Newer Really Better?

A while back I wrote an article about the way that the multi-national conglomerates (OEMs) market and sell golf clubs. (See “MAP and Net Down, What’s That All About?” archived on www.calgolftech.com.) OEM product strategy is based on the rapid release of new designs, each one presumably a “technological” improvement over the model that came before – maybe just a few months before. The implied promise is that every new model will be better than the last.

Alas, a lot of new golf clubs turn out to be duds. New today, a couple of product cycles down the road and your $499 driver will be selling on eBay for $79. Some models hold their value better and others go begging. Even the best companies make mistakes.

The major golf equipment companies have trained their customers to behave in line with their economic interests. If you find that a brand new golf club really performs better for you, you can buy it soon after it becomes available. If you do that, you’ll pay pretty close to the published retail price. You’re buying time. It’s easy to make up the extra $100 with a couple of winning Nassau bets.

But what if you want custom golf clubs? Perhaps a setup that’s not offered by the manufacturer, perhaps shaft flex set to a different slope, oriented to the most stable plane or matched by Moment of Inertia (MOI)? Maybe you want them cut to “True Length Technology” specifications. If you’re thinking custom, you’re going to have to acquire the parts. That’s when you should consider “classic” models from years past.

Consider drivers. If you’re an eBay fanatic like I am, you know that the Orlimar 420 from five or six years ago is still selling, used, for over $100. That’s because it’s a great performer and has become a “cult classic”. Justin Rose is still using his original Taylor Made R7 Quad driver. If you look at drivers that are played extensively on the PGA and other World Tours, you’ll see a collection of models that have never been knocked out of the bag – including the Taylor Made 425 TP and the SuperQuad TP. Many Taylor Made aficionados think that the best of the best was the SuperQuad TP. If you want an exotic new shaft like the new Mitsubishi Fubuki that’s going to cost $300, you can match it up with a “classic” lightly-used head and get the outfit for under $500 – maybe under $400. If you buy a brand new driver with the Fubuki – you’ll spend two or three hundred dollars more.

If you’re a “high spin” player, you can’t find a better driver head than the original Bridgestone J-33, the Nike “Tour” Square or the Adams 9015D. Any can be bought slightly used for a fraction of their original price. In some cases you’re better off waiting until other players figure out how a new product really performs. For example, several Golf Lab customers bought the $275 “Prototype” 9015D Adams head from the LDA, paired it up with a high performance shaft for another $300 only to find that the head produced too little spin for mere mortals. They couldn’t keep it airborne. Remember: “Try before you buy” and “Always buy the demo.”

Irons are the same. My personal favorite in the mass produced category is Bridgestone. You really can’t beat last year’s J-33 forged irons – available in three models – if you’re looking to build a custom set of forged irons. If you want an upgrade, think about Tour Stage. For little more than the cost of re-shafting alone, you can have a new set of irons, built to your custom specifications.

The Ultimate Driver, Shaft and Ball Fitting

The goal of any club fitting exercise is to find the “magic” club – one that goes a little farther, a little straighter or is more reliable. The first goal is to focus on performance parameters that you can measure: ball speed, spin rate and launch angle. Those are your “launch ballistics”. For any given ball speed, there will be an optimal launch angle and spin rate to produce maximum distance. Golf Lab electronic gizmos can measure a player’s launch ballistics and determine exactly how much distance remains to be gained.

After that, performance improvement can only come from increased ball speed. That’s where a different head, shaft or combination might produce what you’re looking for.

Until now, precise “shaft fitting” has not been all that precise. For the most part, you try one driver, then another. Make a few good swings, get a few good shots and that one goes home with you. That trial and error fitting system is unreliable and expensive. Most avid golfers have a bag full of drivers that didn’t work out in their garage.

For the last few months, we’ve been building out an extensive shaft fitting system based on the Nickent Evolver driver. For the first time, you can test any shaft in our library of almost 200 high performance shafts on the very same head. The best way to compare two shafts is to change only one variable at a time.

But the main question is how do you know which shaft to try? That’s where two new products that you should know about fit in.

The truth is that after a “fitting” most clubmakers will recommend one of a half dozen or so shafts that they either play or have sold successfully to their customers. The number of shafts that any of us can have first hand experience with is very small. Out of the 2000 or so models available today, how do you know that the recommendation that you get will even come close to the best one to fit your swing?

Two qualified clubmakers have been working on that problem for years. One, Jerry Hoefling, I have mentioned before. He’s just one guy working in Michigan who has taken “zone profiling” of golf shafts to the extreme. His motivation was to become the first Master Clubfitter in the Professional Clubmakers’ Society. That goal was derailed when the PCS went out of business but he’s now in the forefront of the emerging Association of Golf Clubmaking Professionals (www.agcpgolf.com) who will surely establish a new professional recognition in his honor.

Jerry has profiled hundreds of shafts at six points along their length. That means that he has measured the “frequency” in each “zone” to map the unique pattern of flex that each shaft exhibits. That pattern can be graphed to provide a visual comparison. To supplement his own work, he has released his methodology to other club makers who contribute to his database. He’s surely not in it for the money. He sells the software, complete with the database for under $100.

Jerry’s fitting method is to relate the butt flex, mid flex and tip flex of the shaft to a player’s swing speed, tempo time and release position. Release is defined as the moment when the player lets go of his wrist cock. It is defined by the hands of a clock as early (before 9) mid (8 to 9) or late (7). The theory is that the later the release, the more pressure a player puts on the tip of the shaft. Jerry finds the release position with slow motion video.

Does Jerry’s system work? Absolutely. It’s much better than making a random recommendation. The extensive database is sure to offer some unexpected recommendations. Plus, the results have been confirmed by a lot of clubmakers. Is the system scientifically the very best that will ever be invented. Probably not. Think of it this way: at a minimum it’s a good source of new ideas about what might work. If you’re lucky, you might get a brilliant and unexpected recommendation.

Shaftfitter.com

Another qualified club fitter working on the problem is David Eagar. David is very experienced and he has some notable achievements under his belt. He created the original PCS Equalizer system and he’s keeping it alive with constant improvements.

Shaftfitter.com is a new venture, entered with qualified partners – Kanata LLC. Kanata has acquired distribution rights for Scandium shafts and they have big plans to establish Scandium as a product offered by the major OEMs as an upgrade. That goal is fueled by V.J. Singh – an inveterate switcher – sticking with Scandium for almost a year. The partnership is money getting together with technical expertise and experience.

David’s new shaft fitting program will eventually be released for consumers who are looking for finished golf club recommendations as well as shaft recommendations. Unlike Jerry’s system, David’s is based on matching a player’s swing speed and tempo to the torque rating of a shaft. His view is that the best shaft for a high swing speed player might have a lot of flex but very little torque. At present, shaftfitter.com is restricted to professional club fitters who pay a set up fee and monthly charge for its use.

Shaftfitter.com is a lot of fun. You can search for recommendations company by company. You might receive a surprise. In my case, the program always recommended shafts much heavier than I am used to playing. That’s what I like. Why stick with the same old habits?

As you might expect, David has created another database that focuses on different parameters for measuring shafts. There are hundreds of recommendations in his system.

Max Out Golf

At the Golf Lab, we have used a system invented by Mitch Voges at Max Out Golf, headquartered in Los Angeles, for several years. It is the “Shaft Max”. The focus of the Shaft Max is somewhat different. Rather than try to match up certain swing measurements with a shaft database, the Shaft Max measures what happens to the golf club when a player swings it. With the Shaft Max we can tell exactly how much a player bends the shaft when he swings and whether the tip of the shaft is unusually stressed during the swing. There is no guesswork. Max Out also supplies the Launch Max – a launch monitor based on high speed photography that we think is the most accurate of all the available tools to detect that crucial data.

Until now, our system has been to use the unique insight that we get from the Shaft Max and Launch Max and then make our fitting recommendations from our personal experience.

Now you know that shortcoming in that approach.

The New “Ultimate” Shaft Fitting System

For players who want to spend the time to try to figure out what shaft works for them, once and for all, we now offer the “Ultimate” program.

We trust the Max Out electronics but we know our own experience is limited. Therefore, we have added both Jerry Hoefling’s zone profiling and David Eager’s Shaftfitter.com to our bag of tricks. For the investment of a little more time, a Golf Lab customer can consult all of the gurus. We measure and test with the Shaft Max and Launch Max. We create a list of our own recommendations. We collect the data required by the other shaft fitting systems. Then, we consult all three Oracles.

The result is a much more extensive list of possible choices. The specifics of shaft frequency, profile and torque are all considered in conjunction with swing characteristics

The final step is to collect all of the recommended shafts – as deeply as a client desires – and provide them for testing with the Nickent Evolver system. In the end, the only way to know for sure is to take the exact setup to the range of the course and test it for yourself. Even better if you can perform side-by-side comparison.

Of course, we verify performance with our electronics. There’s not a better or more meticulous way to find the best shaft to fit a player’s swing. I think that other club fitters will begin to expand their universe of experience taking advantage of the new information that is now available.

Heads and Balls?

At some point in the future, our testing system may be converted over to an “open market” option. Club Conex is a small company in Illinois that has invented an adapter system that allows any shaft to be connected to any head. The problem is that the USGA refused to clear their first release for official play. As a result, it for “fitting only” – which is a fatal flaw. It would be even better to allow any head to be interchanged with any shaft – not limiting the testing system to the Nickent driver head. Alas, that’s in the future – if everything goes well, in February or March.

The final missing link is choosing the best ball. There are two good systems that recommend balls. One has been in use for over a year at the Golf Lab. It’s from Advanced Golf Technology and makes its recommendations based on launch ballistics – ball speed, launch angle and spin rate. The system was created by testing the aerodynamics of the golf ball. The other system is Golfballselector.com (GSB), developed by our friends at Max Out Golf. The GSB system is based on physical testing but includes a more subjective element. A complete driver, shaft and ball fitting requires consulting the golf ball Oracles as well. Once those recommendations are coordinated, it makes sense to corroborate all theories and recommendations with continued launch monitor testing.

So there you have it. If you’re cutting back on your playing time and want to make sure you’ve got exactly the right gear in your bag and your pocket, get in touch with your friendly, well-equipped local club fitter. If you live in the bay area, we invite you to give the Golf Lab a call. If you want to get deep into the subject, it’s going to take several hours spread over a few days. But then, you’ll have the time during the recession.

I’ll be back next month with a preview of the PGA Show and my picks for the most significant products of 2008 and the best bets for 2009.

Leith Anderson is a Partner in the Golf Lab, Palo Alto, CA.
He will answer any and all questions about club fitting and club making. Contact: Leith@calgolftech.com. Or by phone (650) 493-1770