The Shape of Things to Come: Bomb & Gouge: Golf Digest

The Shape of Things to Come

Sunday, November 5, 2006 Comments

GOUGE: The biggest winner in golf over at the Chrysler Championship was not K.J. Choi, who did finish first by a comfortable margin for his first win in nearly two years. Nor was it Ernie Els, whose deft pitch to save par at the last hole ensured that he finish in the top 30 and get to play in the annual cash-fest known as the Tour Championship. Even Paul Goydos, whose miraculous week ended with a tie for second and enough money to propel him into the tour's top 125 exempt status. No, the real winner Sunday was Nike Golf. K.J. Choi became the first player to win a tournament with the not-yet-for-sale Nike SQ Sumo2 driver. That's big news because the driver is relatively close to the size of a CD player. The nearly five-inch square driver has had Nike types boasting about its super larger moment of inertia of 5250 grams centimeters squared, which is some 500-600 points higher than the Nike SasQuatch of last year, and probably a good 25 percent higher MOI number than most current popular drivers. How big is Nike's potential success with a driver that clearly looks and apparently sounds different than anything ever used on a golf course that was not powered by a Briggs and Stratton engine? Hard to say, but you could guess that it might be significant based on the fact that the driver is already the subject of knockoffs and counterfeits, like this. And we'll get into this some other time, but if you're making knockoffs or counterfeits you should be put in prison. The cell next to yours should be reserved for those pathetic losers who actually purchase and use illegitimate golf clubs.

BOMB: Actually, the biggest winner may not be Nike, but geometry-based clubs as a group. When you climb out on that non-traditional limb of golf-club design, the amount of time the consumer is willing to give a club can be a few swings and nothing more. But tour success validates technology and increases that trial time frame. So with Choi winning with the Nike square club, Ernie Els using Titleist's new geometry-driven driver and Vijay Singh playing well this week at the Tour Championship with Cleveland's second iteration of the Hi-Bore, these unusual shapes may get more of a look than they otherwise might have. And if Tiger puts the square club in play during the Silly Season or Philly Mick goes with the Callaway FT-I and wins the Bob Hope in January, all bets are off because then golfers will be singing this song.

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Archived Comments (6) Click to expand

"And we'll get into this some other time, but if you're making knockoffs or counterfeits you should be put in prison. The cell next to yours should be reserved for those pathetic losers who actually purchase and use illegitimate golf clubs."

My recommendation to you would be to do some research into where all those clubheads actually come from, and then decide whether or not this commentary has any real basis. I think the words "China" and "same factory" might end up being used.

Posted by Bob Locke November 12, 2006 2:06 AM

Clones and counterfeits are very different. The counterfeits is designed to trick the consumer into thinking they are purchasing the name brand piece of equipment. The clone is compare to the original.

The site you linked to does not sell counterfeit clubs they sell Clones.

To give you an analogy in the clothing market. If the gap makes a technological breakthrough in jeans with adjustable waist bands no company can ever use adjustable waist band because the Gap had them first.

While counterfeiters deserve to be in jail the knockoff companies do not deserve to be put in the same category.

The attitude of the elitist is the exact thing that hampers the game of golf.

GOUGE responds: You sicken me. Cloning, or whatever name of convenience you give this enterprise, is nothing short of stealing. And stealing, euphemism or not, is one thing and one thing only: A CRIME. Not only should they be in jail, but people with your opinion should be locked away, too.

Posted by Rick November 15, 2006 4:36 PM

You two really have no problem with the game of golf slowly dying as it becomes progressively less affordable for the average player, do you? Clubs are too damned expensive, and until major brands start offering cheaper sets, there is no reason for the working class consumer not to purchase a cloned set.

GOUGE responds: Being uninformed is the worst kind of tragedy. Have you considered the exploding used club market at sites like callawaypreowned.com, golfclubexchange.com and the pga.com/valueguide? Get with it, man. The game is as unaffordable as you choose to make it.

Posted by Sam Wilkinson November 16, 2006 4:58 PM

So the guy that unknowingly and innocently buys his first set of clubs which just happen to be clones? This guy should be locked up? You mean the guy that is trying to get into golf but cannot afford a premium set? That guy?

GOUGE responds: Innocently? He buys "clones," but he doesn't get suspicious when the price of his new set of top of the line Callaway Fusion irons is selling for half the price of anywhere else? That shows a blatant disregard for logic and the fairness of business and the rights of patents. If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. If it sounds too good to be true, and you proceed anyway, you deserve nothing but bad luck thereafter.

Posted by Gerry November 19, 2006 5:34 PM

Gouge, you could try some SVG XP-8's in say regular or senior shafts and see if you could tell the difference from the Big Bertha's. See www.goldeneaglegolf.com/golf-irons/index.htm for these at a bargain of only $249. Would you really like to lock these people up when they are really helping disadvantaged people out?

GOUGE: Yes, I really would.

Posted by Gerry November 30, 2006 11:44 PM

This has probably been said already, but the term "clones" is used to refer to many things in golf clubs, including some which are truly _counterfeit_ clubs and others which are sold by component companies with their own, unique names, but often borrowing heavily from big-name brands in terms of the size, shape, color, and overall look of the club. There are degrees of copying within this latter category, some of which begin to wander into a rather shifty, ethically questionable swamp, such as a driver I saw in the late 90s or early 00 that was virtually an identical copy of a Callaway Big Bertha, but was called "Big Brother" instead, even using the same old English font that Callaway uses in their logo. True, it's not a true counterfeit, but it's not necessarily easy to notice this at first glance.

I would agree that knowingly buying counterfeit clubs is pretty slimy, but buying or building the component stuff like Golfsmith, Golfworks, etc., is a different story.

The idea that the equipment companies are ruining golf for the common man because of high prices is so stupid that it hardly merits rebuttal. But I'll say anywat that in our almost limitless American marketplace, there is a staggeringly broad variety of both new and used golf clubs readily available at any price point, and of better quality than most golfers throughout history have ever had access to. If you want to argue that you need the clones to "afford" to play golf, you are either smoking something or hail from the shallow end of the common sense gene pool.

Posted by LD December 11, 2006 10:54 AM