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Designer Golf Explodes the Myths

The greater majority of "manufacturers" of golf clubs are in fact only club assemblers, buying in all of the component parts and assembling them on a production line basis. Some don't even assemble their own clubs.

Write to your favourite manufacturer -Callaway, TaylorMade, Titleist, Wilson, Adams, Cobra, Lynx etc - and ask them where their heads are made, whose steel shafts they use, who makes their graphite shafts, and where do their grips come from. You might be surprised by the reply that you receive.

What you will discover is that by far the vast majority of heads, both woods and irons, are manufactured in either Taiwan or (increasingly) in mainland China, where the Taiwanese manufacturers have opened factories in order to benefit from lower labour costs. The quality speaks for itself: you play with it every day, it is excellent.

For steel shafts read Nippon. These are used exclusively by ourselves and are in our opinion the finest shafts available in today’s market. The majority of OEM’s use True Temper and who recently acquired Royal Precision, plus a number now coming out of China.

But write the letter and let us know what they say or email news@designergolf.co.uk with your response.

Wild Claims from Manufacturers

These same "manufacturers" also come out with really wild claims to encourage you to buy their particular brand. My favourite is "enlarged sweet spot", which of course is not possible. What makes the head more forgiving is the peripheral weighting, common in all modern cavity backed irons, but if the "manufacturers" said that all of their advertising would be the same. You would be really confused which clubs to buy then wouldn't you ?

TaylorMade for example used this illustration in their product brochure:

Explaining that their "new improved scorelines on toe and heel increase forgiveness and spin throughout the clubface."

We all know what happens when you hit the ball off the toe of the club or out of the heel and no amount of extra scorelines are going to alter that.

This is just one example of what in marketing terms is commonly known as "pratt value" , there are of course many others used by all of the major "manufacturers".

The biggest problem that you face today however is the ever increasing number of new models being launched at shorter and shorter intervals, with even more outrageous claims on what will be achieved if you buy this new fantastic innovation. How can they all be right?

If you go back twenty five years all of the major OEM’s produced a set of new irons every two or three years, and then the new model tended to be just a very slight variation of its predecessor. But that has all changed. Now they produce a new set every year and often more than one new model.

So do you want to know why you can hit your new 5 iron further than you hit your old 3 iron ? Well you don’t because it is really a 3 iron.

What the OEM’s have done, to kid you that you can hit the new xyz’s further than the old abc’s you only bought a couple of years ago, is tighten up the lofts. That’s also the reason that you can’t hit 3 and 4 irons anymore, well 25 years ago they were 1 and 2 irons and there were not many around then that could hit either of these. Tom Wishon refers to it as the “vanishing loft syndrome”.

So what did they do then ? Wow, they invented a new club called a hybrid, or rescue club and the golfer was suckered again. Why ? Well they have the same lofts as 3 and 4 irons (and 2’s and 5’s for that matter) but the same construction as a fairway wood. For example a 7 wood is 21 – 23 degrees, depending on the manufacturer, so is a 3 hybrid, but surprise surprise the 3 Hybrid is around 30 grams heavier than the equivalent fairway wood.

So what would happen if we made the 7 wood 30 grams heavier and made it the same length as a 2/3 iron. Correct. It would do the same as the hybrid, but who is going to tell you that. And you would be amazed how many male players, of low to mid handicap, who would die of shame if you suggested that they carry a 7 or 9 wood. But they all carry the new hybrids. I wonder if it’s the power of marketing man all over again ?

And before you ask, Tour players carry hybrids because they are paid to, not because they need to. They can hit 2, 3 and 4 irons anyway and as Lee Trevino once said “if you are playing and there is any thunder and lightening around, hold your one iron in the air, it is the best lightening conductor around, because even God can’t hit a 1 iron”.

Why their Clubs are so Expensive?

Finally ask yourself why their clubs are so expensive, knowing what we do now about where the components come from. The answer is in the cost of worldwide advertising in all of the glossy monthly golf magazines and the massive endorsements paid to tour players. The millions spent have to come from the profits made from club and ball sales. So you become your own worst enemy.

Impartial Advice

We intend to keep you advised on matters such as these, with regular updates in our "News" section, where we will at all times aim to be totally impartial and to bring to your attention only matters that we consider to be newsworthy.

Custom Built & Fitted Golf Clubs

Golf club repairs, refitting, reshafts, regrips

Clubmaker / Clubfitter/ Repairer for Custom Built / Custom Fitted golf clubs

Custom Golf Club Fitting for Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and all of the UK

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