Small minds must accept large heads

Technology continues to fuel golf club sales worldwide.

But many of the latest innovations in club head design, particularly those dealing with drivers and fairway metals, aren’t as noticeable as they were back when titanium first bulled its way onto the scene, pushing persimmon to the edge of extinction.

I still remember the comment one of my golf partners made when I first pulled the head cover off the 310 cc, forged-face titanium driver I had just purchased.

“It looks like a Volkswagen on a stick,” he said.

Having graduated from a McGregor persimmon driver with a head no larger that a teacup, it was an image I had trouble shaking – which is probably why I quickly added the club to my ever-growing cache of “driver-of-the-month” rejects.

The Alpha Z still sits idly in my garage, a lonely, innocent victim of my misguided visual anxieties. Yet, today, I am swinging a driver with a head the size of a cantaloupe – and loving it.

Having maxed out at 460 ccs, the massive heads on today’s drivers seem to have become nearly acceptable.

Club makers keep coming up with new ways to improve their performances without exceeding USGA size limitations.

“I think there’s a leap in technology every year in our business,” John Watts, the director of sales for Edwin Watts Golf, told me during a recent telephone interview. “Sometimes the leaps are visual, and sometimes they’re not.

“To me, the biggest leap this year – in golf clubs, specifically – is what manufacturers are doing with the internal weighting of these things.”

According to Watts, the internal weighting in most of today’s top-selling drivers can be manipulated in ways that can help golfers hit the ball higher, while reducing the severity of slices or hooks.

A player who tends to fade the ball, Watts explained, can be fitted for a driver that is weighted in a way that will help him or her correct that fade without having to resort to an offset club.

By “marrying” different materials such as tungsten, titanium and carbon, today’s club makers can eliminate weight in one area of the club head and redistribute it to another place.

“It’s amazing to me that we’re up to 460 ccs in drivers and, yet, weight is not an issue,” Watts said.

So what kinds of drivers have been flying off the shelves at the 49 retail outlets owned and operated by Edwin Watts Golf?

“Right now there are probably four or five, maybe six, brands that are dominating the market,” Watts said. “The Ping G2 would have to be at the top of list, right next to the Calaway 454 product.”

Watts said composition drivers, consisting of a carbon shell over a titanium face are also selling well, along with the TaylorMade r7 and r5 clubs that feature removable tungsten weights.

He added that Nike sales have increased “tremendously” since Tiger Woods started hitting a few more fairways.

It is Watts’ belief that players on the PGA Tour remain the best vehicles club manufacturers can use to promote their products. He points to the recent uptick in golf club sales by Wilson as a way of supporting that belief.

The company, once a major player in the golf club design and sales, recently enlisted the help of Tour stars Padraig Harrington and Jesper Parnevik in an effort to regain its status in the industry.

“As a result, Wilson is back in the ballgame, in my opinion,” Watts said. “Those two guys really help them with their credibility. They’re both devoted to the folks at Wilson, and they both use their products.”

Then there is Todd Hamilton, who pushed the hybrid utility club onto center stage – and into nearly every serious golfer’s bag – by winning the 2004 British Open.

“People watching on TV were all asking, ‘What is that thing he’s chipping with,’ ” Watts recalled.

For the record, it was a Sonartec MD, but it wasn’t the model name that stirred up all the excitement. It was the design of the hybrid club – a cross between a long iron and a fairway wood – that sparked all the interest.

Most hybrid clubs are considered easier to hit than long irons and feature small, contoured heads about half the size a normal fairway metal that provide added playability from all types of lies.

The shafts are longer than those of typical long irons, for added distance, but shorter than those of most fairway metals, for added control.

The popularity of utility clubs, according to Watts, skyrocketed after Hamilton’s win and sales have since been among the best in the industry.

“Without a question, they’re the fastest growing category,” Watts said, “and they will continue to be for many years to come. Golfers will come to refer to hybrid clubs just like they do metal woods.

“I can’t think of a company that doesn’t have a hybrid of some kind. It’s reached the point where, if you don’t have one in your bag, you’re behind the times.”

To those golf “purists” still resisting the change from a 1-iron to a utility club, Watts offers this prediction:

“It may take you some time, but technology will eventually make the decision for you.”