Agree, I don't think it was ever an issue of quality, but (especially in golf) perception counts for so much. I mean, how many golfers have really played enough rounds with different sets of clubs to really be able to tell the difference? How many are good enough that it would even matter? Me shanking a 4-iron with a Taylormade is no different than me shanking a 4 with a Titleist. Not sure I'm going to be able to tell the difference in perimeter weighting on that badly thinned 6 iron I just hit.
For me the issue was always price. I was curious about Nike equipment since they apparently hired some of 'top' clubmakers from other companies (whatever that means), but their stuff was always so premium-priced it basically discouraged me (and many others, apparently) from ever giving them a shot. I feel like they went about it in the wrong way, to some extent, by not doing more to get their clubs into the hands of golfers out on the course, and instead it seemed like they thought the swoosh logo meant golfers would automatically pay up to get their stuff.
Although in the end it probably didn't much matter - the golf equipment biz has been in a slowdown for some time and there's probably no end in sight. Which is okay by me to be honest; I'd like to return to saner days where you could get a good quality name-brand set of irons for some sub-4-figure amount. And for f's sake, can we get someone to tell the club manufacturers to stop putting plastic inserts into the back of their irons? Has that trend passed yet (please)?
Yep, again, Nike erred in my opinion by not doing enough to get their clubs into golfers' bags out on the course, so that they'd be commonplace and not an oddity. I've had similar experiences to yours w/ regard to Nike - pull out a VRS and people are like "pfft...poser", but pull out that white R11 and everyone's like "oooh!". It's total BS. But Nike never did enough to shake that. If they could do it over again, other than not getting into the business to begin with, I wonder if they would have considered either lowering the initial prices or running more promotions to get the clubs out there and into bags.
What I'm hoping doesn't happen is Taylormade being sold to some Chinese conglomerate and then becoming basically bargain-bin throw-away quality clubs with a Taylormade logo. Although I'm sorta thinking that's what's going to happen....
Comment