It was nearly 20 years ago, when a close friend and business partner suggested I sometimes shake up my blog posts by getting “deep in the weeds” with valuable information about golf equipment and the industry around it. Over a couple of beers and a great burger, we came up with my alter ego, “The Texas Wedgehog,” and his mantra, “Rootin’ out the truth.”

From time to time, I’ve donned that persona to dive into topics that are a somewhat edgy and that might seem a bit sacrilegious for a guy that has made his living in the golf equipment industry for over forty years now. But in my first life as an ad guy, one thing that I despised was advertising that was less than truthful about a product or service. I share that same set of values about the golf equipment industry.

So, today I want to share a couple of recent stories with you that seem to suggest that maybe we should approach buying golf equipment with a bit more research and exploration, rather than to just take manufacturer’s claims and published information at its face value.

This is not to demean the industry or any of its players. Golf club design and marketing is a fast-paced environment, and all golfers have benefited from the vast amount of science and manufacturing technologies that are applied to helping us hit better golf shots. There are a lot of great products for us to choose from.

But as I have noted in prior articles, there is a limit to what golf clubs can do for your game, while there are also great attributes to equipping yourself with modern and meaningful technologies. The point of today’s article is that you need to be careful and maybe inquire a bit deeper before you just assume things about the clubs you are considering, or that you have purchased. Just a couple of examples why . . .

Case Study #1 – What does “forged” really mean?

I often like to try things other companies are producing, so I recently purchased a set of modern blade irons – you know, the ones that claim to have added technologies to make blade style irons more “techy.” And because I’m a die-hard fan of forged irons, I selected a forged model, evidenced by the fact that “FORGED” was stamped right there on the hosel.

The first thing I did when I unpacked them was to run them through my loft/lie machine to make sure the lofts were accurate and to adjust the lie angles to my own spec of 2* flat. At least that was my goal.

I’ve adjusted lie angles on hundreds of clubs in my golf life, and anyone who has done that can quickly tell the difference between a forged head and a cast one. Forgings bend easily, and most castings are brutally hard and unmalleable. These were definitely not fully forged, as it took all my strength to move the lie angles even two degrees; at most they only have a forged face in their multi-piece construction. To me, putting “FORGED” on the hosel is more than misleading, it is downright untruthful. So, now I wonder if I can trust anything else this company says about its products?

Case Study #2 – Shaft flexes can be anything

My club’s general manager asked me why I thought his new irons from Company ‘A’ were performing so differently than his previous irons from Company ‘B’. Though both were similar modern blade designs, and both had shafts that were indicated as “stiff” flex, he was hitting the new irons out on the toe consistently and much higher. So, I suggested he bring both sets to the Edison shop and we’d put them through all the measuring devices to see just what might be causing that issue.

I will add that the two sets of irons had different shafts in them, the first set being one major shaft brand’s mid-weight steel shaft in a “stiff” flex, the newer set having a lighter weight shaft (by 10 grams) from a different major brand shaft company, also marked “stiff.”

But that’s where the similarity ended. Once I put them on the Mitchell Digital Frequency Analyzer, his performance issue came very clear. The newer set of irons delivered frequency readings of 28 to 35 CPM lower than his earlier set, which equates to three full flexes! So, with that much softer shaft in his new set, he was obviously experiencing more “shaft droop” through impact, which was causing the toe hit pattern and higher ball flight.

A major challenge of the golf club industry is that there are no recognized “standards” for anything. Not lofts, not lengths, not in shaft flex designations. Heck, companies don’t even agree on how club length should be measured, much less what a standard length might be. That makes it tough to compare one club to another in a fair manner.

My goal with this blog is to share things I’ve learned in a lifetime of golf and 40+ years in the golf equipment industry. These case studies definitely prove that you should be very careful when purchasing equipment to make sure you get what you think you bought.

If I were a consumer, I would always insist that a new club be put on measuring equipment before I ever hit it to make sure I’m getting what I think I purchased.