SERIES: An Insider’s Look At Modern Golf Club Design | PART 1

Let’s take an insider’s look at R&D in the golf biz – you may find it quite surprising in many ways.

What Does R&D Look Like?

Many of us might envision a visit to one of these OEM’s R&D facilities as some secluded laboratory site, where we pass through layers of security into a huge glass and steel building. Inside, it is populated by golf geeks in white lab coats with pocket protectors. We pass through rows of cubicles with computer displays of spinning CAD files and simulations.  

In the lab itself, we see mysterious fabricated equipment with servomotors and sensors monitored by exotic computer systems with walls of LED displays. And from another direction, we can hear the audible “crack” of a golfer robot rifling shots into a simulator’s virtual display – surrounded by Ph.D. “chin-pullers” pensively studying launch data and hypothesizing, “Hmmm, what if we… ”

Actually, the great majority of golf club R&D is not like that at all – only a few brands have anything that even resembles this. The real world of golf club R&D is much different – and much less sophisticated than you might expect.

Several OEMs have robots and computer simulations, but contemporary R&D is instead much more about email threads, CAD files with the toolmakers, emails and spec sheets for the factory, equipment for building prototypes, cubicles and conference rooms (with endless meetings), and scores of discarded prototype test clubs leaning against walls gathering dust… with just a dab of REAL research going on.

Those are the parts of R&D that you can see, but it is actually the things you cannot see that make the greatest difference. So, let’s take a deeper look into what kind of thinking and what realities drive these golf industry R&D groups.

R&D Leadership begins With Perspective

I remember attending a Golf Digest Technical Panel meeting in late 1990’s, where our guest (Technical Director for one of golf’s governing bodies) told the attendees, “I think all of us in this room know there is really very little left to do now in golf club design… it is pretty much a marketing game from here on!” I was sitting next to Callaway’s VP of R&D, and we both gasped simultaneously (probably audibly)! Good grief, modern golf club design was only then getting started!

My point is that perspective changes… it evolves over time, it grows and matures, and it often holds its fair share of surprises for all of us in the end.  

The extraordinary transition to real R&D that occurred in the years just before and following that meeting actually only began around the turn of this century with the availability of both better robots and launch monitors – finally enabling real data gathering for research to begin.

Despite some products today being very good, Golf Club R&D is still honestly in its infancy from the standpoint of using applied research methodologies and understanding many basic club design elements – the “Golden Age of Golf Club Design” has only just begun.  

Evidence of that is the currently broad range of observed CG locations for drivers (as reported by MyGolfSpy a few months ago), which suggests a lack of consensus on even the most basic of design understandings – there is surely an optimum performing CG location for the golfing population that is slightly adjustable – where is it?

The Unique Realities Golf OEMs Face In R&D

The golf equipment community is like any other business in many respects – there are leaders and followers, aggressive vs. conservative companies, capable vs. fluff design efforts, and financially strong companies vs. weak and struggling companies. And there are the smaller companies who cannot afford to invest in R&D at all, so they do a little “r” with some big “D” instead and make up some good marketing stories for the consumer. It is in the end a business, though – much like any other in many respects.

And even in golf, R&D is regrettably the first place many companies will look to cut operating expenses when times get tough – new golf club graphics and reloaded marketing claims are both easy and inexpensive to do, and they will fool most consumers temporarily. Even deep cuts in R&D will not be evident to the consumer for a while.  

But the golf equipment design and R&D challenges are unlike any product development problems for “widgets”. In what other business might any R&D effort be required to consider the influences of things like a PGA Tour, the golf media (TV, print, digital), the marketing hyperbole, the passion of the end consumer, and the requirement for fitting of the end user with the product? What other product development challenge carries with it such extraordinary breadth and complexity? How about that Widgets Tour and the Widgets Monthly Magazine that every Widgets consumer reads cover-to-cover?

“Size Matters” in R&D

Most of us golfer-consumers likely suffer similar misconceptions regarding the size and sophistication of R&D groups among the name brands. We naively assume there is much R&D behind whatever shiny new clubs we see in the marketplace from the “brands”. But these R&D groups come in different sizes – they may in fact be anywhere from just a couple of “design guys” to a very capable professional staff of over 100.  

Three tiers of companies are present in the golf biz today from an R&D standpoint – the full product line major OEMs that are doing real R&D and getting it pretty much correct, a second tier of mostly “identity” companies that tend to focus on and succeed primarily in one product category and who are doing focused and limited R&D (though they may also be full product line medium-sized companies), and the little “niche” and “garage tinkerer” guys that generally have one thing they sell and rarely any REAL technology.

 

Needless to say, all OEM products are not equal with regards to the R&D behind them. Size matters greatly for suggesting R&D capabilities, but other things can matter even more!

Management and Direction of R&D Efforts

There are corporate culture and leadership issues that greatly influence R&D. Corporate ownership, management dogma, “great player” influence, desired brand positioning, and company “identity” can and do greatly shape the products that come out of R&D. In fact, brand identity considerations can even overwhelm all other priorities of an R&D effort – i.e. we are a “metal woods” company or a “forged irons” company or maybe even a “ball” company. What the R&D group is doing is many times dictated to them with a predetermined focus due to identity.

Direction is key for what happens in R&D, because a whole herd of Ph.D.s heading in the wrong direction will never be as productive as a single golf club design engineer with a correct vision of the future!

There is always the huge temptation for successful second tier golf companies to chase growth through product category diversification. The danger to them is diversification to the point of being really good at nothing – ergo, achieving mediocrity!  So, focus and identity are not always bad things… sometimes, “You gotta dance with the one who brung ‘ya!”

Golf Club Design Philosophy

A “Race Car” design analogy is to me actually the essential formula for the development of better golf club designs. First of all, it is about performance above all else.  A championship-winning race car is the result of synergistically optimizing the performance of many design variables simultaneously – weight and balance, materials, aerodynamics, horsepower, gearing, handling and suspension, driver interaction, tires, driver skills, pit performance, etc.  

Golf clubs too should be high performance combinations of many product design possibilities optimized for a multi-dimensional set of appropriate performance criteria.

The doors to real R&D are finally creaking open. Only now are some OEMs seriously beginning to explore “other” design basics like looking beyond loft alone for distance. They are now examining instead the totality of launch conditions – loft, lie angles, ball spin, CG locations, dynamic loft, launch angle, COR, MOI, dynamic alignment properties, gear effect, shaft design, head weights, grip designs, etc.  

Golf club design is indeed a “multi-dimensional” problem of MANY variables, and ALL of these things (and much more) do indeed matter to us as players.

Other Complications in Golf Club R&D

Setting golf club development apart from the rest of the world of R&D are several other unique factors adding to its breadth and complexity.  

Great golf club R&D is not an end unto itself, because it ultimately must consider the things that come next as well. Getting a golf club into the hands of you the consumer in the 21st century is a 3-step process at the very least:  

1. Development of new product ideas through great R&D,
2. Delivering those new product ideas through carefully managed manufacturing execution, and
3. Properly fitting that new product to you the consumer.  

It takes all three elements (like the 3-legged stool example) to deliver acceptable product nowadays. Even getting two out of the three right is just not good enough – i.e. heavily customized exotic steel forged irons but with little real design behind them, or CNC milled putter guys copying 50 year old designs – both leave the design opportunity on the table (and NOT in your golf bag)!

Finding the Right People

One of the other great challenges to advancing the state of the art in golf club design is properly staffing the R&D groups. There is nowhere to go to learn golf club design except inside the R&D groups of the golf industry OEMs, so every new designer starts from zero and must learn the design basics from his older and more experienced colleagues and mentors – or dig it out for himself. This slows the advance of technology and encourages secrecy somewhat, but it also promotes a constant “re-thinking” of what golf club designs should be, so it keeps us focused and fresh.

Because the design guys also learn from one another as competitors, it retards the development of new ideas somewhat to know that even the best product ideas will not always become visible or even commercially successful. Many innovative ideas fail miserably for want of sufficient capital or media attention or other good reasons, thereby slowing or limiting their influence with the consumer by shaping the marketplace of new ideas.

Alternatively, a highly visible Pro Tour win using a mediocre new product technology (with the attendant media buzz) will sometimes catapult that mediocre design technology into an undeserved and misleading prominence in the marketplace, though it may have been of little technical merit and had very little to do with the player’s success – which is in fact driven by so many other possibilities.

Manufacturing

Is “Made in China” really a problem for the golf consumer? The labor unions and EPA pretty much ran golf club manufacturing out of the U.S. 30 years ago – ergo, the skills and capabilities for golf club manufacturing and finishing are not present in the U.S. anymore (grinding, polishing, shaping, plating). The Chinese actually have become quite good at making golf clubs now. They will give us basically whatever design the R&D group can create at whatever level of manufacturing integrity is desired.

You have heard it rumored, too, that factories in China are making product for multiple brands under a single roof – it is true!  I have been there. They made my very premium golf clubs in the same building as clubs from two of the largest OEMs and a handful of other smaller good niche companies – and this was in one of the top suppliers in China. They do, however, segregate the production of these different brands to different areas of the same building with unique production lines and personnel.

The Rules

The USGA Rules on golf club design pretty much define the “design envelope” wherein the R&D guys should operate, but intentional challenges to the USGA regarding the rules of golf for club design from some OEMs (you guys know who you are) have been real eye-openers for many of us industry veterans, because they have ultimately driven innovation greatly. The USGA’s reluctance to defend its turf has been troubling – where “thinking outside the box” has been replaced with “thinking outside the rules” at times.

Intellectual Property

Patent infringement is a serious problem in golf – particularly for the smaller companies with good ideas. Most consumers do not realize that there are no “patent police” to enforce patent protection. Patent enforcement is instead the responsibility of the inventor himself, and it involves lots of “lawyering” and very expensive lawsuits, so the little inventors are at a disadvantage when it comes to protecting their IP against infringers. The larger OEMs know this and exploit it to their advantage.  

Famous Bottom Line

Obviously there is much going on in golf nowadays to complicate things, but the foundations of industry-leading 21st century golf club R&D must be grounded in a proper perspective, pointed in the correct directions, and studied with a disciplined intellectual curiosity.

Some of the R&D you are offered is – but much is not! The era of “longer” and “feel” is coming to a close, and it will yield a new era of products with objectively measured quantifiable performance advantages.

Some golf clubs are already much better than others, because there is much good thinking behind them.

Maybe you should think about it too.