CLICK HERE to visit ESPN.com to read a recent article on the U.S. Hickory Open which ended today. (More to come on this year’s tournament on the Persimmon bLog.)
Below is an article which appeared in the July 12, 2010 issue of Sports Illustrated.
E-mail josh@louisvillegolf.com if you cannot find the article online and would like to read it. I can send you a PDF.
AVAILABLE THIS MARCH! (keep checking www.louisvillegolf.com)
NEW! HL3 PERSIMMON HYBRIDS
The ease of a hybrid combined with the feel and accuracy of Persimmon!
The HL3 Persimmon hybrid is the 3rd generation of our popular Hy-Lofter series, and 3rd time’s a charm for this design! The HL3 has a lower center of gravity (COG) than previous models due to the new Copper Rudder. The Copper Rudder positions weight low in the head to drop the COG, and back opposite of the insert, to increase accuracy via gear effect. The lower COG promotes quick easy launches while not making the face too shallow. Offered in four lofts, the HL3 Persimmon hybrids are much easier to hit than long irons; our 18- degree model replaces the 2-iron, the 21-degree model replaces a 3-iron, the 24-degree model replaces the 4-iron, while the 34-degree model has the added versatility of hitting shots from 150 yards and closer, while giving you enhanced feel chipping around the greens.
Numbers available:
18 degree (replaces 2-iron)
21 degree (replaces 3-iron)
24 degree (replaces 4-iron)
34 degree (150 yards and in/chipping)
Material: Persimmon
Soleplate: Brass with Copper Rudder
Insert: Burgundy with gold grooves
Hosel: Aluminum sleeve
Finish: Spirit Mahogany Brown
Shaft: Steel or graphite
Shaft flex: R,S,X,A,L
Questions: e-mail josh@louisvillegolf.com
Merry Christmas Louisville Golfers, we wish you all the best this holiday season and hope for all good things in 2010.
Where:
Longleaf Golf Club
10 N Knoll Road
Southern Pines, North Carolina 28387
910) 692-6100
www.longleafgolf.com
When:
Monday, November 2, 2009
Registration 7:30 a.m-8:30 a.m.
Shotgun Start 9:00 a.m.
Parings Party:
Sunday, November 1, 2009
7:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. Clubhouse Longleaf Golf Club
Monday, November 2, 2009 will be the date of the inaugural INTERNATIONAL PLAYABLE CLASSIC CHAMPIONSHIP. This event the first of its kind will be the precursor of many future events using the same format.
Players must use clubs that were built between 1930-1985. No metal woods or hickory shafted clubs. Steel and graphite shafts are permissible. Era dress is encouraged but not required. All players must use the same ball. 80 compression or less. We are currently negotiating with a ball company to provide us with golf balls for the event. News on this will be provided in the future. Play will be individual stroke play. The event will be flighted depending upon the number of entrants. Prizes will also be awarded for closest to the pin, long drive and best vintage match of clubs and dress. Entries are limited to the first 120 players.
Players will receive entry into the event, a souvenir event gift, invitation to the parings party, breakfast and lunch the day of the event. There will also be a chance to set up a display products and services at the parings party on Sunday evening. Cost of the display will depend upon how elaborate a set up is required.
Cost per player for the event is: $149.00
ENTRY DEADLINE IS Monday, October 19, 2009
Send Entry Forms and Make the checks payable to:
Corporate Golf Services
7474 Creedmoor Road
PMB 262
Raleigh, North Carolina 27613
Attn: Tom DiGregorio
(919) 847-9405 (O)
(919) 844-3723 (F)
Email: CorpGolfSv@CorporateGolfSvs.com
A letter we received in the mail today…
Dear Louisville Golf Company,
How do you like this photo? (see below) That’s me with my champions trophy. In my right hand is the weapon that lead my charge to victory. It’s an Earthwoods putter!! I putted lights-out over a three day, four round golf tourney that I recently played in.
The 11th Annual Rodney Thomas Invitational, which is about 40 guys golfing together over three days to lay claim to who’s the best golfer that year. This is my first year to be invited. It is played using each person’s USGA handicap.
I got my putter last year while visiting my cousin in Louisville. We came to your shop around closing time and you allowed me in the back to pick the exact head that I wanted. Then you rushed to get it done so I could take it home with me.
Thanks for making a great product that never fails to get positive comments from my playing partners.
Sincerely,
Dan Pecenka (TX)
THE TRUTH IS NOT OUT THERE
by Joshua Fischer (July 2002)
mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur
The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived.
Golf, ultimately and universally, is not that important: as allegory, yes — as truth, no. This is merely pragmatic, not cynical.
No matter the love we all feel for golf, in the end it is just a game. For all its inequalities and snobbery, the dark side of golf shows more about the people who play it, than the game itself. And like all things, this frustrating and contemplative pastime indeed has a dark side, and it rears its ugly head in the golf equipment industry.
Golf’s dark wood of error begins in the boardroom, where pressure to turn a profit and the protocol of business generates an interesting and highly human motivation. The large golf companies sell mostly hope, not equipment. And when they market an intangible such as hope, the truth and inherent beauty of the source are lost.
Case in point: Nike Golf is promoting a forged titanium driver that is marketed to outperform a cast titanium model. The Nike titanium driver campaign is a manipulation of the truth, an amplified version of the basic. The company’s point isn’t valid because most every driver today is now being forged; it is a simple fact of manufacturing that companies do it this way. A lot of titanium, a relatively expensive resource, is wasted during the casting process. Manufacturers turned to forging titanium drivers because this process wasted less titanium, and thus, in the long run, was more efficient economically. The marketers at Nike are smart, but also expanding on the obvious.
With the possible exception of Ruger (which was already set up to precision-cast titanium frames for its handguns) it is very difficult for companies to source or manufacture a cast titanium driver. But, in theory, a cast titanium driver should be more consistent because there are fewer pieces to be welded together. The truth is, forging a titanium driver is cheaper than casting one. Nike is winking at the truth as it sneaks by the consumer in order to increase its margin. No one seems to notice because the Tiger plays the club, and Nike is a giant.
Turning a profit with a healthy margin isn’t necessarily bad — it is merely capitalism. But filtered through a game steeped in honor and promoted over time to possess integrity and authenticity, the squirrelly marketing feels dirty. (There are many examples.) These large companies are slowly chipping away at the soul of the game…and they are about to break through, changing it forever. I fear it might be too late. Golf has been overtaken by pigs, and it appears nothing will abate their appetite.
Ping Golf is a good company, but it might have unwittingly started this trend when it released its irons with stronger lofts (Ping Eye II). In 1980 the standard loft for a 5-iron was 32 degrees. A Ping ISI 5-iron has 27 degrees of loft. When golfers hit a 5-iron ten yards further with a Ping, they attributed it to the iron design and not the muscled-up loft. The perimeter-weighted design of the first Ping irons did provide more forgiving mishits, but neither a well struck blade nor a well struck perimeter-weighted casting vary in distance if all specifications are equal.
Equality of specifications is a large reason why the use of Persimmon woods has stagnated, and a large reason why the golfing public has been fooled into false positives. When metals first were used and being compared to Persimmon, you were hard-pressed to find a player who would make the switch to a metal “wood.” With the invention of the graphite shaft, which was longer and lighter, Persimmon was compared to a metal “wood” shafted in graphite while still being fitted with a shorter and heavier steel shaft. It’s like comparing two Ferraris, but one has a Ford F150 truck engine.
Simple physics dictates that the longer and lighter your shaft, the more clubhead speed you can produce. Therefore, the longer drives had nothing to do with clubhead material, but more to do with how the club was being built. And it is no coincidence that it is easier to cast a metal head than it is to craft a Persimmon head. Again, profits, not love, change the game forever.
Quality control of OEM clubs is troubling as well, and is another symptom of the larger problem. We have come a long way since Ben Hogan scrapped his entire first run of forgings because he wasn’t satisfied with them. Callaway Golf is the main offender here. A set of off-the-rack X-14 irons recently tested to have as many as 6 different flexes in its shafts ranging from senior to extra stiff. Professional private clubmakers can attest to this. Callaway clubs are probably what they see most of in their shop for one reason or another, many times due to shaft problems. The quality of Callaway shafts has improved, but buyer beware on shaft flex. There is a good chance that the S on the shaft stands for Something, and not Stiff.
The tactics that most golf companies use to grab your attention and dollar lacks authenticity and inspiration. Every new club has some sort of “Technology” in it. This is becoming painfully repetitive and lacks real imagination. Golf clubs aren’t “Technology” — they’re tinkerings. Technology is computers you can talk to or TVs on your wrist watch, not neon bells and glitter whistles that are all variations on a theme.
The game is evolving, and the equipment is too…sort of. Page through The Clubmaker’s Art by Jeffery B. Ellis and you will see that many “Technologies” have been tried before. You’ll see equipment that looks surprisingly like modern clubs as well as a suspicious looking driver with a spring attached to its metal face insert (Spring Face Technology, of course).
Spring Face Technology is a misnomer, an apparition from the twisted mind of a hungry marketer with stock options. Also known as the Trampoline Effect, the physics of the ball at impact with the clubface has nothing to do with the action that the name implies. A “Spring Face” allows the golf ball to compress less, thus losing less energy and penetrating farther into the air. What the name implies, a trampolining of the ball to spit it greater distances, is basically a manipulation of the truth and bent semantics.
Companies are moving away from referring to Spring Faces and Trampolines and starting to use the acronym, C.O.R. (Coefficient of Restitution - a measure of the clubface’s give at impact.) Instead of a Spring Face, a titanium driver now has a “High C.O.R.” No one is the wiser as the initial bogus descriptions “boing” and “tink” away into oblivion.
By exploiting capitalism, coupled with the affluent and impressionable golfers desperate to play this glorious and beautifully difficult game well, these mammoth marketing companies have become like those golfers who roll their ball in the rough when no one is looking — no one really notices that they have improved their lie.
I wrote this column for the newspaper I worked for before my Louisville Golf career and decided to post it now as I think it still applies. Be aware that it was written in 2002, but no less applicable in 2009. The names may have changed, but the problem remains the same.Joshua Fischer
Marketing Director
Look for our new putter ad in Golf Illustrated and PGA Tour Partners magazine. The new ad includes six of our top-selling designs:
Earthwoods
STIMP
Ryder Cup
Louie3
2500
Calamity Jane
Here it is:
Hometown team makes good! GO CARDS!
CLICK HERE to read an article on U of L senior Terrence Williams
Playing golf can ‘damage hearing’
Players who use a new generation of thin-faced titanium drivers to propel the ball further should consider wearing ear plugs, experts advise. Ear specialists suspect the “sonic boom” the metal club head makes when it strikes the ball damaged the hearing of a 55-year-old golfer they treated. They outline the details of this case in the British Medical Journal. The man had been playing with a King Cobra LD titanium club three times a week for 18 months and commented that the noise of the club hitting the ball was “like a gun going off”.
It had become so unpleasant that he decided to ditch the club, but by this time he had already suffered some hearing loss. Doctors at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital carried out tests on the keen golfer after he attended their clinic with unexplained tinnitus and reduced hearing in his right ear. The tests confirmed that his hearing problems were typical of those seen with exposure to loud noises.
‘Sonic boom’
The doctors trawled the web for reviews of the King Cobra LD club and said they found some interesting comments. One player reported: “Drives my mates crazy with that distinctive loud ‘BANG’ sound.” Another said: “This is not so much a ting but a sonic boom which resonates across the course!” The doctors decided to recruit a professional golfer to hit shots with six thin-faced titanium clubs from manufacturers such as King Cobra, Callaway, Nike and Mizuno.
All produced a louder noise than standard thicker stainless steel drivers. The worst offender was the Ping G10 at over 130 decibels. Lead researcher Dr Malcom Buchanan, an ENT specialist and a keen golfer, said: “Our results show that thin-faced titanium drivers may produce sufficient sound to induce temporary or even permanent cochlear damage in susceptible individuals.”
He said golfers should be careful when playing with these thin-faced clubs as they make a lot more noise, and suggested they could wear earplugs for protection. Crystal Rolfe, an audiologist for the RNID, said: “Exposure to loud impulse sounds over time can cause damage. It is a short, sharp burst of very loud peak sound with this type of golf club. “Earplugs would offer some protection and if someone was playing regularly with these types of club they might consider wearing them. But this is only one individual case so we need more research.”
Dr Martin Strangwood, an expert in sports equipment engineering at the University of Birmingham, said manufacturers engineered the sound of the club to get a “good” sound for the player. “There has been a tendency to make booming clubs for drivers. But if this were a problem it would be easy to remedy by filling the head of the club with foam to reduce the sound.” He said wearing earplugs was another solution, but said players use the noise as feedback to assess how they are playing and how well their equipment is performing. “So it might not work for all.”
CLICK HERE to see the article on the BBC website
Over half of the world’s deadliest snakes reside in Australia. So do some of the world’s most beautiful species of wood. In 2009 we will be offering three new putters made from some Australian hardwood we obtained including She Oak, Tuart, Marri, Jarrah and Casuarina. Below are a few images of what we have been working on. These putters will be available March 1, 2009.
Questions? e-mail marketing director Josh Fischer josh@louisvillegolf.com