A Big Upgrade for Callaway Golf

• Report this Comment On September 08, 2009, at 10:24 AM, catoismymotor wrote:

  Ten years ago I went to a used golf club store and bought a driver for $15. It was an all graphite ATX with a 10.5 face. It felt good and balanced to me. It had seen better days but had many good ones left. As a bonus it was solid black, matte finish on the shaft and the head. A had only owned it a few weeks before I took it to a driving range to hit some balls with my dad. As we set up at our tees a middle aged man pulled up in his shiney new Corvette, with some song blarring from the stereo. He go out and pulled a brand new bag of Callaway clubs from his trunk. He walked inside to get a basket of balls and set up a few tees down from where my dad and I were standing. The man stood proudly looking over his shiney bag of clubs. He said something to himself and pulled out his Big Bertha driver. He took a few swings at the rubber tee. He chuckled to him self. He set a ball on the tee, swung back and let it rip! I have never seen a ball shank so bad since. He set up another ball. Shank! And another. Shank! This went on for a few minutes. Mean while I am having fun aiming at the 150 marker with my seven iron. Occasionally I would hear words that rhyme with duck or bell come from his direction. Soon a friend joined him and that starting saying sweet things about the new Callaway clubs. I reached into my bag and pulled out my $15 driver. My this time I started calling it Darth Vader's toilet brush. I took a few practice swings with it. I started off hitting it a bit soft, as I tend to do. The Callaway owner starting hitting with his Big Bertha again. He started to get improve before his buddy started making remarks that he though twould help. Soon he was hitting as bad as ever. At that point I decided to unleash. I hit three in a row that sounded like rifle shots, and should have gone farther, but went straight and farther than anything he had been able to. He took notice of my club and asked me from his tee what I was hitting. When he found out I was showing up him and his $400 club with a second hand $15 modle his face turned almost as red as his Corvette.

  The moral of this story is: Callaway might be a better long term buy than short. Once the sting is gone from the economic crisis the people who are more bluff and guff and flash over substance will start to buy frivolous and overrated items again.

  BTW: For those of you that can afford to drop $3500 and have made golf your real hobby my hat is off to you. Wannabe hacks that think a bag of expensive clubs will cure what ails them are the ones that I laugh at.

• Report this Comment On September 08, 2009, at 10:27 AM, catoismymotor wrote:

  The typos are free of charge. ;)

• Report this Comment On September 08, 2009, at 9:38 PM, uniqueusername99 wrote:

  Agreed. If you are a bad golfer you might as well be swinging a rake at the ball - you'll get the same effect.

  However, if you are a good golfer, a decent set of clubs (not $3500 worth) can make that marginal difference in your game to lower your handicap a few points (if you care about that sort of thing).

• Report this Comment On September 09, 2009, at 6:00 PM, EnigmaDude wrote:

  Nice story cato, however, it is not very relevant. Callaway is the "Cadillac" of golf equipment, just like Garmin is the industry leader in GPS (and not just handheld units - they also make navigation systems for ships at sea, etc. but that is another story).

  I'm not a handicap golfer but I did manage to buy a set of new, previous model year Big Bertha clubs and they improved my game substantially. As in any sport the equipment helps only if the talent is there to begin with.

  Callaway is not the only big name in golf (Ping, Nike are some others that make good stuff) but they definitely have the reputation for being top-tier.

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