Forum > Rants

David Homer

I've just been browsing a couple of internet golf retailers and they are jumping on the Oosthuizen bandwagon promoting Ping woods as the choice of the 2010 open champion.

Did anyone else notice that he was actually using Nike woods!!

Loud Mouth b.a.

Much of the golf industry is based on lies.

If you want to see which driver heads and shafts are the best then watch the players competing in international golf longdrive competitions. The names of most of the manufacturers  are unknown to most golfers. Such companies simply manufacture the best equipment and sell it to those in the know. Not make empty boasts.

How many golfers have say heard of arguably the present hottest shafts on the market at the moment - the Aerotech range? I suspect that none of the Tour players use stock issue shafts. They tend to use top of the range Fubukis and the like. Their shafts invariably fully flex, not twitch.

The heads which they use are hand picked, and unlike in longdrive competitions they are never tested by event organisers for legality for COR, CT etc. At least not as far as I am aware.

Has any Ping or Nike driver ever exceeded 450 yards on a properly measured grid? 425 yards? 400 yards? 375 yards?

Tom Hollingworth recently took the European record with one of my custom built drivers with 478 yards. Measured and carefully re-measured by competition officials on flat ground. Fact, not empty boast. How much have I spent on advertising - Zero. (I don't even have a proper web site.) How much do the companies manufacturing the components which I use spend -very very little.

How much do Ping or Nike spend on their hollow promises? That's anybody's guess. But it likely runs into millions. Even after all of their advertising their tour players are disloyal. I have recently secretly supplied a sponsored tour player with a driver based on a Geek Fail Safe 3 head. But, I very much doubt that a Geek headcover will appear in his bag.    

I have a deep respect for Nike as it was founded by the athletics coach of my correspondence pal and late fellow athlete Steve Prefontaine - the late Bill Bowerman. Bill invented TOP running shoes in his wife's kitchen, moulding soles in her waffle maker! Much later on the co. moved into the golf market.

That aside, there is no way I would use its golf equipment in order to try to hit a serious distance!