man these club companies are really doing a disservice because I bet you 99% of off the rack clubs are going to kill players.
sorry for jacking your thread, you can delete these if you want.
I don't have much of a problem with today's OEM's when it comes to off the rack irons.
Why?
Because today's OEM's provide a multitude custom options, often times at no charge.
Try playing back in '93 when you were stuck with the stock shafts the company gave you, the shaft companies Quality Control stunk to high heaven, changing lie angles to fit golfers was still relatively unknown, and cast clubs made from hard stainless steel that you couldn't bend was becoming the norm because Ping was such a big success and others decided to follow suit.
And that's not even getting into things like the driver where you have a limited selection of graphite shafts which almost all of them stunk or had horrible Quality Control.
In fact, for the most part it feels like today's OEM's tell people that they shouldn't buy clubs off the rack and should instead demo a club and then customize it and you'll get it in less than a week to your specifications, with a shitload of different shaft options from shaft companies who have completely stepped up their game. And you can get the lie angles you want, most of the irons are forged so you can change the lie angle and loft with ease down the road if you wish.
It's a lot easier and a lot less frustrating.
And the technology is also starting to slow down a bit in terms of advancements.
Back when I was a senior in high school (1994), it was exclusively a metal wood or persimmon market. Most preferred the metal woods because you could put graphite in them with little issues and the upkeep on persimmon was a pain in the ass with the wrapping around the hosel coming undone and the possibility of the insert falling out. In fact, John Daly had to use a crappy Cobra driver at the PGA at Crooked Stick because it was made from practically indestructible kevlar because if he hit persimmon, the possiblity of the insert getting destroyed was too high for him.
Basically in the late 80's persimmon ruled because metal was still being reformed. By '94 or so metal ruled and then by '96 we *started* to get into titanium
GIGANTIC shifts in technological advancement in less than a 10 year span. And then they started to get better and better almost every year with the titanium.
Sounds nice, but it cost golfers a ton of money. And since parents were always interested in where *my* money was going, it was difficult to explain why I needed the newest driver because you could lose 30 yards in distance just over the winter. I'd imagine the same thing happened to married men as well, trying to explain to their wives why the driver they got last year was legitimately obsolete 9 months later.
Putters? All were as hard as a rock to putt with. Then the 90's came and it was milling bonanza. Wedges? There were no Vokeys. You basically had guys using either the big ass Ping Eye 2 wedges or Clevelands. And you had guys using Hogans with the ginormous soles and guys having to grind wedges themselves.
It was a fucking headache to no end and in part, why I quit the game for 8 years. The equipment was just royally fucked up and finding a clubmaker with just adequate knowledge of equipment was like winning the lottery.
Don't get me wrong. I still think companies like Hogan, MacGregor, Wilson Staff and Powerbilt put out some really fine equipment. But they were extremely limited back then as far as specifications go and that's probably why you saw so many great players with somewhat unorthodox golf swings.
When I was a freshman in college '95, I had purchased some Founders Club 200 Series irons and a Callaway Warbird driver and 3-wood.
I struggled quite a bit with the irons. Couldn't get any consistency out of the bag. I'd flush a 5-iron all day long, hit every 6-iron off the toe.
I absolutely killed that 3-wood. Got to the point where I was hitting it further than my driver.
Then I finally got them checked out with a clubmaker, which I didn't know much about clubs. The lofts and lie angles of my irons were all over the place. So were the shaft frequencies.
Then I measured my 3-wood shaft flex, which came out like it was supposed to....X-stiff. But my driver shaft which was supposed to measure X-stiff wound up measuring............ladies stiff flex.
Then I started thinking about shots that cost me over the summer, when I paid good money for these clubs. It really ticks you off.
Now we really don't get that. And believe me, back then OEM's didn't make any suggestions to get your set customized to you. Now we have shaft optimizers, Trackman, we know what type of launch we should get on drivers, spin rate measurements, etc.
My problem with OEM's these days is that they are designing clubs to fit hackers instead of forcing hackers to develop their own swing to fit a reasonable set of club specifications. I honestly believe that *if* golfers truly believed that they could work on their swing for a reasonable amount of time and that would allow them to play much better golfer, they would do it. But with instruction often times being poor, they are too afraid that some hard work would go to waste and the OEM's talking about fitting clubs to their hacker swing has brainwashed them into getting super light clubs with longer shafts, super strong lofts and very upright lie angles. All making their swing worse.
The other issue is that less and less OEM's are proving a muscleback irons options. Today we are seeing more mixed sets. I really like Cleveland's products, but they no longer carry a full set of blades. I think Tour Edge tried that for one year...gave up on it.
Lastly, I don't like how they've made standard specs with more upright lie angles. But the good thing is that now forged is so prevalent, one can just bend them to the desired lie angles. But golfers need to realize the dangers of upright lie angles.
3JACK