The U.S. Golf Manufacturers Anti-Counterfeiting Working Group announced today that the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida has issued a preliminary injunction shutting down over 175  websites engaged in the sale of counterfeit golf products.  The order marks one of the Golf Group’s most significant achievements in the fight against counterfeit golf merchandise sold via the Internet.

Fresh on the heels of the Golf Group’s report in January of the successful disabling of over 60 counterfeit websites, today’s news further illustrates the Golf Group’s commitment to protecting consumers from unknowingly purchasing fake golf equipment.

The lawsuit involves over 130 separate defendants operating more than 175 websites.  The counterfeit golf merchandise previously featured on the subject websites included clubs, balls and accessories and visitors to these sites will now be redirected to a website displaying information regarding the preliminary injunction and other details of the legal action that is being taken.

“Over the last decade, we’ve seen a significant increase in counterfeiters using the internet as a tool to dupe consumers,” said Christa McNamara, Director of Corporate Communications for TaylorMade-adidas Golf.  “We’ve shut down a significant number of websites with this recent joint action, and it gives us momentum in our efforts moving forward.”

“We understand that as long as there are people buying counterfeit clubs, there will be counterfeiters out there to make them,” said Jud Hawken, Associate General Counsel for PING.  “That’s why education about counterfeit equipment is so important. Hopefully, future visitors to these websites will see that they’ve been shut down and realize that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Both within the U.S. and abroad, the Golf Group has focused heavily on education and enforcement and is dedicated to curbing the manufacturing and sales of counterfeit golf products.  The Golf Group has worked on educating its consumers on how to spot and avoid fake golf products through its own website, www.keepgolfreal.com.

The U.S. Golf Manufacturers Anti-Counterfeiting Group was formed in 2004 to fight counterfeiters and protect its consumers from inadvertently purchasing fake goods.  The Golf Group’s efforts have resulted in dozens of successful raids carried out by Chinese law enforcement and civil enforcement authorities.

About the Golf Manufacturers Anti-Counterfeiting Working Group The Golf Anti-Counterfeiting Group consists of five of the most well-known golf companies in the world—Callaway-Odyssey and Top-Flite; TaylorMade-adidas Golf and Ashworth; PING; Cleveland Golf, Srixon and Never Compromise; and Acushnet Company whose brands are Titleist, FootJoy and Scotty Cameron. Since 2004, the Golf Anti-Counterfeiting Group has worked with international law enforcement and government agencies to conduct raids and investigations of counterfeit operations, as well as raise public awareness of the issue. In 2011 alone, the group seized more than 80,000 counterfeit golf products.

Benoit Vincent is speed-walking through the research and development department at TaylorMade-Adidas Golf headquarters in Carlsbad, Calif. The equipment manufacturer’s chief technology officer has been talking nonstop for two hours about recent breakthroughs in the perpetual race to increase the distance a human can hit a little white ball. Now he’s offering a tour of the facilities where the company molds prototypes and continues to test the hottest golf club on the market, the RocketBallz 3-wood. For a weekend duffer, it’s the equivalent of getting a peek at the secretive creative process that begat the iPhone.

We zoom by rows of product engineers, their cubicles littered with mangled equipment, careen past lawyers awash in patent applications, and finally approach a lab secured by a combination lock. Vincent, a 52-year-old expat who received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the French university INSA, presses a series of buttons and turns the handle. No luck. He thinks for a moment and tries again. Same result. “The code changes all the time, so the chances of me getting it right are … There are millions of dollars worth of products,” he says sheepishly in a lilting accent. “It’ll be easier just to knock.”

After a few seconds the door swings open and so begins our run through a maze of rooms full of bustling engineers. Rapid-prototyping machines the size of small walk-in closets carve mock-ups of club heads out of steel and wax. We see the latest irons, typically used for approach shots (fingers crossed) to the green, plus several “woods.” That category of clubs—nowadays almost universally made of titanium, steel, and other metals—includes the driver, which is used with a tee, and fairway woods and hybrids, both used primarily off grass.

“There are 10,000 parts coming through here every year,” says Vincent. “We’re testing shapes, geometries, weights, and durability. Because they break. A lot.” Behind another door a pneumatic air cannon repeatedly launches 110-mile-per-hour projectiles at a sleek-looking 3-wood with a white head. Thwooop. Bang! Thwooop. Bang! Thwooop. Bang! “And here’s the RocketBallz product!” Vincent declares proudly. Never has a man appeared so excited to see the fruit of his labors receive such a thorough drubbing.

Tests have shown this new 3-wood to be capable of increasing distance of a shot by 30 yards or more over its predecessor. In its first month of release, it’s flying off retail shelves and out of pro shops. It’s already being played by more than 100 Professional Golfers’ Association Tour players, two dozen of whom have qualified for this year’s first major, The Masters. So Vincent’s pride is understandable, especially because there was a time when he wondered if such a club would ever exist.

All golf balls spin when struck. The greater a club’s loft, the higher it sends the ball and the more spin it causes. The more a ball spins, the slower it travels. As a rule of thumb, a 9-iron, which is generally used for short approach shots, generates 9,000 revolutions per minute when hit correctly. An 8-iron has less loft and so generates fewer RPMs while causing the ball to fly further, and so on. A driver typically generates about 2,500 to 3,000 RPM and a 3-wood roughly 4,000 to 4,500 RPM. Combine the increased spin with a 15-mile-per-hour reduction in ball speed due to the shorter club length, and the net result is that a 3-wood hits a ball about 45 yards less than a driver.

In a sport where drivers rule—Let the big dog eat! Grip it and rip it!—nobody talks about the 3-wood. That’s partly because golfers tend not to take it out of the bag as often as a driver. Also, the club hasn’t changed much in decades. Drivers had their revolution a dozen years ago, when manufacturers started making the club’s face separately from the rest of the head. That enabled the club face to be purer, thinner, and more flexible, all of which increased the transference of energy—creating the so-called trampoline effect—and sent the golf ball flying further.

Unfortunately, these advancements didn’t translate to the fairway woods. The driver is the longest club in the bag, has a larger face, and is the only one designed to be used with a tee. The club generates greater head speed, enjoys an optimal launch position high on the face, and causes the least amount of ball spin. And so the other woods have remained largely an afterthought for most golfers; there’s just never been a great reason to upgrade.

Vincent and the executives at TaylorMade knew that if they could bring driver-like advances to the long-neglected fairway wood, they’d open a new growth opportunity for the company and perhaps even add some sizzle to a sport that, depending on your level of optimism, has either stalled or entered full crisis mode. Doing so, however, would prove tricky. Vincent and his team needed to devise a way to duplicate the driver’s perfect formula for distance in a club that had few of the big dog’s advantages. It took more than 10 years.

There was an obvious commercial incentive to build a better fairway wood. Irons are typically sold in sets for roughly $100 per club for the newest technology. Woods are more technologically sophisticated and command higher prices. The RocketBallz 3-wood retails for $229. Vincent’s team repeatedly tried new materials to make the club’s face more flexible in hopes of generating more ball speed. But unlike a driver, fairway woods have shorter faces and higher loft to allow a golfer to elevate a golf ball off of grass. The shorter face makes it more rigid, and the ball is typically struck at the bottom, the least flexible part of the club face. Creating a longer face wasn’t the answer; without the benefit of a tee, the ball would never elevate. “Every year our engineers said, ‘We need to accelerate the fairway woods,’ and every year, it doesn’t work,” Vincent says. “Finally, we said there’s no way, we cannot solve this problem.”

Then, as is often the case with technological breakthroughs, years of frustration ignited into a flash of inspiration while engineers were toiling away on a seemingly unrelated product. Vincent’s team developed a new line of adjustable drivers in 2004 that made it possible to easily transfer weight around the head according to swing type. The team began noticing how various arrangements affected launch angles, trajectories, ball speed, and spin. It took another few years, but the engineers devised a new approach for the 3-wood based on that knowledge. They lowered the center of gravity and moved it forward, which increased the launch angle and decreased the spin. There was still the riddle of how to add flexibility for that desired trampoline effect. For this, the crew tried something truly novel. They carved a channel behind the face, giving it room to recoil upon impact. The rest of the head then pushes the face forward in a spring-like action. “When you lift a heavy object, you don’t just use your arms. You use your arms and legs,” says Vincent. “It’s the same thing. We’re using the face and the body to create the trampoline. It’s the combination that gives you the power.”

Rarely will a prototype outperform an existing club by more than four or five yards. But in the first day of testing, the 3-wood reduced spin by more than 1,000 RPM, increased ball speed 4 to 6 miles per hour and boosted distance by an average of 25 yards. “It was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what have we done?’” says Vincent. For a day, the crew hid the results in fear that it was a fluke. The next day, and in subsequent tests with professional golfers, the results were even better. “The best we’ve seen is 38 yards of gain.”

You don’t rise to the top of an organization without the ability to illustrate your business model as a pyramid on a white board, and Mark King, the 52-year-old president and CEO of TaylorMade, is no exception. The company, a subsidiary of Adidas (ADS), has a reputation for serving the high end of the market, PGA Tour golfers and zero to four handicappers—effectively club pros and top amateurs. A proficient minority. King, standing in a conference room outside his office, lays waste to that notion. “These guys don’t buy anything,” he barks while circling the tip of the pyramid on the white board. “We focus on the 5 to 25 handicap because that’s where the dollars are. We have to grow. And how do we grow? By leading change. That could be the next hot driver, the next new form of distribution, or the next way to market. We have to do it faster than everyone else.”

King speaks with a combination of bravado and resentment toward his industry. Golf is languishing, and he knows it. The number of U.S. golfers has dropped 15 percent since 2003, according to the National Golf Foundation. A million fewer people played at least one round of golf in 2010 than the year prior, and courses are being shuttered at twice the rate that new ones are opening. Part of the problem is the economy: Golf isn’t cheap. But the great fear is that the downturn is systemic rather than cyclical. It’s a baby boomer sport viewed with skepticism by the Facebook generation. And King suggests that the church of golf is riding its ideals into obsolescence. “The industry is conservative, slow, anti-progression—our competitors, the governing bodies, the PGA, the USGA, they want to hang onto the purity of the game,” he says.

In the face of the downturn, TaylorMade has continued to grow via acquisition—last month it bought Adams Golf to increase its presence with seniors and women—and in-house R&D. “Ten years ago, we said let’s take this fast-paced innovation model from technology and bring it to golf,” King says. It wasn’t long ago that manufacturers would unveil new clubs every few years. Some of the big brands, like Ping, still roll out new lines roughly every other year. But TaylorMade has opted for a state of perpetual innovation with the idea that, just as with computers and cell phones, consumers will buy more if they’re convinced there’s better technology available. This strategy has caused some grousing in the industry. “We’ve made everybody change their behavior,” King says. “And that’s why they don’t like the way we operate.”

It’s not difficult to affirm King’s assertion. Explore any golf-oriented website and you’ll find plenty of commenters in awe of the fairway woods, but at least as many who seem vitriolic toward TaylorMade’s tendency to repeatedly hype revolutionary clubs. You can imagine how the competitors feel. “I don’t want to take anything away from their product, but distance-gain claims in golf equipment advertising have reached a level that we feel is disrespectful to golfers,” says Tim Buckman, vice president of global communications for Callaway Golf (ELY). “What I find most amusing are the claims stating double-digit increases year after year. At this rate, by the time we reach 2015 some of their players may be hitting the ball 500 yards.”

King’s style doesn’t exactly soften TaylorMade’s image. He’s as brash as his role models: Vince Lombardi, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. And the company’s marketing is in-your-face. Choosing the name RocketBallz was either risqué or just goofy, depending on your perspective. Either way, it stands out. The 3-wood’s technological breakthrough has since been applied to other fairway woods as well as the hybrids. They’re all painted white, which makes them flashy in a sea of dark-colored woods.

Then there’s the publicity campaign. There’s no way the average golfer will see the 25- to 30-plus yard gains that Vincent’s team saw in early tests. The pros have far greater swing speeds and so realize greater trampoline effects. So, after consulting lawyers, the marketing team decided rather unscientifically that it would be safe to advertise a typical gain of 17 yards. They plastered the number everywhere, including on the shirts of several PGA pros at a recent tournament, much to the chagrin of Tour officials. “We wanted to do something more extreme. The Tour was a little surprised by the boldness, so we called down the dogs a bit. But the point was out there,” says chief marketing officer Bob Maggiore, adding that 17 will continue to drive the marketing agenda. “It’s interesting for us to have an entire franchise drafting off a fairway wood. Everything we’ve always done has always drafted off of driver success.”

According to Golf Datatech, RocketBallz is leading all categories of woods after just one month on the market. More than 20 percent of the 261,600 woods sold in pro shops and golf specialty stores during the month of February were RocketBallz, with the 3-wood leading the way. At Golfsmith (GOLF), the nation’s largest golf specialty retailer, sales of RocketBallz fairway woods are up 275 percent over TaylorMade’s previous line during the same time last year. And Sven Kessler, vice president of retail operations for the Edwin Watts Golf chain, is seeing new life in a long-dormant category. “Our fairway wood numbers are up considerably this year, while driver sales are pretty flat,” he says. “TaylorMade has done a phenomenal job on the marketing end, and having a product that works is very important. It’s incredible the numbers we’re seeing on our launch monitors. That 17-yard claim they’re making? That’s not BS.”

All of which makes Vincent glow. Reflecting on his journey, he says there’s a lot to be learned from the way these fairway woods came to be. He feels RocketBallz represents the type of game-changing invention that used to come along only once a decade or two. Now the pace of product development has fundamentally changed. “We made the shift from an industry of know-how in the ’90s, where toolmakers were hand-shaping products,” Vincent says. “Now a new generation of engineers have displaced the artist’s approach with the scientific approach.” In other words, the next RocketBallz, whatever it may be, won’t be far behind.

Bloomberg

Golf in the U.S. is growing for the first time in five years as an economic recovery strengthens enough to be measured in the clubs, cleats and plaid shorts that fuel the sport’s $25 billion consumer market.

The number of rounds played on American golf courses has climbed for four straight months through February. Club maker Callaway Golf Co. (ELY), mower-maker Toro Co. (TTC) and Nike Inc. (NKE), which makes golf gear and clothes, are registering revenue growth and stock gains outpacing the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

The rebound is reflected on the links. Americans are feeling secure enough in their jobs to increase leisure spending, returning to a sport basking in the media spotlight with this week’sMasters Tournament and Tiger Woods’s first PGA victory in more than two years.

“It will probably be the strongest year since the recession,” Cindy Davis, president of the golf unit of Beaverton, Oregon-based Nike, said in an interview. “I’d say it’s definitely one of the indicators that maybe consumer confidence is coming back.”

In the past few years, rounds played on U.S. courses dwindled as unemployment surged to 10 percent in 2009, and golf courses closed after a building boom mirroring the housing bubble that started to burst in 2006.

The number of golfers dropped to 26.1 million in 2011 from about 30 million in the middle of last decade, said Greg Nathan, a senior vice president for the National Golf Foundation.

“We were bouncing along the bottom and expect we’ll see a modest recovery in 2012,” said Nathan. “The signs since the beginning of the year have been positive.”

Mild Winter

He said golf’s consumer market draws about $4 billion from equipment, $1 billion from apparel sales and $20 billion from green fees.

The number of golf rounds jumped 10 percent in February, the most recent month for which data is available. That capped four months of year-to-year gains from the economy that were helped by a mild winter in the northern U.S., Nathan said.

Even in California, where the average temperature was about the same as last year, rounds rose 16 percent in February.

Callaway Golf, the Carlsbad, California-based maker of Razr Fit drivers, has jumped 25 percent this year compared with a 12 percent gain for the S&P 500 Index. (SPX) Toro, which has about a quarter of its sales tied to the golf industry, has risen 18 percent. Nike has climbed 14 percent.

Golf’s renaissance shows the effects of improving U.S. economic data. The country’sunemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent in January and February, while payrolls increased more than 220,000 per month in December, January and February.

Older Equipment

Gross domestic product rose 3 percent in the fourth quarter, the highest rate since the second quarter of 2010. The consumer confidence index topped 70 for two straight months in February and January for the first time in four years, the Conference Board said March 27.

With the economy and golf industry showing signs of rebound, course managers are willing to spend on equipment, driving up sales for Toro and agricultural machinery-maker Deere & Co. (DE), based in Moline, Illinois.

“There’s older equipment out there that has quite a bit of hours and courses are realizing that they need to go ahead and re-fleet and purchase new equipment,” said Denny Docherty, Deere’s director of global strategic marketing at the Agricultural and Turf unit.

Toro, based in Bloomington, Minnesota, raised its forecast for 2012 revenue growth in February to as much as 7 percent from 5 percent in December, partly because of increased sales to the golf industry, said Kurt Svendsen, chief of investor relations. The company announced in December it bought the Graden golf greens-roller line for an undisclosed amount.

‘Tiger is Back’

Sales of clubs, balls, shoes and other equipment measured from 600 pro shops and 250 off-course golf specialty stores rose 1.3 percent last year to $2.41 billion, reversing a slide since 2007, said Tom Stine, co-founder of Golf Datatech LLC, which provides statistics on golf-related sales.

Sales probably will accelerate this year, he said, though they remain below the 2007 peak of $2.91 billion.

“There’s been a lot more attention being paid to the PGA tour this year,” Stine said. “Tiger is back playing a lot.”

Textron Inc.’s (TXT) Jacobsen unit, which sells golf mowers, sprayers and machines that rake sand bunkers, has seen purchases increase as returning players bolster golf courses’ budgets.

“We’re pretty much riding the wave of the economy right now,” said Glenn King, marketing manager for Jacobsen. “We’re seeing a lot of pent-up demand.”

‘Not Getting Worse’

ClubCorp, the largest owner and operator of private golf clubs, sold the most memberships last year since 2005, said Eric Affeldt, chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company.

“People are feeling more comfortable spending money again because things aren’t getting any worse,” he said.

ClubCorp which operates in 26 states, bought four golf courses last year and is looking for more, Affeldt said.

“We are rebounding and like what we’re seeing in terms of the recovery,” he said.

Nike Golf’s Davis, who took over as the unit’s president at the beginning of 2009 when the industry was in free fall, finally will reap the benefit of new club and ball designs that the company invested in during the lean years.

“It’s going to be a good year for Nike Golf,” Davis said. “It will be a year where the industry will see more positives than it has in the past three years.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Black in Dallas at tblack@bloomberg.net

Every time you go shopping, you share intimate details about your consumption patterns with retailers. And many of those retailers are studying those details to figure out what you like, what you need, and which coupons are most likely to make you happy. Target, for example, has figured out how to data-mine its way into your womb, to figure out whether you have a baby on the way long before you need to start buying diapers. From the New York Times:

Charles Duhigg outlines in the New York Times how Target tries to hook parents-to-be at that crucial moment before they turn into rampant — and loyal — buyers of all things pastel, plastic, and miniature. He talked to Target statistician Andrew Pole — before Target freaked out and cut off all communications — about the clues to a customer’s impending bundle of joy. Target assigns every customer a Guest ID number, tied to their credit card, name, or email address that becomes a bucket that stores a history of everything they’ve bought and any demographic information Target has collected from them or bought from other sources. Using that, Pole looked at historical buying data for all the ladies who had signed up for Target baby registries in the past.

[Pole] ran test after test, analyzing the data, and before long some useful patterns emerged. Lotions, for example. Lots of people buy lotion, but one of Pole’s colleagues noticed that women on the baby registry were buying larger quantities of unscented lotion around the beginning of their second trimester. Another analyst noted that sometime in the first 20 weeks, pregnant women loaded up on supplements like calcium, magnesium and zinc. Many shoppers purchase soap and cotton balls, but when someone suddenly starts buying lots of scent-free soap and extra-big bags of cotton balls, in addition to hand sanitizers and washcloths, it signals they could be getting close to their delivery date.

Or have a rather nasty infection…

As Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy.

One Target employee I spoke to provided a hypothetical example. Take a fictional Target shopper named Jenny Ward, who is 23, lives in Atlanta and in March bought cocoa-butter lotion, a purse large enough to double as a diaper bag, zinc and magnesium supplements and a bright blue rug. There’s, say, an 87 percent chance that she’s pregnant and that her delivery date is sometime in late August.

And perhaps that it’s a boy based on the color of that rug?

So Target started sending coupons for baby items to customers according to their pregnancy scores. Duhigg shares an anecdote — so good that it sounds made up — that conveys how eerily accurate the targeting is. An angry man went into a Target outside of Minneapolis, demanding to talk to a manager:

“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the man’s daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing, nursery furniture and pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again.

(Nice customer service, Target.)

On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”

What Target discovered fairly quickly is that it creeped people out that the company knew about their pregnancies in advance.

“If we send someone a catalog and say, ‘Congratulations on your first child!’ and they’ve never told us they’re pregnant, that’s going to make some people uncomfortable,” Pole told me. “We are very conservative about compliance with all privacy laws. But even if you’re following the law, you can do things where people get queasy.”

Bold is mine. That’s a quote for our times.

So Target got sneakier about sending the coupons. The company can create personalized booklets; instead of sending people with high pregnancy scores books o’ coupons solely for diapers, rattles, strollers, and the “Go the F*** to Bed” book, they more subtly spread them about:

“Then we started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We’d put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We’d put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance.

“And we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don’t spook her, it works.”

So the Target philosophy towards expecting parents is similar to the first date philosophy? Even if you’ve fully stalked the person on Facebook and Google beforehand, pretend like you know less than you do so as not to creep the person out.

Duhigg suggests that Target’s gangbusters revenue growth — $44 billion in 2002, when Pole was hired, to $67 billion in 2010 — is attributable to Pole’s helping the retail giant corner the baby-on-board market, citing company president Gregg Steinhafel boasting to investors about the company’s “heightened focus on items and categories that appeal to specific guest segments such as mom and baby.”

Target was none too happy about Duhigg’s plans to write this story (and forthcoming book, The Power of Habit). They refused to let him go to Target headquarters. When he flew out anyway, he discovered he was on a list of prohibited visitors.

I think most readers of the excellent piece will find it both unsettling and unsurprising. With all the talk these days about the data grab most companies are engaged in, Target’s collection and analysis seem as expected as its customers’ babies. But with their analysis moving into areas as sensitive as pregnancy, and so accurately, who knows how else they might start profiling Target shoppers? The store’s bulls-eye logo may now send a little shiver of fear down the closely-watched spines of some, though I can promise you that Target is not the only store doing this. Those people chilled by stores’ tracking and profiling them may want to consider going the way of the common criminal — and paying for far more of their purchases in cash.

February 4, 2012

ORLANDO, Fla. — Had Heath Martin not been lodging the butt-end of a Titleist Scotty Cameron putter against his paunchy midsection, he might have sounded as if he were reciting his jacket size.

“I’m a 39 short,” he said. “When you’re low to the ground and got a gut like mine, it’s not going to be very long.”

Martin, a club professional at Deerwood Club in Kingswood, Tex., was among the thousands of P.G.A. pros and golf shop merchandisers at the P.G.A. Merchandise Show here last week, who sought out what many consider will be the hottest product in golf equipment this year — the belly putter.

Following the lead of a growing number of touring pros, many recreational golfers are clamoring for a putter with an extended handle that sticks into the stomach, sternum or, as some prefer, the chin. Golfers are making the switch because it promotes a more consistent setup and removes the wrists from the stroke while still allowing for a pendulum motion.

The potential for gangbuster sales has those in the golf business jumping for joy. Sales of putters have decreased for the last nine years, according to the research firm Golf Datatech. In 2003 putter sales in on- and off-course shops were about $200 million. In 2011, that figure had dropped to $141.3 million, down 4.1 percent from the previous year. But those in the golf-equipment industry say belly putter sales could invigorate the category.

“The belly putter is the great white hope,” said Steve Boccieri, the maker of the Heavy Putter.

He noted that early last summer, he struggled to sell his belly putter models to major retailers, who deemed the club “inventory poison” for its tendency to sit on shelves for months.

Then the belly putter boom began in earnest in August when Keegan Bradley won the P.G.A. Championship, becoming the first golfer to win a men’s major while using a belly putter. Odyssey Golf, the maker of Bradley’s 43-inch White Hot XG Sabertooth belly model, reported belly putter sales skyrocketed more than 400 percent last year. A combined nine tour victories with belly or long putters legitimized the clubs in the eyes of many. The veterans Ernie Els, Jim Furyk and Phil Mickelson also experimented with belly models in tournament play.

Suddenly, Boccieri found himself writing orders in October for 800 putters from the golf retailer Golfsmith and 1,000 from Golf Town, Canada’s largest golf-specialty store.

“That’s more bellies than I had sold in a year,” he said.

The consumer frenzy caught equipment makers and retailers flat-footed. Larry Hirsch of Villanova, Pa., an avid golfer fiddling with a Scotty Cameron belly model at the Titleist booth, said he shopped at several stores before he located a belly putter, then bought the only model on the shelf.

To match the growing demand, the leading shaftmaker True Temper has increased its production of belly and long putter shafts to 120,000 last year from 60,000 in 2010. The company says it expects to produce more than 500,000 shafts this year.

Chris Koske, the global director of Odyssey Golf, said the company sold 8,000 belly putters in 2010 and more than 34,000 units last year. He has high hopes for this season.

“I’d like to get to 100,000,” he said. “I think it is completely doable.”

When Paul Azinger notched the first win with a belly putter in 2000, demand for the club surged temporarily. The putter-maker Scotty Cameron recalled inserting a chopstick in the grip hole of Azinger’s putter as a practice device. Soon after, while browsing at a pro shop, Azinger toyed with lodging a long putter cut down for a shorter man in his belly button. After holing a string of putts, he bought the club, changed the grip, got it approved by the United States Golf Association, and rolled to a seven-stroke victory at the Sony Open. Sales spiked again in 2003 when Vijay Singh, dogged by a balky putter, conquered his woes and won several events wielding a belly putter.

Recreational golfers often avoided the belly or long putter because they were considered an old-man’s crutch, an act of desperation for a golfer with a bad back, or a case of the yips. But when younger players like Adam Scott, Webb Simpson and Bill Haas won on tour with a long or belly putter, the stigma disappeared.

Dave Pelz , a renowned short-game coach, said he had used long and belly putters for instruction purposes for more than 20 years and coordinated trials involving students from his six teaching schools to try and determine which putter generated the most accurate stroke. Pelz found that 60 percent of his students putted better with a belly model.

“I’m not endorsing it,” he said. “I’m saying test it.”

A lingering question is whether the long and belly putter should be allowed. The U.S.G.A. considered a proposal limiting the length of a putter in 1989, but decided longer putters were not detrimental to the game.

But to many golf purists, using a belly or long putter is akin to cheating.

“My best friend said he wouldn’t play with me anymore if I used one,” Hirsch said.

While equipment makers and golf retailers attempt to capitalize on consumer interest, a bigger question than legality is whether the belly putter craze will last this time.

Tim Reed of Adams Golf introduced several belly putters under the company’s Yes! Putter brand at the P.G.A. show. How convinced is he that the belly putter is here to stay?

“Well, I named one of the belly models after my wife,” he said.

By Jack Crittenden

The market forgolf apparel appears to finally be on the rebound, according to a new study by Golf Datatech. The independent research firm reports that the on-course dollar volume in 2011 increased by 8 percent compared to the prioryear.

“Through the first 11 months of 2011, every product category shows significant improvement over 2010 dollar sales volume,” said Tom Stine, Co-Founder, Golf Datatech.  “These totals don’t take into consideration December numbers, which reflect the bulk of holiday sales and are likely to further increase these figures considerably.”

Men’s tops, which includes sweaters, vests and fleeces, showed the biggest year-to-year increase as a category — up 21.9 percent. The average retail price was $75.13, a 4.2 percent increase. Men’s bottoms increased by 20.6 percent, with the average sale price forpants and shorts at $49.04, a 2 percent increase. Not all prices were up, however, as men’s shirts dropped by 1.3 percent to an average of $50.42. That was still far higher than off-course prices, which averaged $34.70.

Women’s shirts sold for$45.49, a 2.8 percent increase, and bottoms for$53.61, a 4 percent increase.

Forouterwear, the average retail price was $72.79 at on-course locations, which reflects a 0.6 percent increase from 2010, while the average retail price at off-course locations was $62.94, which reflects a decrease of 2.8 percent from 2010.  Overall, outerwear sales have increased 9.4%.

Golf Datatech makes the Golf Apparel Market Reports available on a monthly basis to apparel companies, retailers and golf shop operators and managers, providing a detailed snapshot of apparel sales for every category. The reports list the market shares, retail pricing and inventory levels of virtually every apparel manufacturer, as well as define the market leaders.

ORLANDO, Fla., February 16, 2012 … Golf Datatech, LLC (www.golfdatatech.com), the golf industry’s leading independent research firm for consumer, trade and retail golf trends, today released golf’s first comprehensive study of serious golfers’ evolving media habits, including their attitudes towards monthly and weekly print publications, network and cable golf television, Internet usage, digital golf weeklies, social networking, and newspapers.

The Serious Golfers and Modern Media Study explores the impact of emerging, new digital devices & properties, and how they are changing golf media consumption.  The study’s results and recommendations are based on responses from 2,000 randomly selected golfers drawn from Golf Datatech’s exclusive Serious Golfer Database, with significant data mining into critical sub-segments such as age, gender, handicap, etc.

“This study is a deep dive into the modern media habits of serious golfers to see what they are using and how they use it.  It establishes a benchmark for the evolving trends of all age groups of golfers and their propensity for how they receive their golf information,” said Tom Stine, co-founder of Golf Datatech.  “While social media consumption continues to gain popularity in sports, golfers aren’t actually engaging in social media as much as other sports, though the major golf media outlets rely on social media a great deal and frequently quote them in their own reports.”

Key findings in the Serious Golfers and Modern Media Study include the following:

• The two major monthly magazines Golf Digest and Golf Magazine have the strongest readership among printed publications; however, they are read less frequently than they were one year ago.
• Although it remains in its infancy, digital delivery of golf information is the fastest growing method of distribution.
• Facebook is the most widely used social networking tool by serious golfers, with 30% saying they visit daily and 49% reporting they visit at least weekly.  Findings reveal social media consumption is skewed towards younger golfers.
• 82% of respondents watch the Golf Channel at least once a week, and golfchannel.com leads PGAtour.com, golfdigest.com and golf.com as the most popular golf website.

For more information on the Serious Golfers and Modern Media Study or to order the study, call 888-944-4116 or click here.

About Golf Datatech, LLC

Golf Datatech, LLC was established in 1995, and since that time it has become the industry’s golf standard for accurate and timely information on the retail sales, inventory, pricing, and distribution of golf products through the on and off course channels.  In 1998, the Company extended its reach into consumer research and strategic sales and marketing consulting.  In 2006, the Company expanded its retail and consumer research programs into the United Kingdom and in 2008 added markets in Europe.

Golf sales trends

The golf industry received welcome news in 2011 that, through the first three quarters, sales for apparel and equipment were up a combined 3.7 percent, according to Golf Datatech, which tracks results at retail. While sales are still well below pre-recession levels, the year’s growth has retailers encouraged that the bounce back will continue in 2012. One of the largest growth areas was drivers, which also happen to be some of the highest-priced golf items. Spurred by new product launches by TaylorMade and Titleist, overall driver sales were up 17.1 percent in dollars and 4.2 percent in units.

Men’s On-Off Course Golf Apparel
Compared to 2010, the sale of men’s shirts, including short and long sleeve, increased 5.7%.

In regard to men’s tops, which include sweaters, vests and fleeces, sales have revealed a significant increase of 18.9%.

Compared to 2010, the sale of men’s bottoms, including pants and shorts, showed a significant increase of 21.5%.

Women’s On-Off Course Golf Apparel
For women’s shirts, including short and long sleeve, there was a 11.0% increase in sales.

In regard to women’s tops, which include sweaters, vests and fleeces, sales increased to 10.4%.

Compared to 2010, the sale of women’s bottoms, including pants and shorts, resulted in an increase of 8.7%.

Companies included in the monthly reports are:
Adidas
Ahead/Kate Lord
Antigua
Ashworth
Ben Hogan
Bette & Court
Bobby Jones
Bugatchi
Byron Nelson
Callaway
Carnoustie
Cutter & Buck
EP Pro
Fairway & Greene
Footjoy
Forrester
Gear For Sports
Greg Norman
Harry Vardon
Isisport
Izod
Jamie Sadock
Lija
Lilly Pulitzer
Liz Claiborne
Mizuno
Monterey Club
Nicklaus Sportswear
Nike
Oxford
Page & Tuttle
Peter Millar
Ping
Polo/Ralph Lauren
Sport Haley
Straight Down
Sunice
Sun Mountain
Sunderland
Tail
Tehama
Tommy Bahama
Tommy Hilfiger
Travis Mathew
Under Armour
Zero Restriction

Golf shops that are interested in getting the FREE monthly reports should contact Suzie Phillips at sphillips@golfdatatech.com or 407-944-4116. Apparel manufacturers who would like to see a sample report should contact Tom Stine at info@golfdatatech.com or 407-944-4116.

About Golf Datatech, LLC
Golf Datatech, LLC was established in 1995, and since that time it has become the industry’s golf standard for accurate and timely information on the retail sales, inventory, pricing, and distribution of golf products through the on and off course channels. In 1998, the Company extended its reach into consumer research and strategic sales and marketing consulting. In 2006, the Company expanded its retail and consumer research programs into the United Kingdom and in 2008 added markets in Europe.