Driving success -- one tagline at a time
When I first began this blog, I signed up for a lot of different club company's emails. My reasoning was simple -- I wanted to know when they were putting out something new that might be interesting.
Even before 2 Iron Lefty came around, I was a bit of a golf news junkie. It's not that I wanted to get my hands on all the latest new toys, but I was curious to know why Callaway or Titleist or PING was doing what they were doing. Every company markets themselves a little differently, but they all want to claim something like "Playing our clubs will make you the next Masters champion!".
So when I peeked in my In Box this morning and saw something from Golf Digest Stix called 'Every driver that has won on tour this season', I knew I'd be giving five minutes of my day to read that. Turns out, it's turned into a little more than five minutes.
Golf Digest took a look at the 27 PGA tournaments that have been played this season and noted what the winner's driver was for each. It was fun to read since I'm a bit of a tech head when it comes to golf, but the results were a bit surprising to me.
For all the money that Taylormade appears to pour into its marketing, they only have six wins to show for it this season. And for a company that claims its clubs are 'Made To Win', I guess you have to take that with a grain of salt. Another factor I found interesting was that four of those six wins came from players ranked inside the official World Golf Rankings top 15 (1,2,4 and 14). You can take that one of two ways: you have to be a great player to truly get the most out of a Taylormade driver (John Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and Tiger Woods all qualify on that count), or great players gravitate to Taylormade. I'll let you decide that for yourself.
At the top of the list was PING with a robust nine wins, followed by Titleist (8), Taylormade (6), Callaway (3) and Cobra (1). Having made the switch over to PING myself (putting a G400 LST 8.5° driver in my bag this season), I was happy to see they were at the top of this list. And as the company tagline infers, I would say I have started to 'Play My Best' off the tee when I pull my driver. I'm not inclined to believe that someone's marketing efforts have helped me improve that aspect of my game, but it is a little amusing to see it has worked out that way so far.
The best part about golf is that I don't think it matters what clubs you prefer to play with -- if they feel good in your hand and promote confidence in whatever skill you have, that's all you need. If you're hitting it well during any given round, you're going to post a decent score -- it doesn't matter what the folks at Titleist (Serious Clubs for Serious Golfers) or Callaway (Demonstrably Superior, Pleasingly Different) are telling you.
As for Cobra (Look Better. Feel Better. Play Better.) ... would it be safe to say that Bryson DeChambeau has taken that to heart?