Are clone golf clubs as good as name brand clubs?
Let’s take a look at where the brand clubs come from and how they are designed and manufactured. Surprisingly, most of the top name brand golf club manufacturers of today were not in the golf business 30 years ago. Ping, TaylorMade, Callaway and Nike have only become major brands in the last 20 years. Some like Titleist, Ben Hogan, and MacGregor have been around a long time but they’ve certainly lost a lot of their marketshare to the new boys on the block. The early manufacturers (pre 1980) designed golf clubs in a very traditional way using standard manufacturing techniques and designs that had been around for years. Their clubs were really built for professionals and better players. There was no concept of building game improvement clubs for the average player. You either learned to hit the clubs the pros played or you didn’t. It wasn’t until Ping developed the concept of perimeter weighted, cavity back golf irons that golf club design began to change. After Ping’s success, all manuf
