Success on Tour With Club Equals Added Sales

When Tiger Woods pulled the fuzzy tiger-striped cover off his driver at the Mercedes Championships, the folks at Titleist were holding their breath.

To their lasting relief, the club underneath was the Titleist 975D driver, the latest offering in the lucrative but brutally competitive golf club bazaar. Just how lucrative is impossible to say, because not all club manufacturers publish sales figures.

But Callaway Golf, the undisputed king of metal-headed golf “woods,” went from $5 million in annual sales a decade ago to $800 million last year, based largely on the popularity of its “Big Bertha,” “Great Big Bertha” and “Biggest Big Bertha” drivers.

To Callaway and competitors like Titleist who want to take advantage of the 1990s golf-club boom, a key to success lies in which star golfers use their equipment. This is especially true for drivers, a club that pros change frequently, looking for the one that will get them off the tee longer and straighter than the competition.

“Everyone wants to hit it long,” said Chris McGinley, Titleist’s marketing director. “Drivers are a little more sexy than some of the other clubs in the bag.”

That Titleist executives were uncertain what driver Woods would use at last week’s tournament says something about the rarefied and specialized world of golf’s biggest stick.

“Typically on Tour, guys are not contracted to play drivers, putters and wedges,” McGinley said.

Those clubs matter so much over a round of golf that few players want to lock themselves into a brand; they prefer the flexibility to switch from one type to another in search of that elusive perfect feel.

The mystique of the driver is one reason otherwise sane weekend golfers are willing to part with as much as $500--the list price for the 975D--for a metal-wood made out lightweight titanium, a substance previously associated more with fighter aircraft than with golf clubs.

Even at that level the competition is fierce, and getting fiercer.

Rudy Slucker, chairman and chief executive officer of TearDrop Golf, predicts “a battle of titans” for driver sales in 1998.

Amateurs and pros alike may hang on to a set of irons for years, but switch drivers frequently looking for the right fit. Phil Mickelson was doing just that en route to victory at the Mercedes, going back and forth between the Yonex driver he’s paid to play and a Great Big Bertha. At today’s prices, that kind of pattern among amateurs can turn into big money for club makers.

One reason the market for drivers has become so lucrative is that the clubs themselves have become easier to use.

“The driver is the club that traditionally amateurs feared the most,” said Callaway spokesman Larry Dorman. “People would avoid hitting the driver. High handicappers were not skilled enough to take this block of wood that had no loft and a very stiff shaft and hit it with any kind of good result. Along came Big Bertha.”

While Callaway boasts PGA Tour long-driving leader John Daly among its sponsors, it began its climb to the top on the less widely followed PGA Senior Tour. Gradually it became known as a driver that amateurs could handle, breaking a long-standing barrier that led many mid- and high-handicappers to go with a 3-wood off the tee.

“They’re the most expensive woods in the business,” Ely Callaway said of his company’s products. “There’s evidence that people like them. Nobody made them buy them.”

Titleist executives are realistic about their chances of dethroning Callaway. They’re hoping for a niche market of lower handicap golfers with clubs--there’s the 975D and the slightly smaller 976R--designed to produce a lower trajectory than competing clubs.

They got a boost toward that goal last year when the prototype version of their new club was in the winner’s bag for two major championships: Justin Leonard’s British Open victory and Davis Love III’s dramatic win at the PGA Championship. Neither Leonard nor Love, among the last Tour players to use persimmon-wood drivers, were being paid by Titleist to carry the club.

“It’s huge,” McGinley said. “To have that kind of affirmation before you introduce the product is phenomenal.”

Having Woods on board could bring the new club to another level entirely.