Brands and clones - a comparison
(Excerpts from an interview with Pinemeadow Golf)
Previous: Explain the difference between legal and illegal clones...
Me: So talk me through the difference between a big-brand club and a clone club...
Guy Mount III: Let's take it in its simplest form. Take a club that looks like a Ping, and it's an iron and it's got a steel shaft on it. You've got three parts to that club - you've got a grip, you've got a shaft and you've got a head.
Now, if you take a person who buys a club from us and wants to put a Lamkin grip on it, well, Ping buys grips from Lamkin as well. We buy it literally from the same people. So there's not a lot of difference in the grip.
OK, Ping purchases a shaft from True Temper and they may call it a ZZ Lite made for them by True Temper. Well, we buy a shaft from True Temper, and it's called the TT Lite. If you look at the performance characteristics or the technical specifications of that shaft, their shaft and our shaft are going to be very close.
Again, Ping didn't make their steel shaft. True Temper did. We didn't make our steel shaft. True Temper did. And the shafts are going to be very similar because quite frankly, a shaft is a shaft is a shaft, when it's steel - there's very little difference.
"But look at the weight tolerances!", people say. "Our's is lightweight!" Well, it might be 3.5 g versus 3.39 g - very little difference. So there's very little difference in the shaft and very little difference in the grip. They're both made by brand name makers that Ping buys from and we buy from.
Then we come to the head and that's really where there's a difference. And the difference is in the look and the design of that head.
Ping will make their head and they will cast it out of stainless steel. We will cast our head utilizing the same casting techniques - the lost wax casting methods that have been used for many, many years by all makers. And we'll cast it out of stainless steel.
They'll do things a little bit different to the design of their head. They'll have a different way that they set their medallion in the back, or insert. And that's where we have a difference.
We will look at it and say, "we need to change this so it's not counterfeit and not illegal," but we want it made out of the same alloy, we want it made out of stainless steel.
We design it so it looks similar. It may not have a notch here or an angle there, or the toe may not be as big. But it will be very similar in its look, feel and style.
So when you put it all together, when you put our grip on, our shaft and our design in the head, is it different? Yes, it's different to the Ping. If I grab a Ping 7 iron and I grab a new Oxygen 7 iron (that's our ping clone) and I put them side-by-side, I'll be able to tell that there's a difference. A subtle one.
But if you look at the components, they're very similar. The clone gives you a similar feel when you go out and hit the ball. Some who like Ping will play our 7 iron and they'll still like Ping. Some people who like Ping will grab our 7 iron and go, "wow, I like yours better." So it's really up to the individual because from a practical standpoint, there's going to be no difference in the way those clubs play.
And that concept will translate to a driver, it will translate to a putter, and it will translate to a wedge. As long as you're talking about stainless steel in the woods, irons or wedges, or titanium in the woods. The methods are all the same. We make them the same way, they're cast the same way.
Bryan O'Doherty: The same suppliers are making the graphite shafts, the same suppliers are making the grips, and in many cases, the same foundries are casting the heads.
You know, "clone" is a term that can have a positive or a negative connotation to it. When I think of clones, I think of the positive - emulating functionality, design and features, using the same best practices quality, materials and workmanship. Not trying to substitute a cheap imitation and fool the customer into thinking he is buying something that he is not.
There are a great number of cheap imitators out there who deserve having the negative meaning of clone attached to them. They think clone means "let's see if we can make it as cheap as possible with inferior materials because most customers will never know the difference". They bring us all down and those club makers are often some of the largest clubmakers in the world - seen in many of your major retail outlets. That's not PinemeadowGolf.com.
