Following in footsteps of professionals

Why buy it? Well, chances are, somewhere along the way, the advertising hype got to you. In this ever so commercialised world of ours, marketing is a vital factor in determining what product is hot and what is not. How else can you explain the fact that two months' supply of the new Titleist Pro V1 ball disappeared from the shelves of McGuirk's in Blanchardstown in the space of a couple of days?

Or, maybe, you were influenced by the performance of a friend, as was the case of someone who ventured into Nevada Bob's in Kimmage seeking out the Callaway ERC II driver. His golfing buddy, using the club for the first time, went out and won the club competition at Grange Golf Club - and that was good enough for his pal to fork out £649 for the same club.

So, whatever you buy, there's a reason for it. Could be the advertisement on the television, might be your buddy blasting his ball 20 yards past your drive, or perhaps it's the professional sinking a 20footer. We're all influenced by outside factors, and we're all trying to use improved equipment to improve our games.

Studies have shown that ordinary club golfers are curious about which clubs the tour professionals play, which is why the top manufacturers are willing to pay so much money for tour players to use their clubs. Each week, on the US Tour and the European Tour, surveys are conducted to find out the brand and model of every club each professional has in his bag and the ball he is playing.

However, the major manufacturers acknowledge it isn't sufficient to simply have the professionals use their product - the message has to be hammered home in a series of high-powered and expensive promotions, often using statistical evidence from the weekly surveys.

Indeed, the results of a poll conducted on golfonline.com recently makes interesting reading. Only four per cent of golfers admitted they bought clubs because they saw a professional using that particular brand on television, but so-called "brand image", at 21 per cent, the leading reason used by onliners to say why they bought a club, is driven by professional player usage.

"There are more variables to brand image than meet the eye," says Randy Romberg, director of communications with Cleveland Golf. "When someone sees a tour pro win an event wearing a company's hat, that does something for the brand. The ego of most men won't allow us to admit that we play a ball because we saw Tiger Woods win with it. But it does influence us." In fact, sales of Nike balls rose five- to eight-fold in the weeks immediately following Woods' win in last year's US Open at Pebble Beach.

Much of the focus of the early part of this season focused not only on Woods' alleged slump, which of course was nothing of the sort, but also on the ball that professionals were playing. More often than not, the focus was on the Titleist Pro V1 with players claiming they were getting up to 20 yards extra off the tee.

But Jim Furyk, for one, doesn't go along with it. "I think it is a combination of new balls on tour and new drivers and awareness of guys being a little more physically fit on tour and a little stronger. Twenty yards, that's the number thrown around quite a bit, and it interests me. I might have gained 10 yards from last year, and that's a lot. Twenty yards is a giant leap." For the record, Furyk plays Spalding's new solid construction Strata Tour Ultimate ball.

The 20-yards concept is an interesting one, in that the claims aren't quite matched by the actual statistics. Jeff Sluman, playing a Titleist Pro V1, is averaging 14 yards more per drive (279 yards) than he did last season, and Joe Durant, the surprise packet of the early season on the US Tour, has gone from averaging 272 yards last season to 283 yards this year.

And Woods? The world number one, using a solid construction Nike Tour Accuracy TW, is averaging 16.4 yards extra since he switched to that ball from the Titleist Professional, the forerunner of the Pro V1.

"I think statistics are extremely misleading on the (US) PGA Tour," says Furyk, who points out that many of the early tournaments were played on fast golf courses in Hawaii and the west coast of the US. "I'd like to see 30 events this year compared to 30 events last year," he added.

Furyk's scepticism apart, the early season has witnessed an extraordinary hype in terms of new products. Here, we look at the hottest of the bunch: the Callaway ERC II driver, the Taylor Made 300 series, the Adams Tight Lies GT Irons, and the Titleist Pro V1.