Pet Peeves With OEMs

[JD3]

I'll start with, why is TaylorMade obsessed with making their wedges and short irons tiny on anything but game improvement irons? I generally fall in the "player" category and I prefer my irons to have similar looking lengths throughout the set. This is why I tend to steer clear of TM irons. 

Edited April 30 by JD3

[the bishop]

I think you kind of answered your own question.  I think there are more people that fall into the player category who prefer a smaller look at that end of the bag.  And you might fall into a minority group that don't.  Not that it's a bad thing, it's just something that is.

[hammergolf]

My biggest pet peve is the bottom scoreline on irons or wedges being a half groove.

[Chunkitgood]

2 hours ago, JD3 said:

I'll start with, why is TaylorMade obsessed with making their wedges and short irons tiny on anything but game improvement irons? I generally fall in the "player" category and I prefer my irons to have similar looking lengths throughout the set. This is why I tend to steer clear of TM irons. 

 

Maybe…maybe…maybe…oh, never mind.

[JD3]

1 hour ago, the bishop said:

I think you kind of answered your own question.  I think there are more people that fall into the player category who prefer a smaller look at that end of the bag.  And you might fall into a minority group that don't.  Not that it's a bad thing, it's just something that is.

To my eye theyre the only one that does it to that extreme. Part of the reason I don't like a tiny blade length is that it usually requires them making the sole too deep to get to the appropriate head weight 

[jda]

I really do not have any pet peeves anymore with iron makers.  Most of issues with them are people who don't understand who the OEMs made the clubs for... and that not all OEMs want so make clubs for anybody/everybody.  This is why other larger brands, smaller brands and more precise Japanese makers exist.

 

I have gripes with OEMs on drivers and do not understand why they cannot standardize USB 3 shaft tip.  I have a very expensive, custom shaft with a Titleist tip that I spent more than a year getting right and is worth more than any head, so that means that I am not switching to anything else until this shaft breaks.  I am not going to know if a PIng XYZ or Cally ABC is awesome, or not.

 

I have many gripes with OEM putters.

[Milfordlefty]

Mallet putters. They almost always are symmetrical face and length, so just drill a hole on the other side of center shafted heads to give left-handers an option. Stepping down off my soap box.

[mat562]

OTT branding and features.

 

All I need on my irons is 'M,' 'Tour Proven' and the model number on the hosel and a sole stamp,, or 'Titleist' and 'Forged' and the same.

 

I wish all the OEMs would go back to a clean, understated look.

[MN Moose]

34 minutes ago, jda said:

I have gripes with OEMs on drivers and do not understand why they cannot standardize USB 3 shaft tip.  I have a very expensive, custom shaft with a Titleist tip that I spent more than a year getting right and is worth more than any head, so that means that I am not switching to anything else until this shaft breaks.  I am not going to know if a PIng XYZ or Cally ABC is awesome, or not.

This is one of the reasons each OEM has different shaft tips, to keep you from trying heads from other OEMs.  That would be a lot of fun if they were all the same tip.  Out playing a round with friends and trading heads throughout the round and not worrying that one guy plays stiff, one reg, one xstiff, etc...

[HateTheHighDraw]

12 minutes ago, MN Moose said:

This is one of the reasons each OEM has different shaft tips, to keep you from trying heads from other OEMs.  That would be a lot of fun if they were all the same tip.  Out playing a round with friends and trading heads throughout the round and not worrying that one guy plays stiff, one reg, one xstiff, etc...

But that's the same reason why Apple was required to move to USB-C instead of lightning.  The difference is golf is not ubiquitous like mobile devices.  But amongst us golfer-consumers, the adapter tip thing is unfair.

[jda]

15 minutes ago, MN Moose said:

This is one of the reasons each OEM has different shaft tips, to keep you from trying heads from other OEMs.  That would be a lot of fun if they were all the same tip.  Out playing a round with friends and trading heads throughout the round and not worrying that one guy plays stiff, one reg, one xstiff, etc...

 

When I asked a few reps at the golf show, they go into their sales job of proprietary technology that is superior, weight distribution, how the other companies do it wrong and all of that.  My BS meter says 85% they are confident that their tip is the best and 15% wanting to retain customers.

 

They will flat out tell you that they are not worried about losing customers, even though they all do actually lose customers.

 

Make the tip universal and let the brands fight it out for the best head.  I think that they are all afraid that people will find out about some of the Japanese brands that the four major OEMs use their tech a few years later.  🙂

[RogerinNewZealand]

Option 47....

Buy older JDM glued heads..looking at an older Mizuno....

[GHIN n Juice]

My pet peeve, how is Callaway the only company with a driver tip that you can adjust but doesn’t rotate the whole shaft?  

[Binson]

As huge a Ping fan, there is a lot that I love about what they do.  But, I have a few gripes.

 

1) I have a similar but different complaint about Ping and the i2xx series - especially now that Blueprint S is out.  They made the mid-long irons smaller in the i230.  But, that's where the help was so good on the i210 IMO.  The i210 was an iron basically anyone could play.  You could play it as an 18 hcp or a tour pro. To take that design and cater it more towards the Tour pro is frustrating - especially when they're already adding a whole new product for the Tour pro/low handicap. 

 

2) There is no way to get one of their driver heads down to 6 degrees.  As someone who hits up on driver, my choice is to go with Taylormade because they have an 8 degree head that I can turn down to 6 degrees.  Even if it's less "forgiving", my dynamic loft is in such a better place that my poorly struck shots go as far as my best struck shots with a Ping LST turned down to 7.5.  This is a miss in the department of fitting options.

 

3) Their Eye wedges have gotten smaller and smaller.  I don't think it makes sense for the Eye wedge to conform in size with the conventional line.  While it's possible someone would want to have an Eye Sole Grind wedge that otherwise looks like a conventional wedge (like Glide and Glide 2.0), you'll almost never see someone who is interested in a conventional wedge who would want the full high-toe profile of the Eye 2.  The Eye 2 wedge is a different demographic from the rest of the wedges and should be treated as such.  If you're going to give the Eye 2 wedge its high toe shape, please make it a bigger wedge so it fits with that target demographic. 

 

4) The Moonlite bag lost its way when it was "upgraded" with a 4-way divider and the strap no longer reliably stood up on its own.  It now has an opening too large for a partial set not to clank around in, and is basically a lesser, cheaper Hoofer Lite that loses to the Hoofer lite in almost every way except for price. 

 

I would love for Ping to better define the Ideal Customer Profile for each of their products. 

[g_nw]

I would like ping to get back to being the gold standard carry bag. The L8 and Hoofer should be no- compromise best in class bags, like they used to be. Minimal branding options / blank options more readily available… this was their bread and butter for so long. While we are at it, let’s get back to releasing most d-1 college bags for the People.

[bobfoster]

36 minutes ago, HateTheHighDraw said:

50 minutes ago, MN Moose said:

This is one of the reasons each OEM has different shaft tips, to keep you from trying heads from other OEMs.  That would be a lot of fun if they were all the same tip.  Out playing a round with friends and trading heads throughout the round and not worrying that one guy plays stiff, one reg, one xstiff, etc...

But that's the same reason why Apple was required to move to USB-C instead of lightning.  The difference is golf is not ubiquitous like mobile devices.  But amongst us golfer-consumers, the adapter tip thing is unfair.

Actually, I don't think this is anything like the USB-C/Lightning situation. Doubt they are doing it for "lock-in" purposes. 

 

Shafts are almost overwhelmingly standardized on .355 and .370 (the difference coming from tapered vs. parallel shaft profile). But iron shafts are fixed and epoxied. You're talking about (I presume) driver and FW shafts that are interchangeable and adjustable in many new heads. I know I certainly take advantage of that (on my third driver shaft, and second 5W/3W shaft in my TSRs). 

 

Love how easy it is to swap them out - can just buy a correctly tipped shaft instead of messing with trying to pull a graphite shaft and re-epoxy a new one. 

 

Now, I can see why the OEMs - both shaft and club makers - saw it as being in their best interests to almost universally consolidate on .355/.370. But I can also understand why different club OEMs have different and unique tips. The idea of adjustable D/FW heads - being able to fiddle with loft and lie, weights, draw/fade bias - is quite amazing. Until fairly recently, if you wanted a different loft, you bought a new driver. If you wanted to add weight, or rig for draw/fade, you used lead tape. Thing is, however, most of the big guys took different design/mechanical approaches to accomplishing adjustable heads. Taylormade's annual R&D budget is around $30 million. Callaway around $50MM. Acushnet a whopping $65MM. The sheer physics packed into our modern clubs and balls is pretty amazing. 

 

So when these designers are working, it does make sense to standardize on shaft diameter - shaft OEMs certainly wouldn't want to need to produce dozens of different diameters if every clubhead OEM wanted some slight difference. But when it comes to tipping shafts, that has to be unique to the particular approach each OEM design team takes to achieving adjustability. In fact, the tip should actually better be considered to be part of the clubhead rather than part of the shaft. I do not think they are all deliberately tipping differently with the intention of stopping people from trying other clubheads, but rather because they all flat our believe their design is best, and the tip is part of the design.

 

I mean really, even if tips were universal, only pros, club hos, and people like WRX fanatics would even think of the scenario that @MN Moose mentions - trying each others' shafts in different heads - would happen other than very rarely. And of course it would be completely against the RoG to do so during a round. 

 

 

[GDB67]

Mizuno making you wait 3 months for a set of irons that a 12 year old girl put together with no lunch breaks , while praising endo…  who never exist in the first place 

[Hougz79]

“Made For” shafts.

 

[mxskier]

Biggest peeve is hybrid lofts denoted as both loft and number. For example, for Titleist lots of players play the 4H/21 TSR3 hybrid to go along with their 4 iron T100. Rather than it saying 4 twice, just having the loft number "base" of the club would make more aesthetic sense.

[Wedge Ninja]

TaylorMade not offering a (retail) adjustable “max” fairway…

[golferdude54]

Misaligned stock putter grips. 

[Hougz79]

15 minutes ago, Wedge Ninja said:

TaylorMade not offering a (retail) adjustable “max” fairway…

Winner!

[Rosco1216]

8 hours ago, jda said:

I really do not have any pet peeves anymore with iron makers.  Most of issues with them are people who don't understand who the OEMs made the clubs for... and that not all OEMs want so make clubs for anybody/everybody.  This is why other larger brands, smaller brands and more precise Japanese makers exist.

 

I have gripes with OEMs on drivers and do not understand why they cannot standardize USB 3 shaft tip.  I have a very expensive, custom shaft with a Titleist tip that I spent more than a year getting right and is worth more than any head, so that means that I am not switching to anything else until this shaft breaks.  I am not going to know if a PIng XYZ or Cally ABC is awesome, or not.

 

I have many gripes with OEM putters.

This can easily be measured and translated to any OEM head to play exactly the same. Just FYI. But I have a feeling the placebo it gives you is what you find irreplaceable. 

[mikehill06]

not offering the Qi10 Dot head as the standard Core head

[PJE]

In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be continual product release cycles. There would be some legacy products still available; this is a pipe dream and unrealistic but wouldn’t it be great if, for example, you could buy a 2024 AP2 or a 2024 i210? 
On more practical notes:

I wish Ping had an “H” series- something between the G and i series. 
I also wish Ping offered more OEM shaft offerings like Mizuno does. 
I wish flex was a standard across all OEM shafts. 
Finally, the price of new equipment is out of whack versus (likely) OEM costs but that’s economics. I just wish it was different. Then I could own five sets of irons instead of three, ha ha! 

[iNeedMoreGolf]

I hate how one model feels amazing and then the next iteration feels absolutely terrible sometimes? And thats for drivers and irons. How do you go backwards after making the previous soo good? Not to mention quality control has gone down over all.

[hammergolf]

8 hours ago, GHIN n Juice said:

My pet peeve, how is Callaway the only company with a driver tip that you can adjust but doesn’t rotate the whole shaft?  

It’s called a patent. 

[iNeedMoreGolf]

2 hours ago, golferdude54 said:

Misaligned stock putter grips. 

Must be taylormade

[iNeedMoreGolf]

My biggest pet peeve is how my golf clubs are not making my golf ball do what i want and need on command at all times. 

[wedgegame]

Screws in irons.  I understand the engineering and they serve a function, but I just don't like the aesthetic.  Oh and the constant need to label tungsten or any "tech" really.