Your Guide To OEMs, Part 2

The golf equipment business is a crowded, cutthroat place. To help you make sense of it, I’m giving you my interpretation of how the top companies in the biz relate to one another.

Bag DropIn the first part of this series, we took at look at the Big Three: Acushnet, Callaway, and TaylorMade-Adidas. This week, we look at a trio of companies jockeying for position and the chance to make the jump to join the Big Three atop the industry. I call these companies the Next Three, and they are Cleveland, Nike and Ping.

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Volume Twenty-Two

If you get a chance to pull yourselves away from the Monday coverage of the PGA Championships, take a look at this week’s links.

Hittin' the LinksI hate waiting. I can’t imagine what these guys are thinking having to wait overnight to finish their rounds at the PGA Championship. Waiting will only hurt Tiger’s chances of winning. Do you think he really believes he stands a chance? I don’t. I think -5 will win it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to hurry up and finish this week’s column so that I can watch the leaderboard on the Internet.

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Paula Creamer Sensational in Japan

Japan’s most popular female golfer is held off by teen phenom Paula Creamer at the NEC Karuizawa tournament. Morgan Pressel misses an opportunity to win another amateur tournament.

Paula Creamer added an international trophy to her growing list of wins this weekend after defeating 20-year-old Ai Miyazato at the NEC Karuizawa tournament in Japan. After carding three straight bogey-free rounds Creamer finished the tournament with a 4-under 68 yesterday, three strokes ahead of Miyazato who shot a 69. “I feel great!” said Creamer. “I knew I had to play good golf coming down the stretch. I knew if I just stayed patient and kept giving myself birdie looks everything would be okay.”

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Lightning Delays Final Round of PGA Championship

Play was halted just as play was heating up at the PGA Championship.

Mickelson holds a one-shot lead in what could be a very exciting finish to this year’s PGA Championship. Play was halted shortly after a lightning storm moved into the area. Mickelson was getting a read on a par-putt at the 14th hole when lightning struck nearby. “Look, I love this championship,” he said, “but I want to live, man.” And that was reason enough to halt play.

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Improving Your Game

The game of golf can be broken down into five components. We’ve done so – and given you our best tip for each – in this week’s Trap Five.

Trap Five LogoGolf can be broken down into all sorts of things – wrist cock, spine angle, short game, long irons, trouble play, mental aspects, rules and their benefits and penalties, and so on. For this week’s Trap Five, we’ve broken the game of golf into five main areas – the mental game, iron play, chipping/pitching, driving, and putting – and ranked them in order along with the single best tip we can think of to help you with that aspect of the game.

Quick, before you look, which order do you think they came in?

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Retief Goosen

Goosen isn’t the chattiest Tour player. Most of the time he lets his game do the talking.

ProFilesRetief Goosen has the perfect demeanor for both golf and poker. Getting a read on him is not unlike looking at a book written in Sanskrit. His emotions don’t run too high or too low. His steady-as-it-goes approach that has paid him dividends in golf.

Currently ranked 5th in the world he has just come off a victory at the International proving again to himself and the world that he can win. Any doubt about his ability to win would have never entered the picture, had he not stumbled in the final round of this year’s U.S. Open. Goosen, after all, is Mr. Clutch.

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The PGA Championship

Baltusrol is being called a beast this year. According to the numbers, Tiger should be able to tame it and win this year’s PGA but there are a few other golfers that could make a run at it.

The Numbers GameThis year’s PGA is being held at Baltusrol. The numbers are already rolling in. 7,392: The longest par-70 in PGA Championship history. 500: Two of the par fours will be longer than this. 647: The length of #17… which happens to be 17 yards longer than it was in the 1993 US Open.

So you get the picture. This year’s PGA will be a test for sure. Predicting the PGA this year may be a bit more complicated than picking the long hitters. As I’ve talked about previously, there are more important things than mashing the ball 300+ yards… but it may help a bit this week and is factoring into my predictions.

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Solheim Cup a “Humbling” Experience

The LPGA and LET team captains consider their final selections for the exciting biennial Solheim Cup held next month in the U.S.A.

Since there is no LPGA Tour event this week U.S.A. Team Captain Nancy Lopez took hopefuls out for a practice round in Indiana where the U.S.A. will compete against Europe for the Solheim Cup. This biennial matchplay event is the LPGA’s answer to the PGA’s Ryder Cup and is considered to be one of the most prestigious events in women’s world golf.

It’s the U.S.A. versus the rest of the world. Will America dominate?

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TaylorMade r5 Dual Driver Review

The TaylorMade r5 Dual drivers incorporate design elements from the successful r7 Quad drivers in a bigger clubhead. The new design has both benefits and drawbacks.

TaylorMadeTaylorMade Golf has surged to the top of the driver marketplace over the last few years. The company which first popularized the modern metalwood fell off the pace a bit in the late ’90s, but rebounded strongly with its 300 and 500 series titanium drivers. TaylorMade successfully followed those products with the r7 Quad driver, which stands as one of the most-played – and most-imitated – drivers on tour and at retail.

This year, TaylorMade applied some of the design principles of the r7 Quad to the new r5 Dual series. We had a chance to take one of the r5 Dual models for an extended test drive. Read on to see what we thought.

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