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December 11, 2005
TaylorMade hits mother lode with Clarke's r7 425 comments
Darren Clarke sits atop the leader board at -14 at the Target World Challenge. So far this week, he has shot a 65, 73, and 64. He also has 5, yes 5, eagles during the three rounds.
Oh, and by the way, in his post-round interview he credits his phenomenal play on the par 5's to a new addition in his bag.
"... On Tuesday I got a new driver, a (TaylorMade) R7 425, a brand new one (model)," Clarke said. "I hardly ever put something straight into the bag, but this one was straight in.
"It's making a huge difference to my distance off the tee. There's a couple of traps taken out of play and that's helped a great deal on the par 5s."
Talk about a marketer's dream come true... Christmas has come early for TaylorMade, so the boys and girls in Carlsbad should drop everything and spend the next 72 hours finding a way to capitalize on this gift.
How big is this?
Take a gear head like me for instance. I was preparing to write that I hated the latest design direction of the new r7 and some of the other new drivers. Now, like a guy whose standards drop as last call nears, I'm looking at the r7 425 with a whole different appreciation. Call it the golf equivalent of "beer goggles"... that's right, I'm seeing the new r7 through "distance goggles".
A contrasting example is Michael Campbell's U.S. Open win with the new Callaway FT-3 driver. While it was a nice score for Callaway, the only message that the consumer world got from it was that the driver/technology was "good enough" for a pro to win with. While that may be a nice selling point, it doesn't mean that Joe golfer's game will benefit from it.
Compare that to Darren Clarke's recent comments and you can easily see how TaylorMade hit the mother lode of golf marketing... "It's making a huge difference to my distance off the tee." Spoken by a real life pro golfer that has just made five eagles in 3 rounds.
That, my friends, is the holy grail of golf equipment press... Distance to golfers (of any ability) is like fire was to prehistoric man. It is the single biggest reason that the Pro V1 golf ball revolution took off. Now all TaylorMade needs is some ancient player to start talking about how clubs like the r7 425 are ruining the game and we'll have ourselves a 2006 club of the year before January 1.
I would venture that yesterday's comments by Clarke were probably enough to send more hacks (myself included) running to TGW.com to see when this breakthrough club would be available. And right before Christmas too, now that's special.
Filed under EQUIPMENT NEWS | Authored by BogeyMan | Comments (2)
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Comments
BogeyMan, you've got to be kidding. I mean, I heard Darren Clarke talking about how far he was hitting the new TM Driver and then I watched Campbell -- who AIN'T long -- driving it past him on almost every hole!! That Callaway FT-3 is the hottest driver goin, bar none. Demo them side by side if you don't believe it.
Posted by: Driverman at December 12, 2005 9:11 PM
Dude, I love the FT-3, but not enough to let go of my first generation r7... I'm looking forward to using the new r7...
I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance hitting it.
Thanks for the comments... please visit again.
Posted by: BogeyMan at December 12, 2005 9:42 PM
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