ant

and how many products in your shop are 100% made in Japan, to the best of your knowledge ?

i'm not a lawyer so cant comment what falls laws and regulations in this case, i just dont understand what the real, practical issue is with that kinda labeling. maybe some people dont expect to pay premium for something built from components manufactured elsewhere regardless of the product quality and consider that a rip off ? if you take Apple products for example they label them like "Designed by Apple in California Assembled in China". they dont even say "made" and to me this is fair because its not milk or alcohol or something like that. and their products sell like hot cakes and for a premium price too.

if its a solid product what difference does it make, i mean really ?! and how far does that go ie do you expect the end product to be assembled in Japan from components made in Japan from raw materials extracted from Japan soil, all at 100% ? unless you are buying antique nihonto blades, some of which might actually be crap blades and only have historical/antique value even tho entirely made in Japan btw, or something why does it matter ? Japan imports alot of raw materials like iron ore etc and outsources production like everybody else in the world. Endo manufacturing that you have mentioned is good example of that. the ability to deliver solid product is what matters most.

in addition to what TourSpecGolfer has said on the status of different manufacturers in Japan i just wanna add that Royal Collection seems to be operating as normal as well. just got an update that my RC order, placed just before disaster struck, has been shipped. dunno where are they based tho but here you go.

yeah, i think alot of people get freaked out when they hear words 'nuclear', 'meltdown' and 'radiation' thrown together by news media. what they dont understand is how safe those reactor designs actually are and underestimate how well the personnel manning them is trained and educated. personally i was really impressed how well those reactors held up to what was thrown at them by mother nature. i happen to know a little about how those things work too. most people dont realize that they are most likely to get hit by a car or than get exposed because of such accident yet somehow when we drive in a car or cross a street we tend to think there is less risk involved. when people hear nuclear they associate it with nuclear bomb and related consequences. i feel like news media clowns, who know nothing about most of the stuff they report on, tend to blow things out of proportions and people trust them because they think they somehow know better. sure, there is some risk involved and in the end of the day its all about managing risks individually.

how YOU can help this page lists ways to donate to various organizations internationally http://storify.com/1rick/japan-quake-how-can-i-help personally i feel like the Japanese Red Cross is the best bet right now for international donations http://www.google.co.jp/intl/en/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html The relief money collected through Google Checkout will be donated to a charity set up through the Japanese Red Cross to support victims of the earthquake and rebuild the afflicted areas.

Jim, all i can say is RESPECT, you are good man!

+1

glad you guys are ok, sorry for folks who got hit, scary stuff. makes you think, doest it?! news says there is forecast that its gonna continue for about a month or so with up to 7 magnitude and possibilities of new tsunamis as well. sounds like the coast, transport and buildings are places you dont wanna be near even tho i hear Japanese build everything specifically to withstand those things as much as possible.

another good example of this is Ben Hogan company. when the man was in change the product was solid. then the reality of US market changed and the only was to continue to make solid product was to seriously downsize and turn into premium gear niche market operation. when a group of Japanese investors bought the company they didnt do that of course, instead they started to cut corners and squeeze for profits and it wasnt long before the product lost its most loyal followers and finally ended up in Callaways hands. in all fairness i think Callaway did a good job contrary to what most fans say because they hate Callaway for canning the product in the end even tho it made business sense. i think in Japan its kinda unique in a sense that the market is very different where consumer expects premium gear and ready to pay for it so manufacturers can design their product with money is no object attitude and still sell plenty of clubs to justify the whole operation even just domestically plus export some to international niche premium gear market. solid product can be made anywhere in the world and still be solid product.

i reckon its about setting right manufacturing tolerances on components and quality control. i bet that if anyone digs deep enough alot of JDM gear is not 100% made of Japan as far an entire finished product, the consumer is getting, is concerned. assembled in Japan would be more like it. tight manufacturing tolerances on components, careful assembly and quality control at various stages is what you pay premium price for in the end of the day.

lets hope their marketing department doesnt get too involved with these.

Yonex 380 isnt available til late March if i'm not mistaken.

looks real nice and clean! got a pic along something for size ref, like a golf ball?

i wonder if anybody here can recall what kinda volume persimmon drivers had and then the very first ones metal woods ? must have been around 200cc or something like that.

that is my understanding as well. there might be exceptions to this due to the latest materials and designs but generally smaller head is tougher and needs more speed to cause sufficient face, and in some designs ?body?, deflection to minimize energy loss on impact.

some pros hit down on their drivers, like Tiger for example. never seen his exact numbers and not sure what hes doing now but seen some super slomo footage of him in the past and he was clearly hitting down on it. pretty sure its deliberate tho, hes fully aware about loosing distance but just doesnt care about it because with that much of club speed he can get away with it and still hit it a mile.

not bad? i think you got great numbers right there! i agree that you are pretty much maxed out. the only way to get more distance by any substantial number would be increasing club head speed, that is if you need more distance, which you probably dont.

i actually subscribe to this pov as well and not just for drivers, all other clubs too, except the putter ;) while its true that lighter can be swung faster the problem with lightweight clubs to me is that they dont feel like swinging them. and we're talking total club weight not just swing weight. heavier clubs to me promote more solid swinging action. lighter clubs are harder to feel if you like and also just too easy to manipulate and to me thats bad. maybe a good ball striker can get away with lighter weight because of how much their swing is grooved and how much they constantly practice and how their feel is much more developed but i found it hard to believe that anybody out there gaining lots of distance from lighter clubs, we are probably talking about a few yards at best, right ? honestly dunno, havent seen any comparisons on that. sure some folks feel weight differently than others, some folks use lighter grips and some grip them harder so in the end of the day its all personal. i guess manufacturers just trying to squeeze some more distance little bit here, little bit there, and marketing just spins that as next big thing which is basically their job really. new thing now seems to be driver club head aerodynamic optimizations.

if your 3w and driver distance is roughly the same or close enough, which the case for alot of folks, get on a launch monitor and figure out why that is. if you are making a solid contact with your driver there is a good chance you are hitting down on your driver just like you do on your 3w and that would kill your driver distance. we are talking about something like 40 yards possibly. adding couple of inches of shaft length aint gonna help with that, wont even be in a ballpark.

i think the crowd here are golf gear enthusiasts who appreciate well designed and made clubs. we all love better scores no doubt about that but some people also appreciate true blade feel, looks etc and prefer less forgiving clubs for those reasons, they, plain and simple, just enjoy hitting them and looking at them and all that even if it means those clubs have less margin for error. make those guys play for a living and club choices for alot of them might shift towards more margin for error clubs but since we do something else for a living and play for pure joy of it we might just as well play whatever gear gives us most fun. if i had to play for real money i would use all the help i can get from golf gear.

i'm not here to argue about flat vs upright swings. that would really be a waste of time. neither i'm advocating for longer shafts. i'm just telling you flatter or upright doesnt make it any different. thats simple geometry and physics. good ball strikers make those works for them and bad ones fighting them. if you are talking about weekend golfer here how smaller heads fit into all this ? what are we talking about here ?

plane has nothing to do with helping or preventing you to square the club face. you can square it flat and you can square it upright given your lie angles are correct for your specific downswing plane. the easiest way to think about it is a hula hoop or the bottom half of it resting on the ground, entire thing aint gonna match the real swing anyway and upper half is whatever works for you eg Lee Trevino etc, doesnt matter for this. now imagine the club head traveling on it. it will always be square to to arc path but relative to the golf ball resting at low point, for simplicity sake, it will be open thru approach, square at the low point and then closed past the low point. now you can tilt that hula hoop up and down anyway you want, provided it would still be in position a human anatomy allows for in a golf swing, and the club head at correct lie angle relative to your tilt angle would do exactly the same thing ie it will be open, square, closed. if it doesnt make sense think about it another way. most, if not all depending how you look at it, golf greatest ball strikers were all flat. Hogan, Norman, Trevino. your "border line impossible" was solid and repeatable for them. from modern players AK you have mentioned already, pretty flat. he is not a tall guy and he plays a shorter shaft with his driver plus chokes down on it like he does on all his clubs but he doesnt play it upright. hits it flush pretty much every single time, no problem squaring that club face from what i can tell, great swing. regarding shaft length you might find what Tom Wishon has to say about that very interesting http://www.wishongolf.com/faq_tech_answer.php?techKey=25 certainly way more credible and interesting than my rumblings here. you decide how it relates to your swing and what you do and are comfortable with.

i agree about shorter shafts and more control and hitting more fairways and all that but what you write about flatter and squaring club face is utter nonsense. anyways the reason for all those evil things you talk about is consumer demand because majority of people who buy drivers with any regularity want one thing the most and that is distance. they dont care about the fact that the real distance comes from a sound golf swing and no club no matter how good gonna buy them distance in any significant way to compensate for their swing. they just wanna hit an occasional good one past their buddies. so they wanna buy more distance and since they cant buy a sound golf swing manufacturers are happy to oblige and that what drives their designs for the most part. people see tour players bombing it and they wanna do the same and while most of them can afford the latest extra distance frying pan very few of them are loaded enough to play golf courses as manicured as on tour, instead they play real world golf courses with knee deep rough and such where hitting fairways is much more important. so the simple truth of this is that there is demand and there is supply. TSG here is great place to find niche market custom gear if you are not happy with whats generally available but its a niche market nevertheless. preaching to average consumer about shorter distance and hitting more fairways aint gonna sell whole loads of clubs.

they aint really scaling down, maybe some of them are, but AK for example didnt game that Dymo head in 460cc to begin with. 460cc is retail model and guys like AK game tour prototype heads that almost always never make it to retail. the rest of it is marketing bs. it does seem tho that this year there are some scaled down new retail releases ie you see 440 instead of 460 etc, even looks like a trend. i wonder why the industry is starting to drop that whole bigger is better thing, maybe materials and manufacturing got better and they no longer need to inflate them silly to achieve same results ?