What Are Clone Golf Clubs

All you need to know about Clone Golf Clubs and why our clubs stand on their own merits. Our Clone Golf Clubs are low cost but definately not cheap.

This is a question we get asked a lot. Are these just cheapo knock-offs of big OEM's like Callaway or TaylorMade? Are clone golf clubs just low quality cheap copies?

Our clone golf clubs are made from the same quality materials as the big OEM's, use the same, if not better, shafts than those on the big name clubs and are probably made in the same factories in the Far East the OEM's use to make their club heads.

It's not a question of material cost either. Titanium like the one used in Titanium Drivers costs around $3 a kilo. With most driver heads weighing less than 200grams, the cost of titanium material in a driver head comes to less than a buck. That's right. Under a dollar. For that cost of raw material, why would anybody bother using low quality Titanium? The answer is, they don't.

So where does the other $298 bucks go for a top OEM driver head go? Well sponsorship and endoresements for one. Nike won't just write off their deal with Tiger as on over-head. They factor that into the price of their clubs and Nike club owners end up paying Tiger.

Clone golf club manufacturers don't have big endoresements, so there are no costs to factor in to the price of their clubs. If Acer for example offered a touring pro a big endoresement deal to play their clubs, would that make a set of Acer irons better than they are now? Probably not, but the price would sure as hell go up.

Some golfers seem to get too wrapped up in playing expensive sets of clubs. They look at the lables on their clubs and kind of lose track of what a set of clubs should be doing for their game. Price isn't always an indication of what your clubs are all about.

Probably best to take a couple of examples here just to illustrate the point. Take a set of Callaway X-22 irons for example. With True Temper Dynamic Gold steel shafts and Golf Pride Tour Velvet grips, these retail for around $880. Compare these to a set of Acer XK's with the same shaft and grip at under $300 and the Acers start to look like a pretty good deal. Now some would argue that the price difference is just too big for the Acers to be any good. After all, the Callaways are twice the price, they must be twice as good right?

Well, compare the Callaways at $880 to a set of Yonex Tour Forged in steel retailing at a touch over $1700. The Callaways look cheap in comparison. If low price is no good and expensive is great, then the Callaways must be no good. Most Callaway owners would disgree I think.

How about a TaylorMade driver then. Surely these must be at the top of the tree? Well actually no. Take a Taylormade R9. With the Motore F1 shaft these retail for around $400. Pretty top of the range. Expensive, so must be good. Well, compare that to a Yamaha Inpress with a Fujikura Bangvoo shaft and you won't get much change from $2000. Must be 5 times as good as the Taylormade if the price logic is applied.

The truth of the matter is that clone golf clubs are every bit as good as the big OEM's. Casting an iron requires a mold and the cost is the same for casting a club head to tight specifications as off spec. A cast is a cast and most of the big OEM's use factories in the Far East. The same factories where clone club heads are made.

A True temper Dynamic Gold is a True Temper Dynamic Gold whether it's installed in a Ping or an Acer. Perimeter Weighting, High MOI, Cavity Backs, CNC Milling, Offset, these are all technologies used by manufacturers like Titleist or Nike as well as Acer and Dynacraft. Nobody holds a patent on Moment of Inertia.

Take the most expensive club head in the world and fit it to a shaft that isn't right for your game. How well is it going to play? Not very well. Take a low price club head and fit the right shaft for your swing and you're on to a winner.

Take a clone club head and an OEM, fit a shaft that's right for you and you probably won't notice any difference between the two.

That is until you check the price tags.