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View Full Version : The new r7HT driver from TM when will the madness end



Davemason
29th November 2004, 07:38 AM
THE NEW r7 quad HT

The r7 quad ht features a shallower, longer club face and a larger, more substantial club head shape when viewed in the address position. Specifically, the r7 quad ht club face is 56 millimeters deep, compared to 59 for the r7 quad, and is 9,500 square millimeters in size, compared to 8,100 for the r7 quad.

The shape of the r7 quad ht gives it a 5% increase in MOI versus the standard r7 quad, so the ht is more forgiving on mis-hits. Additionally, the difference in the r7 quad ht's head geometry creates a center of gravity (CG) position 1.5 millimeters farther back and 1 millimeter lower than the r7 quad, which is a significant change. The ht's deeper, lower CG position produces launch conditions that deliver a higher trajectory. TaylorMade testing indicates that the r7 quad ht delivers a one-half degree higher launch angle and an additional 400 rpm of spin than the standard r7 quad.

Additionally, the r7 quad ht's more substantial size, when viewed at address, inspires added confidence.
http://www.golfsmith.com/ps/images/tm7020.jpg

amanda
29th November 2004, 07:42 AM
Are their marketing people mad? :shock: Or are consumers just completely stupid when it comes to buying golf gear?

ben
29th November 2004, 08:28 AM
Its funny hearing TM talk about MOI, MOI is extremtly individual and should not be used as a marketing term. Anyway, one of the problems with the R7 is that it has extremely low spin rates, the HT (or shallow as its also known) has a higher spin rate of the face.

ben
29th November 2004, 08:35 AM
Heres something Tom Wishon had to say about the OEM's strategies.


Oh my is that an interesting point to think about!! Since the marketing techniques of the major brand name manufacturers moved into a much higher gear in the industry in the early to middle 1990s, now the determination of staying power for any model is just as much in the marketing as in the performance, with a little bit of how the "fashion" of a model is received as well!! Still, you can't predict everything when it comes to the success or failure of a model these days.

Take Callaway for example. Last year is the first year that their iron sales beat their wood sales. Over the past 4 yrs, their wood sales have dropped from $400 million to $250 million. During that time, they went from saturating the market with their GBB driver, followed that with an all graphite C4, then the Fusion, and during that time they tried to bolster their wood line with the GBB II - and none of them have lit the industry on fire. Yet, they still did $250 million in wood sales last year, which if you do the math, accounts for one heckuva lot of units that they still put out!

In the meantime, Taylor Made became the golden boy of the wood market with their 300 series, then the R500 series - neither of those were anything real special in terms of new technology. They were good basic titanium woods but nothing super special. What did it was their push on the world's professional tours - but heck, they had been pushing their woods on tour for a long time, so what was it that made the tour players drift away from Bertha and Titleist to Taylor? A better shape? Or just because they had gotten tired of the Bertha shape? Or more money to play the TM heads? Probably some of all of those.

But now, TM is reading that they need to bow out of the R500's and replace that with the R7. Why? Because there is a really interesting thing that goes along with the fact that the retail golf industry is now made up of 4 companies who combine to do over 80% of the club sales. When you get that large, and you do it pretty much with only one model of wood, you need to put 2 million of those woods into the field each year, or you are going to sag in sales. Statistics say that there are 12 million "avid" golfers in the USA who account for something like 80% of the equipment sales each year. But not every one will buy a new driver every year - so if you have 4 companies who all need to sell 2 million drivers a year to sustain their sales - doing the math and you can see how much pressure they are under every single year.

These companies know by April whether they are going to make numbers each year - and if the numbers are looking short, their remedy is to introduce another new model as soon as possible and market the heck out of it to create excitement among the golfers. Taylor Made in particular has intro'd more new models faster than any of these companies. But heck, now you see Ping really getting into this as well now, which is really not typical for them.

The bad side of this is that the consumer golfers have gotten to the point where they are asking themselves, "what was wrong with last year's model that they had to drop it and bring out this one"? And so this whole thing that is bred by an insane pressure for these big 4 companies to keep making more sales is really having the opposite effect - consumers are starting to get the feeling that these companies are just hyping their products too much for the sake of making sales, and that the next model is probably not any better than the previous one. Sure, you always have tons of golfers who want to buy every new club that comes along - but overall, golf club sales are stagnant in terms of total units sold.

Anyway, I am just rambling now so I better leave it at that!! In the end, though the ONE THING that still has yet to really penetrate a large segment of the consumer market that really does hold the power to improve golfers' games is something the OEMs can;t do - custom fit properly.

TOM