Fu Sheng and its peers exercise the most preventive measures, but with more than 30 million clubs a year being produced by firms in Asia, self-policing is still not enough. At Taylor Made one can find golf balls, putters, and a variety of golf clubs and drivers. It's a status symbol, a sign that you've "made it," like an Audi A6 or a Louis Vuitton handbag. More precisely, Rugge contacted Fu Sheng, the largest manufacturer of golf clubheads in the world, which has major factories in Taiwan, China and Vietnam that together produce more than a million clubheads a month. "But when it comes to counterfeiting, we don't own the trademarks, so we really have no power to enforce it ourselves. The counterfeiting of golf clubs actually began in Taiwan although after the Taiwanese government started enforcing intellectual-property laws and the Taiwanese wages went up compared to China’s, the roles reversed and now China is the main producer of counterfeit golf clubs. "Any shaft you want," she says. "Overtime," Fu Sheng's Lee says blankly, walking by rows and rows of personal teapots that workers store in rickety shelving just off the factory floor, "is occasionally needed. Although the Asian influence has meant the greatest design opportunities and manufacturing efficiencies the game has ever known, it is not yet an entirely perfect system. "They are the greatest vendors ever," says Clay Long, a veteran club designer for manufacturers such as MacGregor, Cobra and now Nicklaus Golf. What else would you want in a vendor?". shrank by 400,000 and 160 courses shut down. "It's not that they suddenly figured out how to make golf clubs," Zeravica explains. That figure is projected to grow to about 20 million by 2020. For instance, it is one neat trick to develop the wax mold used in the titanium casting process for a new 460 cubic-centimeter driver head that has four intricate weight ports with a specialized screw-tightening mechanism, as in the TaylorMade r7 Superquad driver. By PuttPutt, August 4, 2010 in Clubs, Grips, Shafts, Fitting. It comes in a coffee shop looking down on the displays and the thousands of Japanese consumers clamoring for free tees and balls. Critics from both sides of the political spectrum said the president's actions were "tone deaf" and in "bad taste." Today, it's making none. We can show alternatives that maybe reduce the cost, but there have been cases where, because of us, the price point has meant a product was scrapped.". In fact, its business has grown most rapidly in the last five years, increasing more than 150 percent. Rugge and the USGA staff put the samples through various tests and measurements before settling on one particular clubhead. In this day and age, we've come to expect to see images of U.S. presidents gracing gossip websites and the covers of tabloid newspapers. He borrows a pen and draws the outline for a fairway-wood head, showing how he can make the face and crown of titanium and join them to a stainless-steel frame and sole, the brazing technique that his company has mastered. Not just golf clubs. In the space of 15 minutes, Chen has changed the product direction, and nine months later, the Adams Insight fairway wood is launched. The next three decades witnessed significant growth and expansion of manufacturing facilities in Sakata as Honma extended its reach int… Even Ping has their cast stuff made in China. Yamaha is attempting to improve ball speed with conjoined circles milled behind the face that it says maximize ball speed in two places. Thankfully, the counterfeit golf club issue has slowed some in the last couple of years thanks to people being more aware of the problem. Bryson DeChambeau - Bulking, Testing, Winning. Share Followers 0. Nevertheless, China has the world’s biggest golf club at Mission Hills, perched high on the Hong Kong border. No matter where your opinion falls on this particular controversy, one thing is clear: Something like this would never happen in China. Then, she produces the Callaway FT Hybrid head (not available in the U.S. at the time) and a pristine TaylorMade r7 425 driver head (also not available in the U.S. at the time). In the 1970s, Taylor Made was the first to take a tremendous leap forward in club technology with the introduction of metal woods, going away from the traditional wooden woods. It includes covers for all the clubs, a bag and a travel bag. Fengze Robin Sports Supplies Mart was. Reply to this topic; Start new topic; Note: This thread is 2982 days old. Connecting even smaller U.S. firms to a competent Asian vendor is the world of independent consultants such as Zeravica, president of Illinois-based GlobalAcuity. Wilson Staff Dd6+ driver for 2007. A few seem just slightly off (a grip is miscolored, a lie angle might be a little too upright, a shaft might be missing a brand-name band), but these clubs are practically indistinguishable from the original. Despite the intriguing displays of brands not often seen in the U.S. -- brands like PRGR, OnOff, Kitana, Fourteen--the real intrigue is off the show floor. Its young line workers (rarely older than 20) come from 10, 15, 20 or more hours away by train from rural China to live in Zhongshan. When he and his team are looking for a new way to think about design, they come to the Japan Golf Fair, the annual winter gathering of the Asian golf market in Tokyo's Big Sight Convention Center. Callaway is an American golf company with a number of major endorsements. "Photos of Zhao Ziyang caused such public turmoil back then.". Chief content officer, Asia Society; author, The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream, Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter. He didn't even tap into the elite academic expertise at some of the nation's top engineering schools, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lehigh and New York Polytechnic, that the USGA keeps on retainer to study golf technology. One reason is because of his company's close relationship with the likes of Performax and Sino Golf, a second-tier company that benefited from Adams' technical support in the early days and has grown from there. It's been more than a quarter century since a photo of a member of China's ruling class holding a golf club went public. Throughout the region, the hotels are flashy nouveau riche, factories are built on top of each other and capitalism has taken hold. China's latest ban on golf development came in 2004, when the government, citing the "blind construction" of courses, issued a moratorium intended to protect "the collective land of the peasants" and curb an out-of-control real estate market. Zhao Ziyang - the country's premier from 1980 to 1987 and general secretary, the Communist Party's highest-ranking official, from 1987 to 1989 - was the only top-level Party official to be relatively open about his golf habit. It's difficult to pin down just how many actual golfers there are in China. has been to innovate the scattershot club-assembly process frequently found in Asian factories. Every foreign business knows that when they enter the Chinese market, they are going to have to play by China's rules, but when it comes to golf, no one knows what the rules actually are. For the general public, golf is considered to be prohibitively … Most of the drivers being sold now are conforming. It is located in Southeast China"s Province Fujian. Other than milled putters, Im not aware of any clubheads that are made in the USA. COR, or spring-like effect, is still the big issue in driver faces. When Archer C.C. He knows that key is all about dollars and cents. USE OF AND/OR REGISTRATION ON ANY PORTION OF THIS SITE CONSTITUTES ACCEPTANCE OF OUR VISITOR AGREEMENT (UPDATED 1/1/20), PRIVACY AND COOKIES NOTICE (UPDATED 1/1/20) AND CALIFORNIA PRIVACY NOTICE. After all, at the Japan Golf Fair as recently as last year, nearly every big booth was home to at least one driver that had a face too hot to be used in the U.S. We have been engaging for years in retailing and wholesaling a variety golf products (Golf Clubs, Golf Driver, Golf Fairway Wood, Golf Irons, Golf Wedges, Golf Hybrids, golf, etc. ) First, a lesson in club design and manufacturing. Today is National Voter Registration Day! "Made in China" not only stocks the shelves in Wal-Mart, it also inspires the intellectual horsepower in the research-and-development halls at golf's biggest club … But after the ban, the government in effect turned its back and let things grow even more out of control. Indeed, many of the new golf courses in China were built more as a way to help sell the mansions that line the fairways than to attract golfers to play on them. With the exception of the rubber golf ball, nowhere has golf experienced such rapid transformation as in the manufacture of golf clubs. "I think the possibility of that ever happening is zero," Song Liangliang, a spokesman for the China Golf Association, told me. Japan has been in the club-manufacturing business for decades, but as investment casting of clubheads became more prominent, and the desire for more affordable labor became paramount, Taiwan took the lead in clubhead manufacturing. IF YOU ARE A CALIFORNIA RESIDENT AND WOULD LIKE TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT TO OPT-OUT OF THIRD-PARTY DATA SHARING, YOU MAY DO SO HERE: DO NOT SELL MY PERSONAL INFORMATION. Over here, Yokohama Rubber Company's golf division, known as PRGR, is debuting what it touts as a way to increase clubhead speed through a shaft and hand speed matching system. Today, proper approvals don't even exist, and yet some estimate that the number of courses in China has eclipsed 1,000, although there's no way to know how many there really are. "You have to do things differently, provide different services," says Hribar. Back in 1987, The New York Times had called Zhao the "dapper heir" to reform-minded Deng Xiaoping. Says Seisuke Tomita, executive vice president of development for Bridgestone, "We expect that most golfers will play with conforming clubs. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, which governs golf in Asia, has grandfathered high-COR drivers until 2008, but the question remains: Will players trade in their "hot" drivers for new, conforming models? "If Fu Sheng tells you you'll have finished product in 10 weeks, you'll have it in 10 weeks," says Nicklaus Golf's Clay Long. This is the benefit of high-tech scanners that can copy the look of a three-dimensional object. If the retailer is not on this list, the website is not an authorized retail website and may be selling counterfeit product. In addition to its titanium-casting operation in Taiwan, which features a core of engineers working to discover new ways of casting metal at thinner levels, the Fu Sheng approach under P.Z. Chen, president of Performax Golf, shuffles up to the table, he brings no entourage, just a folder with some papers. Surrounded by mountains and overlooked by the tea plantations of Mount Fuquan, the scene is straight out of a classical Chinese painting. China Golf Clubs wholesale - Select 2021 high quality Golf Clubs products in best price from certified Chinese Golf Cart manufacturers, Golf Bag suppliers, wholesalers and factory on Made-in-China… Deputy White House Press Secretary Eric Schultz had to come to his boss's defense, saying "sports and leisure activities are a good way for release and clearing of the mind.". It is one of a handful of manufacturing mega-centers surrounding southern China's Pearl River Delta. You can have a rest and please slide to verify.

They can also make customized golf clubs. What can be done to make a piece of metal work more efficiently at getting a golf ball into the hole, and how quickly that piece of metal can be transformed into a clubhead, depends on the capability of factories in China and Taiwan. And there are also sublime modern additions, such as the stunning indoor swimming pool and outdoor infinity pool. In terms of appearance, only a close examination would reveal differences between these cheap imitations and the real thing. Situated on the banks of Dongqian Lake, which translates as ‘lake of money in the east’, this stunning resort near the city of Ningbo is just two hours by bullet train from Shanghai. A lot of companies assemble their clubs in the U.S., but everybody has moved their production overseas. So when Reed and his team present their ideas, it is Chen who opens the door of possibility. Fu Sheng's revenue has increased nearly tenfold since 1994, to more than $700 million in 2005. And like lightning, she waves to her husband, Mr. Wen, who is sitting at a desk scattered with papers and a baby bottle, to fetch the casting. That's where you need to have someone like me watching things.". But when I looked on the conforming list for their new drivers, only the glued ones had Made in Sakata. Adams Golf's Reed and his team are in Asia enough to not need a middleman. Asia (Japan and Korea, specifically) is the flashpoint for the sales of drivers with a COR above the 0.83 limit set by the USGA. There last February, Reed and a cadre of his engineers sat around a table, waiting for a wizard. The overriding sensation here is that golf clubs are like jewelry. "They can do more R&D than a lot of smaller U.S. companies can do on their own," says Parente. They were the first US golf manufacturer to Over the years, we have seen different clubs brand design different models to perform different functions. Fu Sheng's president, the man at the root of all this growth and dominance, is a broad-smiling Taiwanese national with dancing eyes named Ping-Zong Lin, or P.Z. He agreed to appear on the American television news show Meet the Press - downing two beers while on camera during his interview with Tom Brokaw. But it would be wrong to say golf fever is sweeping the country. Indirectly, of course, it does hurt our business because there is a portion of golfers who are buying cheap copies instead of the real thing. It used to be that you were never quite sure what you were expressing because of the language difference. They're better, faster and not as expensive. We’re not too sure exactly when the Golf Association of the Republic of China was founded, but the game of golf here in the east is still the preserve of the wealthy. Also link to Taiwan & China Golf Clubs Companies, Golf Club Manufacturers & Suppliers Lists. "But once you move down the line, there's a quality difference. Fu Sheng's Wang-Ming Lee looks almost professorial in his military-cut hair, his fashionably frameless lenses and his measured demeanor as he walks through the company's massive Worldmark Sporting Goods factory in Zhongshan. He is as sinewy as he must have been as a teenager, and though his hands talk for him, there's a rhythm and intensity to his broken English that must leave even the most hardened American business executive fully engaged. Thus, they are willing to gloss over the rules a bit. Nearly 1.1 million Chinese citizens were estimated to play the game and numerous courses had been built within the decade. "Our company culture is to never say no," he says through an interpreter, a wide-eyed junior salesman named Stone who is eager to try out his English. The hands-on work for a golf club is astonishing, as if we were dealing with intricate timepieces instead of implements routinely slammed to the ground in frustration. Even today, those Chinese who have heard of golf likely know it as the "rich man's game," and in China that's precisely what it is. There are some high-end Japanese brands made in Japan. China has always had a complicated relationship with golf. This has been the trend for the better part of the past decade. Titleist does make every attempt to resolve manufacturing defects that do slip through the long list of quality checks. Fu Sheng, a company that dominates the air-compressor business in Asia, began manufacturing clubheads in 1978, and other companies would soon follow, as would years of consolidation. China was projected to be an area of growth for golf due to its massive population and a growing interest in the game. One thing everyone agrees on, however: The number is increasing, which is more than most other places in the world can say. Those in golf course design and construction have to play along and weather the occasional crackdown, because these days if they aren't working in China, they probably aren't working much at all. But that's not to say the inventiveness has diminished. In fact, as one U.S. club designer says, "Anyone with a fax machine and a couple thousand dollars can be in the equipment business.". But rarely, as it was recently, is golf at the heart of the discussion. Clubs. Ouch... You have clicked a page that seems to be very popular. We made it easy for you to exercise your right to vote! Zhao's detractors branded these as examples of the "bourgeois liberalizations" he was allowing to pass through China's once airtight seal. "We can work with a client and show them immediately how slight design changes impact performance because of our test center. Over the past decade, no country has built more golf courses than China - not even close. They can't afford to. At the early stages Chen's suggestions can totally change a product's design. Find useful Golf Clubs resources, or Golf Clubs information about global business and trade on Made-in-China.com. It is all part of the atmosphere of the annual Japan Golf Fair, the largest golf merchandise show in Asia. But it has a price. Chen's Performax, which recently formed an alliance with Asian equipment giant O-TA, is an example of the burgeoning middle tier in the Asian-U.S. golf technology partnership. The set includes 3 woods, 7 irons, 2 wedges, and a putter. China-Direct-Buy.com provides made in china golf club products, china golf club manufacturers, suppliers, exporters, factories and companies. Hoping the adjustable models will not be made in China. Companies throughout the region can take that idea and make it real. Purchasing golf clubs online or on ebay … But despite the sexist, boat-show feel, the ideas here can often be technologically sophisticated and remain distinct from those you see at its U.S. counterpart, the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando. "When you're a big company and you're working with a Fu Sheng, you have a lot more resources at your disposal, and you probably have a staff of people on site working with the vendor," says Zeravica, who was employed by several U.S. manufacturers before going out on his own. "Of course, if you want to use specific new technologies, you need to develop them way ahead of time and prepare equipment and processes," says TaylorMade's chief technical officer, Benoit Vincent. Rugge explained what he was looking for in a clubhead, and Fu Sheng shipped him several "open models," what the industry calls factory-produced design samples that smaller club companies in the U.S. and around the world will sometimes select and slap their own logos on. High quality and quality assurance. In the next room (cooled only by open windows and a single fan), there are nearly 100 grinding wheels, and the workers move through the clubheads at one every five seconds. According to a report in the Chinese-language Commercial Times of Taiwan, of the world's 45 million clubs sold annually, three-quarters have Asian fingerprints on them. As the demand for clubheads has increased and the factories have expanded to China, that country has sprouted more firms to work with smaller U.S. companies, because not even the combined resources of the four powers can come close to handling the orders that come their way. At the company's small headquarters building off a thoroughfare so new it's still unpaved in spots, the walls are lined with samples of products that the facility can make (its "open models"), some looking like knockoffs of TaylorMade's r7 drivers and putters like the Odyssey 2-Ball and the Ping Craz-E. Part of HuffPost News. But it's another thing to cast the wall thicknesses at 0.6 millimeters without three-quarters of the heads caving in after impact. Washburn has a new book on this topic, The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream, available here. "Of course, everything any manufacturer can think of, we can do. In its article, it even noted a photo distributed by the Xinhua News Agency, China's official government media mouthpiece, that "shows [Zhao] on the golf course wearing a white baseball cap and clutching what knowledgeable observers believe is a three-iron. to America, Europe, UK, Japan, Canada, Australia, And global. In the golf business, quality is the most important thing for us. Scott Hribar, an American who serves as product-development manager, says the R&D capability strongly positions a company like Sino. Golf … Almost all cast irons, woods and hybrids are made in China. The final leg in China's club-manufacturing business can be seen in an unlit, unheated, garage-like outbuilding where burlap bags filled with unfinished clubheads arrive for the final steps toward completion. It's why at Fu Sheng every one of the thousands of workers must pass through a metal detector every time he or she leaves the factory floor, even if only to go to lunch. Ten years ago, when the moratorium went into place, state media reported that China was home to 176 golf courses, and only 10 of them had received proper approvals from the government. Mao banned the game in 1949 when the Communists took power, denouncing it as the "sport for millionaires." After breaking briefly from a two-week vacation on Martha's Vineyard to publicly address the savage beheading of American journalist James Foley at the hands of Islamic State militants, Barack Obama headed straightaway to Vineyard Golf Club for a round of golf. He knows with the wisdom of someone raised in the age of Chairman Mao. In 1979, TaylorMade Golf introduced the first wood made … We went to Costco last night and saw Made in Cambodia, Made in Bangladesh, Made in Mexico, Made in Vietnam and more. But there always will be players who won't, who want all the technology. Just last year in the United States alone, the number of active golfers shrank by 400,000 and 160 courses shut down. With some of these medium-size vendors, the entrepreneurial spirit is even greater, because they can contribute to a product's design, not just its manufacture. In short, the present and the future of the game will be determined in part by what happened in a 3,000-degree titanium vacuum furnace in Tao-Yuan City, Taiwan. Traveling businessmen have frequently seen deals for full sets of "Callaway" clubs, including a bag and a travel cover, for $150. Five years ago, the California-based Coastcast Corporation was making more than a million titanium clubheads a year for some of golf's major brands. Ram Golf's latest, easy-to-hit clubs. Rule No. Put simply, there's no way Chinese officials should be able to afford to play golf in China. We appreciate that you found this thread instead of starting a new one, but if you plan to post here please make sure it's still relevant. That sample became the club that the game's chief governing body uses to determine which balls will conform to the Rules of Golf. The Cobra king F8 steel iron is the best cobra iron, it comes with … Zhao could regularly be found teeing it up at Beijing International Golf Club, near the famous Ming Tombs, where thirteen Chinese emperors were buried. The general theme of small, cottage industry turned significant JDM player is very much a part of Honma’s DNA. Though the Chinese government has drawn universal praise for its crackdown of counterfeit operations (more than $1 million worth of counterfeit products was seized in a recent raid in Shanghai), the problem still exists. The resort has been created in the style of a traditional, Chinese water village made up of low-level villas with simply plastered exteriors and tiled, gabled roofs. Second, many consumers report websites to TaylorMade after they made the unfortunate mistake of falling into the counterfeit trap of a deal that was "too good to be true". New ideas can become reality in days, not months or years. "We taught them how to do it. None of them is legitimate, however. The vigilance is an effort to combat a culture that seems oblivious to the value of intellectual property, and yet decidedly practical when it comes to finding any way possible of putting food on the table, even if it means trafficking in illegal golf clubs. THE MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED, TRANSMITTED, CACHED OR OTHERWISE USED, EXCEPT WITH THE PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF DISCOVERY GOLF, INC. © 2021 DISCOVERY GOLF, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The work for many of those laborers, though, seems endless, as rows of men stand shoulder to shoulder, 18 in a row, while grinding wheels roar in one room, torches spark away in another and shafts are tested in another, sometimes 25,000 shafts in a day. "I knew I'd better keep the money coming in or the chairman, he would ask me to come back. Today, the four major manufacturers that got their start in Taiwan have expanded operations to China and beyond. That's where Asia comes in. Golf pride grips also. The decline has been the death of the middle class. Zhao was not your typical Chinese leader, and perhaps that's why he was ousted and sentenced to house arrest not long after taking a sympathetic stance toward the Tiananmen Square student protesters in 1989. Fu Sheng, for instance, devotes as many as 2,000 of its workers to Callaway projects. In 1958, the Honma brothers opened a driving range in Tsurumi, Yokohama. He gives their 3-month-old son to grandma, and in a flash, Wen is proudly at Hua's shoulder, displaying the raw casting for a Nike CPR utility wood. 1 when planning a golf course in China: Don't call it a golf course. "The head is real," she says through an interpreter, indicating the shaft is not as real. She charges ¥1600 for a set which includes delivery in China. ", Still, Mrs. Hua stands in her family store proudly and offers a customer a telling, troubling finale. Now, we all know many Chinese officials are indeed filthy rich, and, yes, it's likely some do play golf -- but they know enough to do so in secret. He didn't work with any of the highly regarded independent designers in the U.S. These high-tech scanning devices can produce a three-dimensional model of a computer drawing in minutes, and the most highly evolved can yield hittable versions of product ideas in only a few days. Overtime is a way of life here, with so many customers wanting a piece of Fu Sheng's efficiencies. What's mostly on display are wildly expensive technologies (the $800 driver and the $1,600 set of irons are not uncommon). "Really, we split the cost of running the business: The vendors invest in equipment and manufacturing, and we invest in design, marketing and sales," says Vincent. Huidan Research valued the golf industry in 2018 to be worth 6.2 billion yuan up 10 percent from last year. Truth is, no golf course in China gets built without heavy government involvement, but it's always at the local level. True Temper steel shafts, made in the USA. Zhao eschewed traditional Mao suits in favor of Western-style jackets and ties. Fu Sheng's Wang-Ming Lee says the major vendors are very concerned, but powerless. Fu Sheng's manufacturing bulk cannot be overstated. They are everywhere.

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