Equipment
Oakley as a golf brand? Exactly
On the surface, it doesn’t make much sense. Why would Oakley — a brand beloved by surfers, snowboarders, skiers, skaters and otherwise “cool” people — want to be a golf brand? Doesn’t it know that golfers are notoriously uncool, and that for every Tiger Woods or Rory McIlroy there are 50 Tour players who make Chris Kirk seem exciting?
GolfWRX regulars might have noticed that we’ve been learning a lot about the Southern-California based company lately. When Oakley signed Zach Johnson and Bubba Watson in 2013, we did a Q&A with the company’s sports marketing manager. We followed up with a feature on the impact Bubba Watson has had in shaping Oakley product this spring, and spent this summer reviewing Oakley’s Carbon Pro 2 golf shoes, M2 Frame and Holbrook sunglasses and its latest golf apparel.
What we’ve found is that few companies spend as much time perfecting its products as The Ellipse, which became even more evident when I visited Oakley headquarters.
Oakley HQ, nicknamed the “Design Bunker,” looks like a spaceship that might blast off from its Foothills Ranch, Calif. location. Even though it’s a public facility that includes a retail store and a walk-in warranty department, the winding, tank-equipped driveaway screams “keep out” to poindexters.
The coolness threshold was reinforced in the lobby, where I was instructed to wait for my tour guide in an authentic fighter jet ejector seat. I, in khakis and a polo, wondered if I was about to be propelled through the vaulted ceilings of the main lobby. Was I cool enough to be in this place?
Luckily, it was another case of a journalist making stuff up, and I made my way through the public lobby and into the private Oakley hallways unscathed.
If you’re waiting for a photo tour of HQ, the production facilities and research labs I saw, you’re out of luck, as just about all of the areas were off limits for photography. Oakley protects its prototype products and procedures more tightly than any golf apparel company I’ve ever toured, which is why it makes sense to shift the conversation from what exactly Oakley does to produce its apparel, footwear and accessories to why it does it in the first place.
For that answer, I talked to Nathan Strange, Oakley’s head of global golf marketing. Strange spent a decade working at one of the golf equipment industry’s traditional powerhouses, and is the man responsible for the now famous Bubba Hovercraft video.
The outside-the-box video was perfect for the Oakley brand, Strange said, as it showcased what I kept hearing from every member of the Oakley golf team.
“We’re different,” they kept saying.
I, like you, have seen the barrage of Oakley marketing material that has hit the internet in 2014. It includes the message that Oakley is “Disruptive by Design” and celebrates the company’s 30-year anniversary of releasing innovative products. In the early days, those products included motorcycle hand grips, goggles and performance sunglasses that were a hit with extreme sports athletes.
How do you know that you’ve been sufficiently disruptive since? I won’t play the game of what’s disruptive and what’s not, but I will say this. When your brand is healthy enough to get House of Cards frontman Kevin Spacey to narrate your video, you’re doing better than ok.
But a spokesman like Spacey, or even endorsers such as Bubba Watson and Zach Johnson don’t actually change a brand or a sub brand. They might change its perception, or even offer a new insight, but their affiliation does not by itself make something different.
So what actually makes Oakley different? I kept wondering this, and prodded team members with questions that I hoped would lead me to that answer. It didn’t hit home until I sat with Strange at the end of my visit that I finally figured it out.
At the core of Oakley’s business has always been an obsession with individual athletes, the hard-working, go-it-alone perfectionists who do whatever it takes to reach their goal. That’s when it occurred to me that while golf will never be labeled as an extreme sport, the demands golf places on its players are extreme. Few other sports need its athletes to be as precise and consistent as golfers need to be in the time it takes golfers to play 18 holes, and even fewer sports place those athletes on ever-changing courses and climates that are as variable as the ones golfers face.
Let’s look at Oakley’s marquee product in golf, its sunglasses, which became popular in part thanks to their use by David Duval and Annika Sorenstam in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Sunglasses were nothing new to the sport, but Oakley’s models were comfortable, precise and protective against the damage the sun and debris can do to a golfer’s eyes. It didn’t hurt, either, that people thought they were cool.
Above is Bubba Watson’s outfit script for Sunday at the 2014 PGA Championship, with White Take 3.0 pants and the Markus Polo.
Now, Oakley is making even better sunglasses that are more adaptable and available in more styles. Its expanded into performance-first polos, jackets, accessories and golf pants that look the part on the course, but could just as easily be worn in yoga class. They’re that soft, lightweight, bendable and breathable. Again, nothing new, but they just perform a little better.
So why is Oakley in the golf business? Simply put, its team thinks it can make better apparel and accessories than the big guys. In fact, its team thinks that it already has. For the team of performance-obsessed sports product people, what’s cooler than that?
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- Kevin Tway what’s in the bag accurate as of the Wells Fargo Championship. More photos from the event here.
Driver: Ping G430 LST (10.5 degrees)
Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Black 6 X
3-wood: TaylorMade Stealth 2 (15 degrees)
Shaft: Mitsubishi Diamana D+ 80 TX
5-wood: TaylorMade Stealth 2 (18 degrees)
Shaft: Mitsubishi Diamana D+ 90 TX
Irons: Wilson Staff Utility (2), Titleist T100 (4-9)
Shafts: Mitsubishi MMT 100 TX (2), True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 (4-9)
Wedges: Titleist Vokey Design SM10 (48-10F @47, 52-12F @51, 56-14F), SM7 (60-10S)
Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 (48-56), True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 (60)
Putter: Scotty Cameron T-5 Proto
Grip: Scotty Cameron Black Baby T
Grips: Golf Pride Tour Velvet Plus4
More photos of Kevin Tway’s WITB in the forums.
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Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from a piece our Andrew Tursky originally wrote for PGATour.com’s Equipment Report. Head over there for the full article.
The timing of Lowry’s putter changeup was curious: Was he just using a Spider putter because he was paired with McIlroy, who’s been using a Spider Tour X head throughout 2024? Was Lowry just being festive because it’s the Zurich Classic, and he wanted to match his teammate? Did McIlroy let Lowry try his putter, and he liked it so much he actually switched into it?
Well, as it turns out, McIlroy’s only influence was inspiring Lowry to make more putts.
When asked if McIlroy had an influence on the putter switch, Lowry had this to say: “No, it’s actually a different putter than what he uses. Maybe there was more pressure there because I needed to hole some more putts if we wanted to win,” he said with a laugh.
To Lowry’s point, McIlroy plays the Tour X model, whereas Lowry switched into the Tour Z model, which has a sleeker shape in comparison, and the two sole weights of the club are more towards the face.
Lowry’s Spider Tour Z has a white True Path Alignment channel on the crown of his putter, which is reminiscent of Lowry’s former 2-ball designs, thus helping to provide a comfort factor despite the departure from his norm. Instead of a double-bend hosel, which Lowry used in his 2-ball putters, his new Spider Tour Z is designed with a short slant neck.
“I’ve been struggling on the greens, and I just needed something with a fresh look,” Lowry told GolfWRX.com on Wednesday at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship. “It has a different neck on it, as well, so it moves a bit differently, but it’s similar. It has a white line on the back of it [like my 2-ball], and it’s a mallet style. So it’s not too drastic of a change.
“I just picked it up on the putting green and I liked the look of it, so I was like, ‘Let’s give it a go.’”
Read the rest of the piece over at PGATour.com.
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Equipment
Webb Simpson equipment Q&A: Titleist’s new 2-wood, 680 blade irons, and switching to a broomstick Jailbird
With seven career wins on the PGA Tour, including a U.S. Open victory, Webb Simpson is a certified veteran on the course. But he’s also a certified veteran in the equipment world, too. He’s a gearhead who truly knows his stuff, and he’s even worked closely with Titleist on making his own custom 682.WS irons.
On Wednesday at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship, I caught up with Simpson to hear about his experience with Titleist’s new prototype 2-wood, how Titleist’s 680 Forged irons from 2003 ended up back in his bag, and why he’s switching into an Odyssey Ai-One Jailbird Cruiser broomstick putter this week for the first time.
Click here to read our full story about Simpson’s putter switch on PGATOUR.com’s Equipment Report, or continue reading below for my full Q&A with Simpson at Quail Hollow Club on Wednesday.
See Webb Simpson’s full WITB from the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship here
GolfWRX: It seems like you’ve been a little all over the place with your irons in the past six months or so, and now going back to the 680’s. Is that just a comfort thing? What’s been going on with the irons?
Webb Simpson: Titleist has been so great at working with me, and R&D, on trying to get an iron that kind of modernizes the 680. And so the 682.WS took the T100 grooves, but kinda took the look and the bulk and the build of the 680’s into one club. They’re beautiful, and awesome looking. I just never hit them that well for a consistent period of time. It was probably me, but then I went to T100’s and loved them. I loved the spin, the trajectory, the yardage, but again, I never went on good runs. Going through the ground, I couldn’t feel the club as well as with the blade. So last week, I’m like, ‘Alright. I’m gonna go back more for…comfort, and see if I can get on a nice little run of ball striking.’
So that’s why I went back.
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OK, that makes sense. I know you had done some 2-wood testing recently. Is that in the bag right now?
It’s like day-by-day. I used it at Hilton Head every day. Valero, I used it one round. And this week, me and my caddie will do the book every morning, and if it’s a day where we think we need it, we’ll just put it in and take the 3-wood out. I love it because it’s a super simple swap. Like, it doesn’t really change much.
Yeah, can you tell me about that club? I mean, we don’t really know anything about it yet. You know? I haven’t hit it or anything, obviously.
It has grooves like a 3-wood. Spin is perfect. And it’s honestly, like, everything is in the middle of a 3-wood and driver number. Trajectory, spin, carry, all of it. So, a Hilton Head golf course is almost too easy to talk about because, you know, there, so many holes are driver 3-wood.
Valero, our thinking was we had two par-5’s into the wind, and we knew that it would take two great shots to get there in two. So instead of hitting driver-driver, we just put it in. And I used it on those holes.
Hilton was a little easier because it was off-the-tee kind of questions. But Colonial will be a golf course where, you know, there’s a lot of driver or 3-woods. It’s kind of like a backup putter or driver for me now. I’ll bring it to every tournament.
So it’s, like, in your locker right now, probably?
Well, it would be. It’s in my house [because Webb lives near by Quail Hollow Club, and is a member at the course.] It’s in the garage.
Oh, yeah, that’s right. Do you know what holes you might use it out here if it goes in play?
Potentially 15, depending on the wind. Second shot on 10. Could be 14 off the tee. The chances here are pretty low (that he’ll use the 2-wood). But, like, Greensboro would be an awesome club all day. I’m trying to think of any other golf courses.
There’s plenty that it’ll be a nice weapon to have.
It’s interesting, the wave of 2-woods and mini drivers. Like, it’s just really taken off on Tour, and all the companies have seemed to embrace it.
Yeah. The thing I had to learn, it took me, like, at least a week to learn about it is you gotta tee it up lower than you think. I kept teeing it up too high. You need it low, like barely higher than a 3-wood. And that was where I got optimal spin and carry. If you tee it up too high, you just don’t get as much spin and lose distance, I don’t know if that’s just a mini driver thing.
And you obviously have a Jailbird putter this week. What spurred that on?
Inconsistent putting. I’m stubborn in a lot of ways when it comes to my equipment, but I have to be open minded – I just hadn’t putted consistently well in a while. And I’m like, ‘Man, I feel my ball-striking coming along. Like I feel better; for real, better.’
If I can just get something in my hands that I’m consistent with. Being on Tour, you see it every year, guys get on little runs. I can put together four to five tournaments where I’m all the sudden back in the majors, or in the FedExCup Playoffs. You can turn things around quick out here. I’m like, ‘Man, whatever’s going to get me there, great.’
My caddie, David Cook, caddied for Akshay at the Houston Open and he putted beautifully. Then, I watched Akshay on TV at Valero, and he putted beautifully. And, I’m like, ‘I’m just going to try it.’
I’ve never tried it for more than a putt or two, and I just ordered what Akshay uses. It was pretty awkward at first, but the more I used it, the more I’m like, ‘Man, it’s pretty easy.’ And a buddy of mine who’s a rep out here, John Tyler Griffin, he helped me with some setup stuff. And he said at Hilton Head, he wasn’t putting well, then tried it, and now he makes everything. He was very confident. So I’m like, ‘Alright, I’ll try it.’”
And you’re going with it this week?
Hundred percent.
Alright, I love it. Thank you, I always love talking gear with you. Play well this week.
Thanks, man.
See Webb Simpson’s full WITB from the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship here
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Pingback: The Takeaway: A Look at the Golf Industry (November 2014) « Grow the Game Central
stripe
Oct 16, 2014 at 3:34 pm
I can get down with the clothes but will always stick with FJ.
Gregg
Oct 15, 2014 at 10:49 am
At the high school golf level I see a lot of Under Armour clothing and very little Oakley stuff.
Craig
Oct 15, 2014 at 9:55 am
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Oakley lost it’s cool factor a long time ago. And Bubba has never been cool.
hjsdl
Oct 14, 2014 at 11:57 am
Oakley makes very good products and had Rory not signed with Nike, Oakley might have been one of the top selling clothing brands in golf by now.
Corny
Oct 14, 2014 at 2:43 am
I hate that O symbol, it gets in the way of everything, it looks so out of place and corny. It’s corny baby, yeah, corny!
Jeremy
Oct 14, 2014 at 3:40 pm
Zach Johnson needs a bigger belt buckle.
J
Oct 14, 2014 at 12:44 am
Wonder when Oakley makes a putter…. Bet they do.
RumtumTim
Oct 13, 2014 at 10:16 pm
Oakley hasn’t been “cool” since the LeMond days.
Ponjo
Oct 14, 2014 at 5:25 pm
That’s like saying Nike has not been cool since Tiger did what he did.
Mike Belkin
Oct 13, 2014 at 9:06 pm
I do view Oakley as a disruptive brand especially in the golf space, but am surprised at how little we see Oakley product on our NCCGA college golfers. Part of that may be that NCCGA college teams are somewhat geographically East-coast centric, however.