8 Failed Golf Technologies: Some Of Golf’s Most Interesting Misses

Golf technologies (sometimes even good ones) typically fail for one of three reasons.

1. The idea is fundamentally bad. You might even call it a gimmick.

2. The resulting product defies expectations in a bad way. It doesn’t pass the eye (or ear) test.

3. It’s a solution in search of a problem. Even if there might be real benefits, often the market isn’t ready … or interested.

And, of course, in many cases, failed technologies exhibit two or three of the reasons listed above.

With that said, let’s take a look at some golf technologies that didn’t quite make the cut.

Square drivers

Before anybody was talking about 10K drivers, a couple of major (or I suppose, major adjacent) manufacturers (Callaway and NIKE) released square drivers. The objective was to maximize the MOI component of forgiveness and push heel/toe inertia up against the 5,900 limit.

In one sense, the square designs accomplished the objective. They were super-stable and super-consistent. Unfortunately, given the best available technology, they were also comparatively slow and shorter than most anything else on the market.

The reality is that while many golfers love a forgiveness story, and many of us would benefit from a bit of extra help, nobody wants to give up distance to get it. As if the performance implications weren’t bad enough, square drivers were absolute eyesores and the feel was less than pleasant.

Cavity-back drivers

If you don’t put more than a few seconds of thought into it, cavity-back drivers almost make sense. As golfers, we’ve been conditioned to associate cavity-back irons with perimeter weighting and, by extension, more forgiveness and so, I suppose, a cavity-back driver almost sounds like a good idea.

In the driver category, however, cavity-back designs, most notably NIKE’s Covert lineup, were an exercise in poor design.

By effectively pushing a significant portion of what should be the sole into the crown, NIKE raised its centers of gravity to extreme levels, creating lower launch, an excessive amount of spin and sub-optimal ball speeds.

While it wasn’t the only mistake one could point to, this stream of cavity-back drivers contributed to NIKE’s exit from the equipment space.

As a footnote to this part of our story, NIKE wasn’t entirely alone in buggering the fundamentals of driver design. Mac Burrows’ Powersphere offered a similarly poor approach.

Sloped-crown drivers (OG Cleveland HiBore)

The anti-Covert of sorts, Cleveland’s original HiBore design worked to lower the center of gravity while offering relatively high MOI for its time. The tradeoff was a shape that was not quite square and anything but traditional.

At the time, I’d argue that HiBore series was a mostly good idea that didn’t pass the eye test (or the ear test, for that matter).

By today’s standards, it would fail on aerodynamics alone which is likely why when Cleveland brought back HiBore this year, they leaned into a triangular shape rather than the swept crown of the original.

Adjustable wedges

I’m going to offer up two different approaches to adjustable wedges, neither of which proved viable.

If you find yourself intrigued, Bruce Sizemore’s MORE wedges are still available.

MORE wedges are completely modular which admittedly sounds kind of cool. With separate hosel (adjustable loft), face and flange pieces, you could not only swap a worn face without buying a new wedge but also use the flange to change the bounce.

Why buy multiple wedges when you just need to tweak the sole?

Apart from the $350 price tag, the fundamental problem was that MORE wedges aren’t particularly strong performers. They produced lower spin than most competitors, had a right-miss tendency and delivered subpar feel.

In chasing more features than the market demands, they fail at the fundamentals.

Of the two examples, one could argue that TaylorMade’s replaceable-face xFT wedges made more sense. That’s especially true at the Tour level where custom sole grinds are ubiquitous. If you can replace a worn face without having to recreate what is often a one-of-one sole grind, it’s a real advantage.

While xFT wedges had a small cult following beyond the Tour, where it’s hard enough to get players to change grips and wedges seemingly have an infinite lifespan, the demand didn’t justify the design.

It’s also nearly universally true that as construction complexity increases and you start adding screws and various disrupted connection points, feel invariably suffers. In a category that all but demands something approximating forged feel, simpler is often better.

Harrison Shotmaker

The Shotmaker was a 12-inch-long removable shaft insert. Designed specifically to stabilize the tip section of the golf shaft, the company claimed it could improve dispersion by up to 40 percent.

Reviews (including ours) were generally positive but OEMs were dismissive of the purported benefits. Even for fitters, matching the golfer to the right Shotmaker insert seemed like an educated guess at best and it ultimately never received widespread awareness, let alone adoption.

There may have been something to the tech and, over the years, some have flirted with the idea of reintroducing it but, for now, it seems like we’ve heard the end of the story.

Magnesium drivers

Magnesium has been used a time or few as a driver material due to its lightweight properties. A low-density material, magnesium theoretically would allow designers to reposition mass for better forgiveness and launch conditions.

In practice, compared to titanium and carbon composites, magnesium failed to deliver significant performance benefits while simultaneously introducing new design challenges.

Despite its weight advantage, magnesium lacks the durability necessary to withstand repeated high-speed impacts, making it prone to denting and cracking.

It also oxidized easily and the muted sound and feel aren’t particularly appealing for many golfers.

With titanium offering superior strength and proven performance and carbon composites excelling in weight savings, magnesium never gained widespread adoption and has been largely abandoned in golf club design.

True Aim alignment stickers

Basically, they were stickers you put on your driver crown to improve accuracy and dispersion. At the time, we believed they would catch on and, if memory serves, there was at least one OEM kicking the tires on integrating the decals or at least a version of them with their drivers.

They came in several patterns and there was a documented process for figuring out which one was right for you. Though USGA-approved, they never caught on. The idea faded and the company moved on to ball markers but I’m not convinced they couldn’t have helped golfers drive the ball better.

COBRA CARBONTRAC

The biggest challenge when bundling a ton of adjustability into a golf club is accounting for, or offsetting, the weight lost to the structures necessary to support the movable weight.

With its F6+ driver, COBRA attempted to solve the problem by using carbon fiber to create the structures that enabled it to slide weight from the extreme front to extreme rear of its drivers.

In a different version of this story, CARBONTRAC might be considered alongside a long list of other COBRA innovations but the reality is CARBONTRAC had significant sound and feel implications (and none of them were good).

Despite its best efforts, COBRA was unable to resolve the acoustic issue and so, despite being otherwise fundamentally sound technology, CARBONTRAC was scrapped before F7 hit the market.

What else?

What other failed golf technologies can you think of? Were they good ideas without an audience or fundamentally flawed from the start?