Is This A Ripoff? Yes, but so what.

Pick any golf technology. Composite crowns, cupped faces, rubber cores, weights (both affixed and movable), slots (speed & velocity), compression channels – whatever you want to call them, the ubiquitous Anser putter, and everything else; done and redone.

If you think you’ve seen it before, you probably have.

Nearly every manufacturer, nearly every technology.

Is Tour Edge’s new Rally Wedge a PM Grind rip-off? Yup, and blatantly so. Is the PM Grind spawned from PING’s Eye2. Maybe. Not even Callaway would deny similarities.

Does any of that actually matter?

Not even a little.

It’s likely that every club in your bag was begotten of a previous creation, and anything that’s been successfully evolved will beget more. It’s the circle of life within the golf equipment world.

Do we really have shits to give about this?

I don’t care who created the first adjustable driver, just give me a better one…or at least a cheaper one.

That’s what I want.

We All Do It

All this pointless “they borrowed/stole <insert new product here> from <insert whomever you think did it first here>” stuff that we’ve all complained about from time to time…it’s just that; pointless. It’s tedious.

I’m guilty of it too. Not long ago I called out Callaway for their Turbulator-inspired Speed Step Crown. Yeah, the story sure was familiar, but in retrospect, shame on me. I can’t really fault anyone.

G30 was a winner; the #1 driver model in golf last season. Duplication to nearly any extent is smart design. Failure to make it through so much as a paragraph without mentioning Boeing is brilliant marketing.

This is Not That

Similarities are always in the eye of the beholder, and they inevitably always illicit rage to varying degrees – Example A:

Come on @TaylorMadeGolf. It’s time for @GolfChannel, @MyGolfSpy, @GolfWRX, @pgaofamerica to call you out. #frauds pic.twitter.com/rH3PODXEw9

— Golf Rep Guy (@SalesRepGuy) February 10, 2016

While this may look like that (and give me any club and I’ll find another it looks just like), it’s seldom about ripping off a competitor.

It’s about responding to the consumer and chasing what sells. Also, what does the PGA of America have to do with this?

Is the 2016 TaylorMade M2 really trying to be the 2015 Cobra Fly-Z? C’mon.

A bit of yellow paint, reportedly similar centers of gravity, and they’re both designed to hit golf balls.

One’s metal, the other UnMetal. Speed Pockets and Smart Pads are different things. Yeah, they both have words on the sole, but otherwise, they’re nearly as different as any two back-CG drivers can be. That is to say, probably not all that much, but that’s true of everything.

As long as the common sense bottom line is why innovate when the other guy has already found the answer, there will always be overlap. There’s profit in someone else’s ingenuity.

It’s not just the equipment companies either. Media does it too. Content ideas, layout and formatting, even stories themselves. The better something works, the faster the clock on exclusivity ticks for all of us. It’s reality; no more, no less.

A year ago our competitors said data-driven club tests were meaningless, now they flatter us.

And that’s the thing. Imitation isn’t just flattery, it’s validation. Just don’t expect anyone to cop to it. While there’s little honor among thieves, hypocrisy festers in abundance.

This too is the undisputed reality of the industry.

Advancing Good Ideas, Ignoring Bad Ones

Today’s technology makes it easier than ever before to reverse engineer the old and rapid prototype the new.

Here’s your reality check: If two, maybe three years go by and somebody’s latest and greatest technology hasn’t been co-opted by a competitor, you can be all but assured that it was shit technology to begin with.

If it’s copied, at least you know it works.

It Is What It Is

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like any of this, and I hate condoning it, even excusing it, but what’s really to be done? If it’s a problem, it’s twofold;

Nearly everyone in the industry does it, and nearly everyone in the industry accepts it.

Like I said…circle of life.

So let me prep you for the next battleground in the war of who did what first. It probably won’t be long before TaylorMade, Callaway, PING or somebody else with measurable market share produces a single-length iron set.

As you always do, one of you will say Tom Wishon did it first. Another will say it was Edel. A third will site an obscure patent to prove everyone else wrong. It won’t matter.

It is what it is.

So by all means, let’s grab a bottle of single malt and celebrate the few true innovators we have until none of us are left standing, but make no mistake; almost everything is derivative, and it almost never matters who did what first, or even who did it best.

It only matters who sells the most.

It’s time we all came to terms with that.