Supply chain snags force golfers to wait for clubs

At Granville Golfland, a Golf Digest Top 100 club fitter 30 minutes east of Columbus, Ohio, customfit clubs used to take about seven to ten days to arrive. Now, customers are being told it may take as long as 12 weeks. At American Golf locations in the UK, they're telling clients they might not come until December.

Irons, drivers, putters, even grips have been hard to find because of global supply chain shortages that have delayed everything from semiconductors to chlorine tablets.

For golf, the timing couldn't be worse. The sport enjoyed renewed popularity amid the pandemic: The National Golf Foundation estimates that a record 3 million people played on a golf course for the first time in 2020. More golfers led to additional equipment sales. Industry behemoth Callaway reported a record fourth quarter 2020, with consolidated net sales of $375 million and a 20 per cent increase, compared to the fourth quarter of 2019.

But combined with ongoing pandemic problems, including shutdowns of factories in Vietnam over concerns around the Delta variant, delays have become the norm for both sellers and buyers.

During a call with investors on August 5, David Maher, CEO of Titleist's parent company Acushnet, announced second-quarter net sales of $624.9 million, up 108.3 per cent year over year, but warned that, "While we expect golfer engagement to remain healthy, we do expect to face various levels of disruption within our supply chain." Mizuno, long known as a leader for its golf irons, used to turn custom orders around in two business days. Now they're quoting up to seven weeks-and that's if the components are available.

"The industry saw a turnaround that no one could possibly see coming," says Jeff Crawford, associate marketing manager of Mizuno's golf division. "We went from thinking we'd have massive amounts of leftover inventory to practically having no inventory at all, within a matter of weeks."

Dean Snell, who runs an eponymous direct-to-market golf ball manufacturer, says smaller companies like his are in an uphill fight against larger companies with more buying power for both raw materials and manufacturing processes. "We didn't get any shipments in for the first five or six months of this year."