Making par hard with no ball

At Granville Golfland, a Golf Digest Top 100 club fitter 30 minutes east of Columbus, Ohio, custom-fit clubs used to take little more than a week to arrive. Now, customers are being told it may take as long as 12 weeks. At American Golf locations in the UK, they are telling clients they may not arrive 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 could not 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 in 2020, with consolidated net sales of $375m and a 20% increase, compared with the same period a year earlier.

But, combined with continuing pandemic problems, including shutdowns of factories in Vietnam as a result of concerns about 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 secondquarter net sales of $624.9m, up 108.3% year on 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 around custom orders in two business days. Now it is quoting up to seven weeks — 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 huge amounts of leftover inventory to practically having no inventory at all within a matter of weeks. It’s a challenging time for the industry with the demand being at an all-time high, and our valued partners are navigating all sorts of obstacles to try to supply the globe with the necessary products.”

Dean Snell, who runs an eponymous direct-to-market golf ball maker, says smaller firms like his are in an uphill fight against larger ones with more buying power for raw materials and manufacturing processes.

“We didn’t get any shipments in for the first five or six months of this year.” That issue was “compounded when shipping costs went crazy”. Seaborne costs have risen sixfold and air freight can be as much as eight times more. Snell is limiting customers to two boxes per order.

“It’s been an absolute mess,” says Chad Evans, master fitter at True Spec, which has more than 25 locations worldwide. “You just don’t know what you’re going to get and when you’re going to get it.”