Widespread fake brand golf clubs

By Kim Jeong-kyoo

Golf has emerged as a popular, contactless, outdoor sport, becoming a big business. Unfortunately, this situation has attracted crooks who want to abuse it, prompting them to make fake brand-name golf clubs. Phony golf clubs have become more widespread lately as the people newly taking up the sport have exploded in number.

Every golfer needs a set of clubs to play the game. Those who have become newly interested in playing golf have triggered global supply issues for golf products. Golf items such as drivers and irons have reportedly become scarce. It looks like the supply is not satisfying worldwide demand. This situation has resulted in price hikes.

Thus, a huge market for bogus “brand” golf items has burst onto the scene. You cannot easily distinguish fakes from real products unless you are an expert or before you try them out.

By this token, as a golfer, you need to be careful when you encounter deals that look too good. If you find that a price seems too low, you can assume that something is wrong with the product in question. There's always a reason golf clubs are cheap, and chances are they are knockoff clubs.

When buying a club online, don't believe a seller who might claim, for instance, that the club was a gift that he does not need. Sellers of bogus golf clubs on the Internet will tell specious stories like this one to cheat you out of your hard-earned money.

You'd be better off buying golf clubs in a sanctioned shop to protect yourselves from getting scammed. That way you will stay safe from buying fake brand items. In fact, fake golf equipment has a long history on the black market.

Golf club counterfeiting began roughly 30 years ago when Taiwan and China started getting golf club production orders from the United States. Engineers and foundries there were well-known for doing phenomenal work at unbeatable prices. Naturally, they started to counterfeit clubs and other golf items. Now they are reportedly making roughly 85 percent of the bogus golf clubs worldwide.

The AP reported in August 2020 that the U.S. Golf Manufacturers Anti-Counterfeiting Working Group and 100 local Shanghai police officers had raided 10 facilities operating in the online golf business. The joint operation team raided club-head manufacturers, shaft and grip suppliers, shipping centers, owners of assembling workshops and online chat rooms.

In the raid, they seized over 120,000 counterfeit products bearing the fake brand names of Callaway, TaylorMade, PING, PXG, Titleist and XXIO among others. Counterfeit golf products uncovered were worth over $1.8 million, the largest phony golf equipment seizure in history. The working group's efforts led to the shutdown of more than 1,500 websites last year, spurring authorities to seize more than 2 million fake brand golf products.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Working Group, which is a watchdog association, revealed last August that more than two million fakes are produced annually. The association estimated that the total value of bogus golf products globally could reach roughly $1.8 trillion by the end of last year.

This situation goes to prove that fake brand golf products have become widespread around the world. I presume that knockoff golf clubs have become more rampant lately as new golf enthusiasts have surged in number.

You can readily hypothesize that a counterfeit club will perform worse than the real product. If you have ever wondered how much worse a fake driver can be, these are the results of a scientific experiment conducted in Sacramento, California, in 2019, using the Track Man Launch Monitor.

The test showed that a bogus Ping driver was substantially inferior to a genuine Ping G400 driver. The authentic driver hit an average of 21.1 yards farther than the fake driver on a much more consistent basis. I believe that such results will hold equally true for other brands.

The author lives in a rural village near Seoul, teaching and studying golf.