Dear MyGolfSpy Readers:
This would normally be the time when I’d tell you all about Callaway’s new XR Driver.
I’m not writing that story today. Instead, I’m going to break a pseudo-promise I made to Harry Arnett, Callaway’s Senior VP of Marketing.
A few months back, I told Harry that product or no product in-hand, company-supplied info or not (we can get the details from other sources), I was never not going to cover a major Callaway release.
As it turns out I’m not going to have much more to say about the XR driver.
Instead, I’m using this time and space to pull back the curtain to reveal the true story of what’s really going on between MyGolfSpy and Callaway. I’m going to be as honest and transparent as I possibly can, because I’m sick of tired of the speculation and accusations from people who have absolutely no idea what’s actually going on.
It’s time to put it all out there.
A Patent Dispute
For those relatively new to MyGolfSpy, I should probably tell you that the owner of MyGolfSpy got his start in the industry as an independent club designer. Some of you have probably played one of his creations.
Very long story short, he believes that a key Callaway technology, one that has generated millions in revenue for the company, leveraged one of his original designs. He believes he should be fairly compensated for an idea he contends Callaway used to help re-launch its brand in 2014.
I personally have no way of knowing if that’s true (I wasn’t in the room), but nobody at Callaway denies those original meetings took place. Nobody denies his designs were shown to Callaway engineers. There’s also an email trail that suggests Callaway representatives liked what they saw.
No reasonable person could deny the obvious similarities between his design and what Callaway eventually brought to market.
I’m not going to get into the specifics of the design – and I’m sure as hell not going to weigh-in on whether the dispute has any merit. There are chasms between what is right and what is legal. Sometimes similar is legally the same, sometimes not. The ultimate resolution is a matter for lawyers and judges.
As a matter of absolute fact, I can tell you that Callaway thought enough of the claim to host a meeting with my boss at last year’s PGA Show.
We’ll come back to this in a minute, but it’s important to point out that the timing of most of this roughly coincides with last year’s driver test.
2014’s Most Wanted Driver Test
There are some who believe the origins of the ongoing issues between our companies lie with lingering bitterness over the results of last year’s driver test where Callaway’s NEW (at the time) Big Bertha finished in the statistical middle (based on standard deviations of total performance). Because we rank by the numbers, it was listed near the bottom.
Clearly Callaway was disappointed by the result, and Harry Arnett’s response on Social Media reflects that. Despite celebrating XHot’s 1st place finish the year before, the company’s representatives didn’t hesitate to belittle our test.
There’s an obvious hypocrisy there which we didn’t hesitate to point out.
One can make a perfectly fair argument that six testers isn’t the ideal sample size, but at the time, nobody was offering a better alternative, and my viewpoint is that Callaway’s initial reaction suggested it was sandbagged. It certainly gave some the impression that they didn’t know what they were getting into when they agreed to participate. That certainly wasn’t the case. The details of our test are explicitly laid out in the invitation.
There are countless club tests conducted annually. None of them are perfect (there’s no such thing). We know the flaws with everybody’s tests, and Callaway does too. For whatever reason (and the reason is obvious enough), ours was the one the company’s representatives chose to go after publicly.
I will absolutely concede that I was less than thrilled by the company’s willingness to incite (in fairness, I believe this was inadvertent) its loyalists to troll us on Twitter, and complete unwillingness to straighten out the factual inaccuracies being tossed around by those same fans.
We fought back. Just as Callaway did, we defended our brand, and things escalated quickly.
As I said, I was angered – and I’ve subsequently let my Callaway contacts know that, but I’m also not a guy who holds a grudge (ask around), nor do I ever let business disputes become personal (again, ask around).
We moved on with our fairway wood test, and had absolutely zero reservations about naming Callaway’s Big Bertha Fairway Wood the winner.
Back to the Patent Dispute
As an unfortunate timing coincidence, not far removed from our driver test, the patent dispute reached a boiling point. Those of you keeping up on Twitter witnessed a flame war for the ages, and what was put out publicly was tame compared to what was exchanged via email. If you missed the back and forth, sufficed to say it was ugly.
I’m not going to sugarcoat anything. My boss, he has no filter (and that’s from a guy most would say lacks a filter himself). He says exactly what’s on his mind..sometimes all of it. He is at times abrasive, and very often rubs people the wrong way. For those of you who read his article on Bob Parsons, let’s just say the two share some similar personality traits.
Knowing him as I do, and getting to know those on the other side of this mess a bit, it’s relatively easy for me to understand how a business dispute – one with origins that pre-date MyGolfSpy somehow escalated to a deeply personal level damaging a solid business relationship in the process. We have exceptionally passionate people on both sides of the metaphorical table, and when passionate people disagree – especially where money is involved – relationships can sometimes go sideways…really sideways.
From my perspective, there’s plenty of blame to go around. Quite frankly, in letting the dispute manifest itself both personally and publicly, it’s fair to say neither side handled things with any particular grace.
All of this came to a head when Callaway’s legal team made the internal determination that no patent infringement had taken place and that it would not offer the compensation discussed during the meeting at the PGA Show. As his response, the owner of MyGolfSpy told representatives of Callaway Golf that he would consider using the full reach of MyGolfSpy to tell his story.
If the proverbial fan wasn’t already covered in excrement, it was now.
As a major golf media outlet, this website is his leverage. I would imagine it’s an almost unprecedented situation.
In response, Callaway made the decision to withhold all product and related information from MyGolfSpy.
Lots of back and forth…some publicly, some privately, and nearly one year later, we’re almost exactly where we were when this started.
None of It Matters To Me
I want to be absolutely clear about several things:
With regard to the patent dispute, I have no particular dog in the fight. Wherever the truth lies (and I make no claiming on knowing where it does), compensation for the design or not, my life is not impacted (financially or otherwise). I have no personal stake in the situation, and it has never impacted how I’ve covered Callaway Golf.
Certainly articles I’ve written about Callaway over the past year have been critical at times, but one thing has nothing to do with the other. Obviously I’m not oblivious to the fact that it may look otherwise, but I am my own man. Believe that. I’ve been perfectly clear with both my boss and the guys at Callaway; while the communication gap obvious impacts my ability to do my job to the best of my ability (and I don’t like that), I will not be involved in any of the other stuff.
And so yes, I have taken shots at some of what Callaway has done in the last year. Anyone who’s been here a while also knows that at one time or another I have been mercilessly critical of nearly every golf company on the planet, which is exactly why Callaway isn’t the first to put us in time out. I don’t make friends easily, but I am well-respected (mostly).
If you look at the whole of the body of Callaway-specific work, as well as how Callaway has responded, one could surmise that the company took some of what I wrote to heart.
After I criticized Callaway’s claim of Big Bertha being the #1 Selling Driver in Golf, Callaway changed the graphic to provide what I would characterize as more accurate context.
After I criticized Callaway’s V-Series launch, specifically the video where the company claimed that the new driver was “for anyone who wants to hit the ball farther”, the company removed the video.
My criticism has been neither unreasonable nor unfair. I stand by every word I’ve written without reservation.
The Communication Black Out
For the duration of the dispute, I have made every effort to work with Callaway, and from my perspective, the company hasn’t always followed through to the degree it suggested it would.
Early on, Callaway representatives suggested that a simple conversation could have cleared up some of the open-ended questions I raised in an article.
Fair enough, but my response was that it’s difficult to involve Callaway in the article when the company is unwilling to actually provide information or contribute in any way to the article.
You can’t provide two sides of a story when one side isn’t communicating, but that doesn’t mean I won’t write the article.
As the launch of Big Bertha Alpha 815 approached, I was told that, regardless of any dispute, Callaway would always answer marketing questions. With nearly two weeks of lead time, I submitted several questions, none of which received an answer. Those are the same unanswered questions I included in the Big Bertha Alpha 815 launch article.
Part of my job is to ask questions. If they go unanswered, I’m not going to pretend they weren’t asked.
While trying to work through the larger issues, at Callaway’s request I provided an outline of what we were willing to do to get things moving in the right direction. Well over a month later, the company’s response, which was tied to its decision to not participate in this year’s driver test, was that it will continue with the status quo for now.
And so here we are.
So Where Does that Leave Us?
As you can imagine, Callaway declined to provide any information around its most recent product launch. While some may point to the current situation as reason enough, I would suggest to you that Callaway’s efforts (or lack thereof) are inching closer to media manipulation – especially when one considers the efforts the company makes elsewhere to ensure its products receive a significant amount of favorable coverage.
For the sake of total transparency, I haven’t addressed this with Callaway (I’m sure it will be discussed shortly), but I’ve come to believe that by allowing us to be cast in the role of anti-Callaway malcontents, the company can more easily de-legitimize whatever criticism we happen to levy. Having us perceived as the bad guys probably doesn’t hurt Callaway.
That’s far from who we are.
No Resolution
The likelihood is that we’re far removed from any sort of resolution. The impact of how the the larger situation impedes my ability to provide you with timely, in-depth coverage of Callaway releases is frustrating, but the issues, I believe, are not insurmountable. I’m an optimist.
While the larger situation is unfortunate, I’ve worked (and certainly Callaway shares credit here) to maintain what I believe to be solid professional, even friendly relationships with several of the guys at Callaway. At some point…someday…probably not tomorrow, we’ll come out the other side.
So with the understanding that a resolution may not be in the immediate future, I felt it was necessary to put the speculation to bed, and let all of you know what’s really going on. We’re huge proponents of transparency, and given how much of what probably should have been handled privately has been aired publicly, I wanted to make sure our readers, regardless of how you might feel about the situation, understand its origins.
Speculative discussion have been had elsewhere, and so we might just as well have a more informed discussion here.
Thank you for your continued support of MyGolfSpy,
Tony
Tony Covey
Equipment Editor – MyGolfSpy
giles
9 years ago
Thanks for this article, it is helpful to understand the media relations and practices of a large company. Great job standing tall when, it sounds like, you are under various forms of attack. Keep doing a great job with the evaluations.