LALI STANDER: Opposing fortunes show switching gear contracts is a lottery

It occurs on an admittedly smaller scale, and with far less fanfare than, say, the Premier League, but the end of golf’s calendar year vaguely resembles football’s transfer window.

Some professional golfers upgrade or downgrade the terms of their contracts, while others have their contracts wind down to an end, as they become free agents. With a bit of luck, another big brand will snap them up, but if not, these players are free to play with any equipment brand they can get their hands on.

As many of the world’s top players are already signed up to long contracts, they will stick with one equipment company for most of their careers.

This suits both parties as the brand gets to tie in its superstar golfer for a long period, while the golfer avoids the significant hassle of adapting to a new brand and all its subtle differences in feel and play.

Rory McIlroy signed a 10-year deal worth $100m to play TaylorMade clubs in 2017. It’s a huge figure, and yet it pales into comparison to the $200m apparel sponsorship from Nike.

While McIlroy is effectively tied in to Team TaylorMade for the peak years of his career, others have gambled on switching things about, with varying degrees of success.

Immediate return

Jon Rahm switched to Callaway at the beginning of 2021. At the time he was the world’s No 2-ranked player, with five PGA Tour and six DP World Tour titles to his credit, so a move to a new brand — and in particular a new ball — seemed risky.

Yet the Spaniard reportedly shot a 59 in his first practice round with the clubs and would go on to dominate the world of golf in 2021, winning his first Major championship along the way. Talk about an immediate return on your investment for team Callaway.

Of course, Rahm had been a Callaway player throughout his amateur days, so the switch may not have been as big a leap as one might expect.

Brooks Koepka is another interesting case. A long-standing free agent, he reportedly put Srixon’s ZX7 irons into play for the first time at the Waste Management Phoenix Open last year and promptly won the event. One thing led to another and by November the four-time Major winner had signed on the dotted line and was unveiled as a Srixon staff player — who now plays the company’s driver and ball as well.

Went south

Yet not all players have been so lucky. Former US Open champion Justin Rose made the change from TaylorMade, with whom he had been a marquee player for two decades, to Japanese equipment makers Honma in 2019.

At the time, Rose was at the peak of his game, ranked No 1 in the world. He actually won an event two weeks into his new sponsorship but, the relationship went south from there. Rose fell to 14th in the world within a few months and, after a year, they announced their parting of company. In a polite media statement Rose hoped he had helped “lay the groundwork for Honma to continue to expand their brand”.

Bubba Watson was another star golfer who paid the price for an equipment change. The two-time Masters champion switched his trusty Titleist ball for the lesser known, but brightly coloured, Volvik brand in 2017.

Though it was initially announced as a multiyear deal, Watson’s season tanked badly, and he fell from 10th in the world to 63rd. The American was back to his familiar ProV1 within 12 months.

These high-profile failures do not necessarily mean  the products themselves are inferior. It could just be a case of a bad fit, or perhaps the player was unable to adjust to a new product after so many years with the old one.

In Bubba’s case it’s hard to know what to make of it. The American is not a great one for change regarding his clubs and at one point he had been using the same set of irons for seven consecutive seasons. Quite what convinced him to change balls, I guess we will never know.

Golf’s 2022 transfer window could be worth watching over the next few months. Patrick Reed was spotted wearing a PXG cap at the start of the year, and an announcement soon followed that the man we all love to hate had left free agency to join PXG’s stable of players.

Meanwhile, Abraham Ancer has signed a deal with Callaway. The Mexican, who reached a career high 11th in the world and won a World Golf Championship event last year, will add the Callaway woods and Odyssey putter to his bag, but he won’t be using the irons.

In a novel sponsorship set-up, as an “ambassador” for Japanese equipment brand Miura, makers of some of the finest — and most expensive — forged irons in the game, Ancer is actually a full partner in the company’s Mexico distribution rights. What better way to market your own business than to play your own products on the PGA Tour, right?