A Red Alert for Adams Golf

Its new hybrid increases speculation on the brand’s future.

Tony Dear

When TaylorMade-Adidas Golf purchased Adams Golf three years ago, the industry immediately began speculating about TaylorMade’s plans for its $70 million acquisition.

“The combination of Adams Golf and TaylorMade-Adidas Golf brings together two highly complementary sets of brands,” said adidas Group’s CEO Herbert Hainer. “It combines Adams' focus on game-improvement as well as senior and women golfers with TaylorMade-Adidas Golf’s focus on the younger and the low-to-mid handicap golfer.”

A lot of savvy golfers weren’t buying it. Most suspected TaylorMade’s intentions were not quite so altruistic. Speculation was that, instead of taking advantage of, and actually promoting, Adams’s undeniable reputation for innovation, the market leader was really going to dissolve the brand entirely.

Give it a year they said, and the only products with the Adams name on them would be complete bagged sets you could buy for $149.99 at Walmart.

At the end of the second year, they argued, Adams would vanish altogether, its groundbreaking Tight Lies fairway woods just a distant memory.

Some said TaylorMade, whose revenue had risen 20% to over $1.4 billion the year before it bought Adams (whose net sales the same year were a solid $96 million), believed the smaller company might actually have been a threat. It was one of the very few manufacturers considered able to beat TaylorMade to a certain technological breakthrough, or introduce a piece of equipment better than TaylorMade’s equivalent.

Why not just buy the competition, the doubters contended, and make that possibility disappear?

Three years after the deal was finalized, however, it is still not entirely clear what is going to happen to Adams Golf. Its scaled-down website makes very little mention, if any, of the brand’s proud past or its commitment to innovation. That suggests the cynics were right and that TaylorMade is slowly withdrawing the brand, much the same as Callaway did with Ben Hogan.

And yet Adams still counts Tom Watson, Bernhard Langer, Ernie Els and others among its playing staff. A look at its current inventory reveals a new Tight Lies fairway wood for 2015; the new Blue Series of driver, woods and irons; and a new hybrid—the Red—that has received some very high marks.

The first thing you notice about the Red Hybrid is its size. Unlike so many other hybrids which have grown larger to increase forgiveness, the Red’s head is just 95 cc. The focus, says Adams, is on versatility and the ability to hit a wider range of difficult shots.

The familiar upside-down shape ensures a low center of gravity that makes it easy to get the ball airborne, and the sole slot (Vertical Slot) and barely visible crown slot (Ghost Slot) increase ball speed, helping to generate more distance.

There’s more. Three transferrable weights on the sole (one 25g and two 2g) can be configured to promote the shot shape you’re most comfortable hitting (pictured top).

The Red Hybrid ($230) is a strong addition to Adams’s product line. The brand may be going through considerable change, but it’s still alive and kicking. For now.

RELATED LINKS

Compare hybrids and fairway woods

How a hybrid can replace your wedge

2015 Buyer’s Guide

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