By Ted Johnson
GolfWeb Contributor
These are heady times for Nike Golf, the stand-alone entity that handles all matters related to golf for the $10-billion, sporting goods giant based in Beaverton, Ore.
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| Tiger Woods switched to the Nike Tour Accuracy golf ball midway through the 2000 season. (Allsport) |
Tiger Woods was scheduled to be on hand Friday for the ceremony that dedicates a conference center in his name on the sprawling Nike campus. It's an honor bestowed upon the likes of Michael Jordan, Alberto Salazar, Bo Jackson, Mike Schmidt, Joan Benoit, Mia Hamm and Ken Griffey Jr., among others. It will be about a 30-minute celebration before all the employees and their families.
Two years ago, Nike was dabbling in golf -- shoes, umbrellas, gloves and bags -- but it had no plans to design clubs or balls. Of course, it didn't hurt that Woods was wearing the company's shoes and apparel.
Nike Golf President Bob Wood kept saying it had to be "authentic" to be a real player in the ultra-competitive industry. That's when Mike Kelly, then a 31-year-old marketing whiz, was lured from Taylor Made to help Wood and others build Nike Golf's presence.
Since then, Nike Golf has developed a successful ball line, which gained the ultimate authenticity when Woods switched to it mid-way through the 2000 season. He went on to win the Memorial Tournament, as well as four successive major championships.
David Duval, like Woods ahead of him, had been an all-Titleist man until Nike lured him away late last year. Now Duval wears all Nike apparel and even plays a set of prototype Nike irons, designed by noted clubmaker Tom Stites of Fort Worth, Texas.
A 3-wood, wedges and putters are now being handed out on ranges. Players are coming to Nike to see what the company has to offer, said Kelly, who has been promoted to Golf Category Business Director.
What makes this so unique, Kelly pointed out, is that Nike could be the only brand that outfits better players from head to toe, including golf glove, bag, clubs, woods, irons, putters, summer wear, cool-weather outerwear and rain gear. It's the only brand that could do it for the recreational golfer as well.
That's where this Q&A with Kelly began.
Q: Is that the goal -- to be an all-encompassing brand with no separation between the high-performance brand and the value brand?
Kelly: What you're seeing is that Nike is trying to do something that's never been done before. Strata has Top Flight; Titleist has Pinnacle. Maxfli and Slazenger have Dunlop -- the latter being value brands here in America. Nike will be able to stretch across all levels of golfers. And you see it already. With Titleist and Callaway making deals to get into apparel, that there are now these "mega-brands" developing.
Q: Are the products going to be aimed at better players?
Kelly: I think so. People have no problem believing that when Nike comes out with a product it is pretty high performance. What we have been battling is the credibility issue by not owning factories. [Bridgestone manufacturers balls to Nike's specs].
We bought Golf Impact Technologies [Stites' company] and we've been doing all our testing. It's important to lay down a foundation of credibility. Consumers will believe it will be a high performance product and it will have lots of energy behind it -- marketing and promotion. That's all great and everything, but it comes down to: Is it a better club? It's all rhetoric until you tee it up.
Q: When did you really finalize plans to get into clubs?
Kelly: The turning point came last year when Tiger switched to the ball. There never had been any strategic talk about [making clubs] internally. Many said we'd never get Tiger to switch to the Nike ball. That emotion we generated with the ball gave us some confidence to do the clubs. That's when the first strategic meeting happened.
Q: When can consumers expect to see Nike clubs on the shelves?
Kelly: We're building products that are going to be very good when they do come out. Next year is the target, but working with these players we're not tied to anything commercially. It's Pandora's box, what we can do with these players. In the end product for the consumer, there will be a lot of R&D and testing time with the best players. It's like any other product we've done -- specialized track shoes or running suits. They are tested on the world's best and then they work their way through to the consumer.
Q: Does that mean Nike Golf will niche its equipment as for the better player?
Kelly: That's a hard thing to answer. We're not sure what category we're going to get into right away. It's OK to have putters designed to be high-performance. That stretches up to the 25-handicapper. With drivers, it's OK, too, because the amateurs can get higher lofts and softer shafts. It's OK for wedges. But irons, that needs two sets -- a set of blades for better players and something else for higher handicappers.
Q: Tiger has hit the Nike irons. Any estimate when he'll make the switch?
Kelly: It's all about getting a product he likes. It's much like the ball. He kept testing it and we kept revising. We didn't know if it would be 24 months or 12 months. It turned out to be about six months. When we have the right product, he'll switch.
Q: It's been a fast rise -- from being a true outsider in the industry to now looming on the horizon as a powerful, dominant force in the golf industry. Could you have done that without Tiger?
Kelly: We're giving him a building, so he's obviously important. But Tiger is not about the money when it comes to equipment. With shoes and apparel, it could be. But with the golf ball, he felt he could do more. It's not about the contract. It's not about the Swoosh. It's about what the clubs and the ball can do for Tiger. That's why Duval came over.
Could we have been successful without Tiger? Yes. We have lots of players coming over and they're coming over for the product. They want to see what we have.
Having Tiger definitely accelerated it. But there's a downside to that. We all think he's going to win the next 30 majors. Everyone was talking about the Titleist Pro V1 this year, and when Tiger wasn't winning it was because he wasn't playing that ball. Then he won THE PLAYERS Championship and the Masters, and all that talk stopped.
You get the best of it and you get the worst of it. So it's all about player performance on TOUR. We believe there are two strategies to go: Everyone plays our product, or the best players play my product. We'll never want to own the TOUR. More people miss the cut than make the cut. We want people who will be there on Sunday, on television."
Editor's note: Look for Ted Johnson's equipment columns every Friday on PGATOUR.COM and GolfWeb.
