When Golf Companies Fight

Oh, it's not a pretty sight. Callaway recently ran ads claiming that its Diablo driver is longer than TaylorMade's Burner driver. Which led TaylorMade to whip out its ... uh ... own test results and scream, "Look! Look, mine's bigger than yours!"

TaylorMade sent out an email to its subscribers with the subject line "Bad Lies." Look on the TaylorMadeGolf.com homepage and you'll see the same large headline.

The email and homepage exclaim, "A competitor recently made deceptive claims that their drivers are longer than TaylorMade drivers. Those claims are not true. To mislead golfers about their inferior equipment (awwwwww snap!*), they manipulated the variables and conditions of their tests to achieve the results they wanted."

Gee, I wish I could manipulate the variables and conditions of the pro shop to achieve the affordable price I'd like to see on TaylorMade (and Callaway, and Titleist, and ...) equipment.

On the TM Web site, the company's Senior Director of Product Creation, Tom Olsavsky, appears in a couple-minutes-long video laying the smack down on Callaway's claims. He concludes by saying, "And Callaway's developers have bad breath**."

This feud ain't pretty, and neither is Tom, but it's fun! TaylorMade and Callaway, I demand water balloons at 20 paces!

*I added this, it didn't actually appear in the email ... but it should have!
**Not really.