In the summer of 2018, I wrote a story for our Know Your Japanese Golf Brands series that summarized more than 100 years of Mizuno history.
At that time, Mizuno was well into a revitalization of its iron business. Though it enjoyed a stellar reputation among better players, the lineup had grown bloated and arguably stale. Despite the best efforts and best intentions, Mizuno had shanked its way through the game-improvement category for years. Player’s irons are nice but game-improvement is where the industry makes its money.
Fortunes changed when Mizuno launched the Hot Metal iron as part of the JPX900 series. Clean by category standards, Hot Metal proved to be the game-improvement iron that established Mizuno as a serious player in the segment. Several revisions later, Hot Metal is Mizuno’s best-selling model. Not bad for a brand once regarded as exclusively for better players.
By any reasonable measure, Mizuno’s iron business was moving in the right direction. That was only the beginning. Behind the scenes, the company was laying plans to tackle an even bigger challenge: reestablish the Mizuno brand as a credible player in the driver category.
The Demise
Once a mainstay on the PGA Tour, the quick version of what led to Mizuno’s fall from grace with the driver can be summarized as a series of unfortunate events: a misreading of the tea leaves, PING’s release of the G2 (seriously) and the bad decisions that followed. The finer points are for another day but the summary version is that as a Tour driver brand, Mizuno had lost all credibility.
Its weekly driver count had sunk to near zero.
When it couldn’t convince brand ambassadors like Stacy Lewis and Luke Donald to put its drivers in play, Mizuno compensated by writing contracts that mandated that the company’s headcovers be used to hide its competitors’ products.
It’s not a great look when the No. 1 player in the world pulls off a Mizuno headcover to reveal a TaylorMade driver.
“Our brand ambassadors were damaging our woods reputation.” says Chris Voshall, Mizuno USA Golf Product & Marketing Manager.
So diminished was Mizuno’s driver credibility among the world’s best that Mizuno’s Tour team stopped spending time, or perhaps more directly, wasting time trying to fit Tour pros into its drivers. It wasn’t happening.
The driver was never part of a contract.
A Change of Plans
The view from Mizuno corporate HQ in Osaka, Japan.
In the summer of 2018, Mizuno was about halfway through the lifecycle of a two-driver lineup.
The ST180 was the closest thing Mizuno had to a driver for the masses—the everyman club that sales numbers suggested almost no man wanted. The GT180 was the follow-up to the JPX900. It was the lower spinning of the two and offered an excessive amount of adjustability. Between the weight tracks and the lie adjustment mechanism, the GT180 wasn’t so much an innovative statement as it was the strong suggestion that Mizuno was trying too hard.
If you needed further evidence that Mizuno had lost the plot with the serious golfer, both heads were available exclusively in blue.
The unfiltered truth of the matter is that Mizuno’s designers weren’t making drivers for Tour players because nobody expected Tour players would use them.
It was time for a reset.
Development was well underway on the ST190 driver when, at a meeting at its corporate headquarters in Osaka, Japan, Mizuno made an especially bold decision, given the reputation of its drivers among the world’s best.
2019 would serve as an adjustment year for its Tour ambassadors. They’d be incentivized to play the driver but it wouldn’t be required. Come 2020, Mizuno would play by new rules: any professional under contact with Mizuno would be required to play the driver. No exceptions.
For the plan to succeed, Mizuno would need to get serious about a driver in a way it hadn’t been in more than a decade.
Part and parcel of every equipment story are the details of how the hot new widget was designed with insight and feedback from the Tour staff.
That hadn’t been the case with Mizuno.
“I wouldn’t say we kept them in the dark. We always gave them feedback,” says Voshall. “We always got their opinions on stuff but to say that their feedback had massive effect in terms of the direction that that product was already going would be false. The wheels were in motion, and we kept them in the loop.”
The ST190 represented a fundamental shift in Mizuno design philosophy. Instead of giving Tour pros a heads up on what was in the pipeline, Mizuno began to actively seek their input during the development phase.
“What we always heard from Tour players is, ‘Just make it a little bit more serious, remove a lot of the bells and whistles on the bottom,’” says Voshall.
And, yeah, pick up a can of black paint.
Success Came Unexpectedly and Early
Voshall says Mitchell was initially just going through the motions. Sometimes, Tour players test stuff for no other reason than they’re under contract with the irons. It’s as much a courtesy as anything else. That was the case with Mitchell and the ST190 but the results were eye-opening for everyone.
Mitchell’s gamble on the Mizuno driver paid off. In March 2019, he won the Honda Classic with the ST190.
A mind-blowing footnote in all of this: Mitchell’s was the first Tour win with a Mizuno driver since Vijay Singh won the 2000 Masters.
It was far too early to say Mizuno was back but Mitchell’s win helped clear some hurdles inside the company. It was validation that Mizuno drivers could win on Tour and, with that, helped alleviate some hesitancy on the part of Mizuno’s Tour team to push the driver.
“The fact that the Keith test went so well right off the bat I think helped ease a little bit of anxiety from everybody in terms of whether we were making the right choice or not,” says Voshall.
There was still plenty of work to be done and Mizuno’s newfound unwillingness to negotiate around the driver created a fresh set of consequences.
There is No Plan B
While there was some discussion about backing down, Mizuno stuck to its guns. Real progress in the driver category required a hard line in sand.
“I think everyone thought we were bluffing,” says David Matthews, Mizuno’s Western Golf Brand Marketing Manager. “We had to go through a very painful process of losing people who are valuable to play the long game to come back to where we should have been all along.
“There couldn’t be a plan B. Plan A had to be the one and only plan and the plan is our players must play our drivers. That’s it.”
The plan was the reason Mizuno didn’t sign Lucas Glover after he couldn’t get a driver to hook enough for his needs.
Mizuno also missed out on arguably the most recognizable name in the game short of Tiger when the player flat out refused to even test the driver.
“I remember sitting in the room and we’re like this may be dumb, but if he’s not testing it, we don’t want him,” says Voshall
In hindsight, are there any regrets?
“Kinda, but I think it’s a bigger thing. It’s not a regret. It just speaks volumes to the damage that we had done to our reputation. That he literally said he would not even try it, like to be so close-minded to it, means that it’s not even that you don’t know us, it’s that you have negative confidence in us.
“I think we’re to blame for that. I don’t think he would have ever said to Callaway, ‘I will not try your stuff.’ We bred that behavior, sadly.”
The failure to sign top-tier talent was rapidly becoming a source of frustration. Mizuno’s Tour staff was bringing elite players to the table—the caliber of guys any brand would love to have on its roster—but the guys at corporate were standing on principles and rejecting them over the driver.
“You’ve got to design products that work for the Tour, the Tour staff has to ensure the contracts are rock solid and, when you sign a player, he can’t be testing a PING three months later,” says Matthews
Those decisions left Mizuno in unfamiliar territory.
More Money Than Mizuno Can Spend
Often frugal, Mizuno ownership is often reticent to spend, let alone spend big, on Tour pros and other brand ambassadors. But, as part the efforts to regain credibility at the elite level with the driver, the corporate bosses loosened the purse strings.
“It’s a tricky thing with your reputation, not just with players in terms of knowing your woods, but also your reputation with managers in terms of knowing what Mizuno is willing to pay,” says Voshall.
“With a lot of the big names, we never really got much of a shot because they assume Mizuno will not put up the money. We’ve made multi-million-dollar offers to multiple players. It has them kind of reconsidering: ‘Wait, maybe I can’t just dismiss Mizuno or someone who won’t pay them.’
“We’re definitely not throwing peanuts anymore.”
Mizuno had money to invest on Tour but because of its unwillingness to budge on the driver, the Tour team was struggling to find players willing to sign.
The COVID Boom
Good Good’s Garrett Clark and Grant Hovart with Luke Donald and Mizuno’s Chris Voshall
The combination of COVID and money to spend created a perfect storm for Mizuno.
It’s well-documented that COVID brought new golfers to the game in droves. To its credit, Mizuno was among the first to recognize that something was different about this group. Unlike their pre-COVID counterparts, the new generation of avid golfers didn’t carry the baggage of history.
One way or another, they had no preconceived notions about Mizuno drivers.
“I feel like this new generation of golfers is way less locked in on old opinions. They’re willing to try anything,” says Voshall. “I think Trackman and Foresight and all the fittings allow numbers to dictate what works. That has helped us overcome some things because a [bad] reputation can go away pretty quickly if you show better numbers.”
Unlike more established golfers, the COVID generation was willing to give Mizuno the chance to compete in the fitting bay. While Voshall has no expectation that Mizuno is going to win every time, it’s not lost on him that you’ll win a lot more when given an opportunity to play.
It was against this backdrop that Mizuno took what, at the time, seemed like yet another bold move.
Mizuno signed Good Good’s Grant Hovart and Garret Clark to ambassador deals. Clark signed at the end of ‘21 and Clark followed in early ‘22.
“We signed Grant and Garret early on when the industry wasn’t interested in getting involved,” says Matthews. “Everything was still about Tour players.”
As the industry has shifted towards influencers as ambassadors, both have since moved on to more lucrative deals but Voshall and Matthews agree that the pair were instrumental in exposing Mizuno to an entirely new demographic of golfers.
Mizuno continues to dabble in the influencer market but Matthews says it’s proving more difficult to find value. “They’re asking for 10 times what they’re worth so we’re taking the approach: Who are the right people we can get?”
“We’ve always steered away from sexualization of the brand,” adds Voshall. “We’re not going after that.”
A New Approach to Everything
Mizuno Ambassador Ben Griffin
Lessons learned during the driver revitalization project and the Good Good experience have shifted how Mizuno approaches more traditional player signings.
“It impacts the kind of players you sign,” says Matthews. “When you approach a 27- 28-year-old player who is already established and say, ‘How about a Mizuno driver?’ as soon as that reaction is, ‘Oh, no. I kind of feel bad things,’ it doesn’t matter what the results are anymore.
“With a 19-, 20-, 21-year-old player, you can start the fitting process with the driver and there’s no resistance because their experience with Mizuno drivers is the last two to three years and all they’ve had are positive things.”
There’s perhaps no better example than Ben Griffin on the PGA Tour. Without an equipment contract and searching for a driver, Griffin tested the Mizuno driver and loved it. Once the driver goes in the bag, the rest is easy.
It’s a similar story for Marco Penge. An up-and-comer on the DP World Tour, Penge is one of the longest hitters on the circuit. “He never questioned it [the driver],” says Matthews.
“It was the quickest fitting in the world and you suddenly realize there’s this generational thing about what people remember and what stigmas they’ve got about various brands.
“It changes the way you think about doing everything. It changes the sort of players you go for. It changes how you sequence the fittings. Every part of what we do is different than where we were 10 years ago. “
Matthews says Mizuno’s new R&D center wouldn’t have happened without the need for a home base for its younger players and those players don’t happen without the driver project.
Mizuno’s current Tour staff includes a few players at the highest levels but a bigger group is the pipeline. Mizuno is working with the American Junior Golf Association as well as the Clutch Pro Tour in the UK. It’s an approach Matthews calls “an investment in later.”
The ST Evolution
With each release, Mizuno has alternated between adding speed and increasing forgiveness.
With ST 190, a new face material help Mizuno get faster. With ST 200, added stability; 200 Z and X got faster; the 220 series more forgiving. The initial offerings in the 230 series further increased speed while Mizuno’s latest, the ST230 MAX, is its most forgiving.
“Are we where we want to be?” Matthews wonders aloud. “We’re pretty bloody close.”
If there’s a missing piece, it’s that for all Mizuno has done to elevate its drivers, there’s nothing it can point to that’s uniquely its own. Everybody has some form of face technology. Signature technologies like the Shockwave sole and CoreTech Chamber are Mizuno versions of things that everyone else has.
Who’s to say Mizuno’s version is better than theirs?
“There’s nothing unique to the industry, just our execution,” says Voshall. “We’re missing that super-exciting thing we can shout about.”
That super-exciting thing is coming but that is a story for another day.
Mizuno Drivers Right Now
Keith Mitchell continues to find success with a Mizuno driver in the bag
Today, Mizuno is content with where it is in the driver space. It believes it has worked through the hard stuff. Company-wide, everyone has bought into the notion that Mizuno drivers aren’t inferior anymore. It’s undone some of the negative beliefs and, in doing so, has established trust with its brand ambassadors.
The driver is no longer a hurdle, at least not with the type of player Mizuno wants to sign.
That’s backed up by this season’s success on the professional tours. Lights and buzzers may not have gone off to signal Mizuno’s return but there have been a series of moments the show that something is happening.
Keith Mitchell, the man who put Mizuno drivers back on the map, sits sixth in Strokes Gined off the tee. Grayson Murray won the Sony Open, Bailey Tardy won the LPGA’s Blue Bay and Steven Fisk picked up a victory on the Korn Ferry Tour—all three with Mizuno drivers in the bag.
Luke Donald and Stacy Lewis are still on staff but both now pair their Mizuno headcovers with Mizuno drivers.
The Work to Be Done
What’s Mizuno’s homework? What does it need to do next?
Voshall thinks he, and the rest of the Mizuno team, need a technology and a story that’s compelling enough that you’ll want to try a Mizuno driver. TaylorMade and Callaway will almost always get a shot. The next stage of the game requires that uniquely and exclusively Mizuno “thing” that will giving golfers a reason to pick up a Mizuno driver instead of a Titleist or a COBRA.
If the plan stays on track, Mizuno is confident it won’t be long before it can do just that.
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