Club Warz!!1! Nickent vs. TaylorMade

Got this email tonight from the good folks at Nickent Golf. Apparently, they're getting sued by TaylorMade-adidas for a claim they made in a recent marketing campaign.

Nickent Golf was informed Friday that one of it's competitors, TaylorMade-adidas Golf Company, has filed a lawsuit involving our advertisement that a Nickent 4DX driver had finished as the #1 overall driver model at the Moonah Classic, the most recent 2008 Nationwide Tour. We are a small company with great products, and we wanted to tout the fact that we have a driver that is good enough to finish as the #1 driver model in a Nationwide Tour event.

There has been no misleading information disseminated by Nickent, as the Darrell Survey, the mechanism responsible for keeping track of golf club equipment usage at professional events, clearly shows that the Nickent 4DX T Spec was the #1 driver model at the Nationwide Tour Moonah Classic with 28 clubs in play. It was the first time Nickent has taken the #1 driver model distinction on the Nationwide Tour and it was deemed worthy of a small advertising campaign, especially since the event was the Nationwide Tour's most recent.

Seriously, TM-adidas? Pretty much everyday, someone makes a false claim about golf products - or claims that are very loosely based on scientific fact and research. Since the USGA has effectively limited what the club can do, any claims of technological breakthroughs to jack up distance are wrong. How often are those made? Count 'em on your fingers.

I do think it is funny that this is a window into the niche industry and balance sheet reference to lawsuits that is common to golf manufacturers. Normally, the claims are more worthwhile than this (the NATIONWIDE TOUR?!), but these are not uncommon.