Is Golf Doing Enough for the Environment?

Is Golf Doing Enough for the Environment?

CALLAWAY'S CHARTER

From the depths of the latest Callaway website:

‘Callaway Golf appreciates hearing from you and welcomes your feedback. Please note, however, that Callaway Golf does not solicit or pay for your creative and/or product ideas. If you choose to send us feedback, you acknowledge and agree that you do so voluntarily and that no contract (other than as described in this paragraph) or confidential relationship is thereby created.
Callaway Golf may create in the future something substantially similar or identical to your submission, with no liability or obligation to you. The content of your submission will become and remain the sole property of Callaway Golf and will not be returned, and we shall be entitled to unrestricted use of the material for any purpose whatsoever, without compensation to you.'

Is this Callaway's charter to 'Copyaway'?

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PROJECT MENTOR

This year 2012, Callaway Golf thought of a 'new' concept called the ‘swept hosel’. Where they specify the leading top edge of the hosel is forward of the bottom edge.

Here is a picture taken from Golf Refugees very expensive wind tunnel model from 2005/ 06 of an aerofoil hosel golf club head which follows the forward angle of the golf shaft. This results in the leading top edge of the hosel being further forward than the bottom edge ie ‘a swept hosel’.

Golf Refugees designer Peter Gorse won a prestigious Audi Design Foundation Award for his aerofoil hosel golf club head. As part of the award Audi allocated a senior chartered engineer decorated by Her Majesty with an OBE for his services to engineering, Professor Richard S. Taylor OBE, to act as a mentor for the project.

This week Golf Refugees will ask Callaway's IP Counsel if they would like to receive a written account from this highly respected decorated chartered engineer to verify the prior art already forwarded by Golf Refugees with regard to the design and protection of the swept aerofoil hosel.
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SWEPT AWAY

This picture describes our aerodynamic wind tunnel experiments set-up, conducted at Cranfield University for our aerofoil hosel golf club head in 2005 / 06.

Our wind tunnel model is in black in the centre of the picture, mounted to an aero balance cradle between the mouths of the wind tunnel. If you look very closely at the metallic golf shaft, you can see the leading edge of our aerofoil hosel below follows the same forward angle of the golf shaft. For wind tunnel testing only a short section of the lower part of the golf shaft is modelled.

The hosel is the part of the club head where the lower part of the golf shaft intersects with the top surface of the golf club head. A standard hosel is circular.

Golf shafts use a forward angle to make sure the golfers hands are positioned forward of the striking face of the club head. When you surround the lower part of the circular golf shaft with an aerofoil hosel which follows the forward angle of the golf shaft this results in the leading top point of the hosel being further forward than the bottom point of the hosel.

Callaway Golf describes this as a ‘swept hosel’. And this really is the crucial point according to Callaway.

At the time Callaway supplied a wind tunnel model of their standard ‘driver’ to enable us to conduct direct comparison tests with our aero club head model. In return I offered Callaway full access to our data and test results.

Unfortunately for Callaway, Golf Refugees were the first golf company to design, build, test and prove the advantage in terms of increased aerodynamic efficiency of an aerofoil hosel for a golf club head, which follows the natural forward angel of the golf shaft.

We have just sent to Callaway’s IP Counsel close-up pictures of our aerofoil hosel showing the forward position of the top leading edge in relation to the bottom edge and the rest of the golf club head.

This acts as prior art and provides evidence that Golf Refugees tested and published several years before Callaway's 'new' 2012 concept of a 'swept hosel'.

http://www.golf-refugees.com >>
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TOP BANANA

"Everyone laughed at us when we started: they thought Fairtrade was for a few yoghurt-eating vicars. No one thought for a moment the public would be willing to pay extra, or that companies would pay more so that the world's poorest farmers get a decent price for their products. But they do and they have" said top banana Harriet Lamb.

Fairtrade is now mainstream and going global. In the UK some £1.3bn worth of goods were sold last year bearing the now-familiar blue-and-green symbol of a man holding up the world.

The turning point for Ms Lamb came when working as a banana co-ordinator for the World Development Movement. She visited farmers known as the "burnt ones" on plantations in Costa Rica – workers who suffered reproductive problems due to exposure to the chemical DBCP that they had sprayed on the bananas to stop parasites. "I met Maria, the wife of one of the workers who had been affected after spraying. She showed me pictures of their dead baby. It looked like ET, had no eyelids, was greenish in colour and had a huge head. I knew from then on there was a better way," she says, clearly still moved by the memory, and has been campaigning like fury ever since.

So how about fair-trade sports apparel? Anyone seen the Fairtrade logo on a sports shirt?
Our TV screens are filled with top athletes pursuing their golden Olympic dreams. But are any of them running and jumping in apparel made in a fair and ethical way? Are the necessary health and safety standards for textile workers implemented in major sport brands sub-contracted Asian factories, to guard them against the hazardous heavy metals and toxic chemicals used to manufacture the latest hi-tech sportswear?

Will any of the top banana golfers playing at this weeks last major of the year; The PGA Championship at the beautiful sounding Ocean course at Kiawah Island be wearing a colourful Fairtrade outfit? At least some of them may snack on a Fairtrade banana as they strut around the course.
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UNARMED

We have used this logo from time to time on our packaging labels.

There is a funny little story which began when we submitted the drawing to the US Trade Mark Association.

To trained American eyes it appeared as though we were trying to obtain a Trade Mark for golf products depicting a man carrying a gun.

This had never occurred to us, as it was a line drawing taken from a picture of myself carrying our disposable golf bag.
 
The last time I held a gun was at the fairground.

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COPYAWAY TEE

http://www.golf-refugees.com
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COPYAWAY

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FINE JERSEY VEST

Golf Refugees hand-dyed in Britain fine jersey vest.
Produced exclusively from the wood pulp of Eucalyptus trees certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC), and the fibre carries the Pan-European Forest Council (PEFC) quality seal.

http://www.golf-refugees.com
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