How To Spot Counterfeit Golf Clubs

There’s a lot of debate as to exactly how widespread the counterfeit golf club problem is. In the mid-2000s some reports said as many as 25% of the clubs on eBay could be fake. Many dealers and consumers however have bought hundreds if not thousands of sets off of second hand marketplaces and never encountered a fake, meanwhile there have been recent seizures of 10,000+ and 100,000+ clubs from sting operations in China.

One extreme case was in 2009 when a counterfeit operation was convicted of selling millions of pounds worth of Chinese golf clubs to people all over the world through eBay. This article aims to reclaim the holy land of authentic golf clubs and golfing, by spelling out how to distinguish real and fake golf clubs.

Most in the industry agree that counterfeiting peaked at some point and has dropped off in some regard, but that it absolutely still exists as a major industry. Most consumers agree that being ripped off even one time is way more than they ever want to deal with. Because of this, brands and dealers are very concerned about the problem, but your average consumer who has not handled a lot of different sets of golf clubs with different qualities may actually have no idea that they own a fake set. 

As more people become aware of the problem and manufacturers take more steps to counter the counterfeiters, it may put a dent in the flow of clubs temporarily, but it’s also forcing counterfeit club manufacturers to make sharper and sharper fakes in order to capitalize on unsuspecting consumers, so a keen eye for many of the details which we will cover in this article is needed.

How To Identify Counterfeit Golf Clubs

People who handle many many sets of used golf clubs can become adept at identifying fakes immediately just through subtle details or feeling the club in their hands. Your average consumer, however, might need to really inspect some details and/or compare the club side-by-side with a known legitimate version.

Where Is It Coming From?

The first order of business is to avoid buying anything assembled in China. Granted, almost every club manufacturer uses parts made in China to some extent in their process, but most still assemble the clubs elsewhere. If you are buying a new, fully assembled golf club or set that ships from China … just don’t! 

This covers the biggest segment of obvious counterfeits. Completely rule out the idea of buying a golf club from a Chinese e-commerce site such as Aliexpress or DHGate. This should be common sense, but sometimes people may think “how much worse could it be than the real thing?”

The answer to this question is that there is absolutely no comparison as the name of the game for counterfeits is making everything as cheap as possible every step of the way.

Price

The old adage “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is” applies here. The market for golf clubs is very active, and unless you are at a garage sale or dealing with somebody who knows nothing about golf equipment on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, prices generally get set fairly uniformly for clubs being resold. Meaning anyone operating a club-reselling business, whether online or brick-and-mortar, are going to have their clubs priced within a reasonable margin of the going rate based on the age of the club.

This is easiest to figure out with new golf clubs. People selling brand new golf clubs for more than 10-15% less than what the manufacturer offers them for is almost unheard of. Any deals like this should be scrutinized very heavily.

Aesthetics

Almost all counterfeit spotters use the aesthetics of the club in order to suss out inconsistencies that quickly identify fakes. To the untrained eye these may not be noticeable at all, and are easiest when looking at two clubs side-by-side and paying careful attention to detail.

For others, they have seen a certain manufacturer’s or club’s script lettering so many times that something seemingly as small as a slight change in the thickness of the font used for branding or numbering the clubs can be a dead giveaway that something is off.

Performance

Even if the appearances of the club are somehow PERFECT (they virtually never are) for most people who have any sense of what high quality golf clubs feel and sound like, it can become immediately evident they are holding a complete imposter in their hands.

There is a lot of technology that goes into modern golf clubs. For game improvement irons and woods, drivers, and hybrids that performance does not come cheap, and while a counterfeiter may be able to reasonably duplicate the shape and logos and color schemes of a club, they literally cannot produce the same performance, feel, and sound or build a club that hit the ball as far as a well-engineered club made from top materials.

Even for more “basic” clubs such as blade irons, you will never see a counterfeiter use forged steel to make a club, so this is a dead giveaway as well. They can stamp “forged” onto a club that has been cast but one good strike will reveal the fake.

How To Spot A Counterfeit Head On Irons And Wedges

There are several aspects to look at when it comes to spotting a counterfeit iron or wedge head, but they might not be obvious. The best thing to do, if you haven’t seen that particular club many times before, is go for a side-by-side comparison and be very detailed.

Things to pay attention to:

• The thickness of the lettering of any numbers or letters
• The exact font used
• Does the “paint fill” spill over in any places or does it not completely fill any areas?
• Is the exact shade of red, blue, etc. used?
• Look at the face of the club. Are there the same number of grooves and do they start and end in the correct places as the original?
• Counterfeit irons and wedges often wear down faster than the real deal
• Look at the size of the ferrule and see if it differs
• Look at the depth and width at which any etching or lettering is done
• Is the head exactly the right shape or does it differ?

Some of these will be subtle but eventually close inspection will confirm whether the item is fake or genuine.

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Serial Numbers

A lot is made of serial numbers, but most manufacturers can not confirm serial numbers to customers and even if they could, a counterfeiter could have just copied a legitimate serial number. If you can compare to a genuine club, you can compare whether the serial numbers are laser printed or stamped into the club, and whether they are the same size, font, and location as the legitimate club. Fake serial numbers are almost always laser printed, but more and more OEM manufacturers are using laser printed serial numbers themselves, so this is no longer a definitive factor. 

The bottom line is, do not trust that a club is legitimate just because it has serial numbers on it. If the club has no serial numbers, that is cause to investigate further, although some legitimate clubs also do not have serial numbers so again it is not definitive.

How To Spot A Counterfeit Head On Drivers And Fairway Woods

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Drivers and fairway woods are somewhat easier to spot as fakes, because their designs are a little more “involved.” The first pass is to check a lot of the same things we would check with golf irons:

• Check the shape of the head, especially how it sits at address. Fake clubs may not have the same subtle balance to sit properly at address like a real club would.
• Look for differences in the curvature and where certain segments of the club head, such as the face and the body, come together to check for irregularities
• Thoroughly check the paint fills, fonts, and placement and style of all lettering. This includes the thickness of the fonts, whether they are neatly oriented, and whether any paint fill is thinning or “spills out” of the borders it should be in.

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One of the main things to check with woods and drivers is their overall weight and performance. When you hit an imitation metal-wood it will not sound, feel, or perform at all like the authentic club that has several hundred dollars worth of engineering and materials built into it.

One of the key material differences is that counterfeit drivers and fairway woods will not use advanced metals like titanium, which are in use in virtually all modern clubs (or some other composite). This means that the club will be markedly heavier, because it will be made out of steel.

This also means that it will fail the “magnet test” meaning that a magnet will generally not stick to an authentic (titanium/composite) club but it will stick to a fake fairway wood or driver (do not use this test for irons).

Check out our golf driver buying guide to learn more about how to find the perfect driver for your game!

How To Spot A Counterfeit Shaft

Spotting a counterfeit shaft is one place where experience comes in handy. In ord