Minden firm seeks to take a slice out of club business

In the highly saturated world of golf club manufacturers, Minden's resident Mike Day is quietly making a name for himself with a self-designed club he claims cures the worst malady afflicting the average golfer: the slice.

Two years ago Day, president of Day Golf, Co., introduced the Drive-Tru driver, and although sales have been modest, Day says he has "sold enough clubs to know that there is a market for these clubs."

It took Day, 77, more than three years of trial and error and hundreds of buckets of range balls before he settled on the club's design, the geometric dimensions of which he patented earlier this year.

Working with a Minden-area machinist, Day continually tweaked elements of the club's design, particularly the face, and then tested the changes at a driving range.

"By the time I hit five balls I knew whether (the modifications) were going to work or not," he says. "One day I took a model out on the driving range, and I hit every ball in the bucket dead straight. I thought, 'Oh boy, it worked!'"

Since that breakthrough day, Day hasn't changed a thing about the Drive-Tru club.

Every clubface has some degree of bulge (the horizontal curvature) and roll (its vertical counterpart). Day says his club simply incorporates a new configuration of both.

"It is different, and this is what makes it work. Without that (geometry) it would not work," he says.

Because his budget is tight Day uses personal assets to fund the project he works with engineers and manufacturers in China.

During early design, he sent a mockup of his idea to engineers in China, who cast the club and returned it. Day then modified that model to perform how he wanted.

Since most design changes were very minor adjustments to the clubface, communicating the minutia of those modifications to the engineers doing the work proved extremely challenging.

"You have to have someone to communicate with," he says. "You have certain features in your golf club that have to be there, and the Chinese have a habit of seeing a design and making a change. But that doesn't work. You might as well have them make a hand grenade, because that is all it is good for."

Day says it would cost roughly two or three times more to manufacture clubs in the United States.

Marketing the driver, which is priced at about $300, brought more challenges. Day says he hasn't been very successful placing the club at pro shops because most represent the big names in golf Callaway, Nike and they are loath to take on a specialty club that lacks either a big name or a following.

But he thinks the tide is turning.

"We are just beginning to penetrate pro shops that have tried the club and realized it does work," he says.

"But we are not trying to deal with the big boys. They do not come out with direct claims that they can cure your slice. We do, and it is successful for 80 percent of the golfers who have a slice who tried our club."

Day says that the 10 percent who had issues with the driver needed assistance correcting major flaws in their swing, and the final 10 percent should quit the game altogether.

"They need to try tennis, or take up roller skating," he says. "They should not be playing golf. There is no magic wand in golf clubs. You have to have some reasonably developed golf swing."

Day's marketing strategy the last six months has been to offer the club for $1 day for 45 days.

"It has turned out to be very, very successful for us," he says. "Instead of asking them to spend $295 for a club that they aren't convinced will work, we let them play golf with it. We are having a great success completing sales using that strategy."

Next up for Day are designs for the 3, 5 and 7 fairway woods, which he hopes to have on the market by the end of 2007.