Soaring At Wentworth

Filed in archive Golf News on October 13, 2007

Cabrera at Wentworth
Courtesy: HSBC

Angel Cabrera is having the year of his career. With the U.S. Open under his belt and a decent President's Cup recently, Cabrera's confidence is soaring.

That has been clearly on display this week at the World Golf Match play Championships at Wentworth in Surrey, England.

As I write this, not far from Wentworth, Cabrera is 2 up in his semi-final contest with American Hunter Mahan, another golfer who's having a breakout year. Mahan's first test of top level match play was also at the President's Cup at Royal Montreal and he was a stand-out for the winning American side.

I mentioned yesterday that I was currently in England for family reasons. Yesterday I had occasion to wander into a local golf shop just off the High Street in Guildford.

Oddly named "Massive Golf Sale", it contained a range of golfing stuff priced at varying discount levels. But, let me tell you, it was also a lesson in global economics!

The first thing I saw was a sale on Maxfli golf balls. The price was slashed by 50% - a great deal - but at £13 they were twice what I would have paid back home in Toronto. It takes two of our Canadian dollars to equal one British pound.

The topper was a TaylorMade R7 driver going for £299 or roughly $600 Canadian!!

I find this fascinating. An X series Jaguar can be bought here in the U.K. for approximately £26, 000 or $52,000 Canadian. In Toronto, I can buy one (if I could afford it!) for about $45,000. And they're made in the U.K.!!

I recently read a study done by a couple of economics professors at an American university who studied this very phenomenon. Their conclusion was that there was no justification for such price differences other than what the market would bear.

So those Maxflis - and all other golf gear for that matter, produced somewhere in the Far East probably, are shipped to North America and shipped to Europe. Transportation costs are going to be roughly the same, yet the pricing is vastly different at the consumer level.

Thank god for the internet. Cross border shopping was never so easy. If I'm an English golfer, I'm going to order from overseas and pay the shipping and VAT costs happily.