A shaft unlike any other
What costs $17,000?
According to Autotrader.com, you can get a great used car just a couple of years old, like a Ford Escape or a Subaru Legacy.
Or you can seduce your golf bag by tickling it with shafts from Seven Dreamers Laboratories.
$17,000.
$16,800 to be precise. 14 x $1,200.
Even I can do the math. There might be tax on top.
No, they are not whittled out of petrified unicorn horns, simmered in a cauldron of hummingbird tears and then dried by the gentle breeze of angels’ wings before being delivered via magic carpet.
If not — and perhaps like you, I was very disappointed to find that was not the case — then just how do you justify that price?
“Seven Dreamers uses aerospace-quality carbon fiber, a proprietary 3D design system and an autoclave to cure every shaft,” reads a recent Seven Dreamers Laboratories press release.
In the release, Shin Sakane, company president and chief executive officer, is quoted as saying “much like fine-quality bespoke suits, our shafts are designed to complement the user by perfectly reacting to his or her unique swing profile.”
Survey question: Who among you has 14 $1,200 suits? Congrats, Mr. Bezos. You, Mr. Gates, Mr. Buffett and Mr. Arnault — reportedly the four richest men in the world — are welcome to read on.
But is there any there, there?
Are you buying a shaft or just getting one, in the figurative sense?
Seven Dreamers bills its shaft as the “most expensive in the world.” They’re not talking about the $1,200 version, by the way.
For the golfer who has everything, absolutely everything, says Mike Rossi, vice-president of sales and marketing, the company also crafts the $150,000 Space shaft, which is made of the exact same material as the flat panels for satellites that Seven Dreamers manufactures.
Four have been purchased, maybe by the foursome mentioned earlier, but we cannot confirm that. For about the same money, you can get a Porsche Panamera Turbo. That’s $150,000 for one shaft.
This is fine and good if you want to throw them — err, have white-gloved Jeeves lovingly place them — in the trunk of your Bugatti Veyron, but would a $1,200 shaft help your game more than Accra, Oban or Mitsubishi shafts favored by high-end custom club fitters at less than half the price? By the way, you’re slumming in the $3.4-million Veyron because your $4.8-million Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita is being detailed and, besides, it doesn’t have a trunk.
Although Seven Dreamers is a new arrival to golf, having begun production of its shafts in 2014, Rossi is not. He spent more than three decades working with some of the most reputable mass-produced shaft companies before moving to his new post in November.
“We make no apologies,” he said. “There are no compromises.
“The ultra-premium market is golf’s last frontier. We use only the finest and most expensive aerospace materials and we have chosen to compete in the ultra-premium category.”
He cited at length the extra effort and expense that contributes to the exorbitant price tag.
The result, he said, is “perceptible, responsive and stable at every point in the swing.” Unimaginable to the average golf consumer, or mainstream shaft manufacturer for that matter, is the excruciating attention to details on the production and personalized fitting processes.
The Seven Dreamers release alludes to an unnamed “recent major championship winner teeing it up with Seven Dreamers shafts at the 2018 Masters Tournament,” but the only named pro endorsing the product is 71-year-old Jumbo Ozaki. We leave it to you speculate.
While you are on www.sevendreamers.com, check out the company’s other products, like the Nastent nasal cavity insertion device or the Laundroid, “the world’s first fully automatic laundry-folding robot.” And the aforementioned flat panels for satellites, of course.
The Nastent will fit in the Trevita, but you’ll need the Veyron to get the Laundroid home from the store.
You may have to take your $17,000 set of clubs out to make room.
THE ESSENTIALS
Seven Dreamers Laboratories
Website: https://www.sevendreamers.com
Phone:＋81-3-6809-3412
Facebook: @sevendreamers
Instagram: @seven_dreamers_golf
Twitter: @sevendreamers1
John Gordon, who has covered golf for more than 30 years for Canadian newspapers, magazines and a TV network, has authored eight books on the game. He lives in Midland, Ontario.
Email:gordongolf@outlook.com
Twitter:@gordongolf