The old SW from this set, which was my first set of real clubs (after the Herman's (We are sports!) specials). The grip is toast, but the club is nicely sandblasted. They were blades IIRC, and probably not the best set of clubs for a newbie. I recall being able to hit them well on occasion. Anyone know much about them? When did Daiwa stop making clubs?
The DG originally stood for David Graham. He was a Daiwa staff player for years and they used to say that all of the players irons were designed with his input(the game improvement clubs didn't have DG on them). They had a code for all the four digit models where the first two numbers were supposed to be the year of manufacturing, and the last two were what model it was for that year. So the 8301 came out in 1983 and the 01 means it was the first model of that year.
The most famous of the David Graham models was the DG-273. They were designed in 1990 by David Graham to be a copy of the grind he used on his MacGregors in 1981 when he won the US Open(273 was his winning score). They were a big deal because they were the first investment cast Carbon Steel iron to hit the market and Daiwa had a bunch of tests showing that no one could tell the difference between cast carbon steel and forged carbon steel. They were also the set that Ian Baker-Finch used to win his British Open. Sometime after David Graham left Daiwa(I think for Callaway) they changed the DG to mean Daiwa Grind instead. They even went so far as to re-issue the DG-273 without the "Designed by D. Graham" on the muscle. The most interesting fact about them, isn't any of that. It's that Tiger Woods first foray in to blades as a well known amateur was with Daiwa. He used the DG-273 as a Junior Player in 1992.
Daiwa isn't gone, they just aren't in the US anymore which is unfortunate. They sold some of the most high quality clubs out there until 2000 or so. And their shafts were amazing. All their experience with graphite fishing rods gave them an edge in the early years of graphite shafts, and their stock OEM offering was as good as any aftermarket shaft. But in 2000 after years of declining sales they sold the naming rights in the US to Carbite Golf and left the market. Carbite basically turned them into a low level OEM putting out knock off designs. Then Daiwa tried to compete against itself when the Hi-Cor craze hit. They had been the first to really develop Hi-Cor drivers in Japan, including some around .86 and they tried to bring those over at the same time that Carbite was selling their low level crap. And it basically killed the name over here completely, Carbite even had to stop selling them around 2002.
So now they have basically left the US and are only a fishing rod company here. They still make great stuff in Japan, but no one ever thinks of it as Daiwa because they don't use the Daiwa name. Instead they've split golf into different divisions. They've got Roddio Shafts, which are among the top shafts available anywhere. The clubs are split into On-Off and GIII, with On-Off being the top of the line expensive stuff...though GIII is still very good. They may also be involved with Seiko Golf's S-Yard(Daiwa is technically DaiwaSeiko LTD.) but I've never heard any confirmation of that....someone who keeps up with Japanese clubs more could give a better explanation.
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