It was a young left-handed American by the name of Phil Mickelson wielding a high chrome, graphite shafted blade putter and graphite irons, taking the PGA Tour by storm that first brought Yonex Golf to prominence in the 1990s. Later on, Scott Hoch chalked off several PGA Tour victories as a Yonex ambassador, and Colin Montgomerie, using a full bag of Yonex equipment managed to take down the great Tiger Woods at the 2004 Ryder Cup at Oakland Hills.
Undoubtedly Yonex is a brand steeped in golfing heritage and when you dig a little deeper into its story, the success should come as no surprise. The company was founded in 1946 by Minrou Yoneyama, a producer of wooden floats for fishing nets of all things who became frustrated at being overtaken by the advancements of plastic floats and vowed never to be left behind again. After diversifying and many successful years of manufacturing badminton and tennis racquets, Yonex entered the golf industry in the early 80s and has long been regarded as a pioneer in the graphite space.
This year has seen some exciting products from Yonex including the EZONE GT driver, and EZONE CB 901 Forged irons, and 2025 looks equally as exciting. If the glowing reviews of products like the aforementioned aren’t reason enough to consider Yonex for your next club upgrade, then here are 3 more for you…
From development to production, premium Yonex golf club heads and shafts are made in Japan
The Yonex Niigata Factory in Nagaoka City serves a dual purpose as a development center for creating concepts and designs of new clubs, but also as the production and manufacturing center for club building. This is a major feature of Yonex which centralizes the management of creating its products from development to production at a single site in Japan, allowing designers and builders to work in perfect unison.
All work, from molding the head equipped with the latest technology, to compounding, painting, and attaching the shaft, is done through the hands and eyes of skilled Japanese craftsmen. In particular, the world's top-level carbon composite technology is one of the things that can only be produced at the Yonex Niigata Factory in Japan.
Unique Technologies Put Yonex Ahead Of The Curve
Over the years, Yonex has always been at the forefront of pioneering new technologies and materials and has never been afraid to be different. Yonex was putting some of the world's best players including Phil Mickelson and Scott Hoch in graphite shafts long before it was more widely accepted that graphite could be stable enough for the strongest male professionals. Similarly, one of the biggest features of Yonex clubs is the carbon crown composite head structures which take a huge amount of time and effort to produce. Precision technology is introduced into the heads to optimize CG positions and dial-in launch conditions. These things are impossible to achieve as efficiently with a single material but are precisely controlled with the carbon composite heads that Yonex produces.
Yonex Manufactures Shafts To Precisely Match Heads
Another benefit of manufacturing all components in the same place is that these components can be specifically fine-tuned to work seamlessly with one another. Yonex prefers not to take the chance of a clubhead and shafts performance characteristics not marrying well, and as such researches and develops its own proprietary shafts to maximize the power of the heads and optimize performance. By layering a wide variety of carbon through numerous processes, Yonex creates shafts that provide ideal flexibility and energy transfer for the best ball flights.
