Vanquishing the opposition

Mitsubishi are known for their tour-driven Diamana and Tensei lines. But the Vanquish is something new and different designed to help a wider range of golfers.  Jonathan Alongi, Director, Aftermarket Sales & Marketing Mitsubishi Chemical, explains more about the new line they have created.

What is Vanquish?

VANQUISH is our all-new, premium, lightweight performance brand. Product development was led by our team in Japan, actually by the same group of people responsible for our renowned Diamana brand. Cosmetic development was led by our team here in California. The final product you see is the result of a really cool collaboration between our teams in Tokyo and Carlsbad.

Why introduce a new brand, and not just use an existing name?

It’s not an everyday occurrence for us to launch a completely new brand. It happens only on very rare occasions – and that’s intentional. It’s supposed to be a really big deal when a new brand comes around. As we developed VANQUISH and started seeing structure development and cosmetic development, it was becoming clearer and clearer that its performance and appearance warranted an entire new brand. The term VANQUISH is very strong. It’s declarative of our intentions. We believe it’s the best lightweight product we’ve ever made and it needed an aggressive name suggestive of that.

What are the advantages of a lighter-weight shaft, and in particular this lighter-weight shaft?

The advantages of a lighter-weight shaft are just that – lighter weight. When you remove weight from a golf shaft, it’s easier to move it faster, simply from the result of less physical mass to move. The issue with going lighter, typically, is that as you move a golf club faster you tend to also move it a bit looser. With VANQUISH we created a ton of clubhead acceleration by using our newly-developed Amorphous Wire Technology in the handle of the shaft. This idea was inspired by high-performance fly-fishing rods. As anglers cast, the handle of the rod stays really stable while the tip section bends and creates massive acceleration to cast a lure far into a body of water. We found in testing that this technology used in the handle of the golf shaft was really increasing ball speed — by about 1mph in robot testing and 2-3mph in player testing. But when you go lighter – and thereby faster – we needed to include technology to make the product stable. There’s no point to simply go lighter if you’re just going to hit it more crooked. Then you’re just closer to the hole but further from the fairway. So we used really high modulus 40 and 46 ton fibers to strengthen the product. We also adjusted the orientation of the angle plys in the tip section differently than we typically do in other designs to keep that area of the shaft structurally sound during a faster swing. We need to go lighter, but help you hit it straighter too. That’s what VANQUISH does.

Are you expecting to get any tour play with Vanquish?

Absolutely on women’s tours. VANQUISH was actually developed through feedback from some of the top LPGA pros in the world. VANQUISH has been incredibly successful on the LPGA Tour to this point and is in the bags of quite a few of the top female golfers on the planet. VANQUISH won’t be seen on major men’s tours.

How does it slot into your product line up and does it replace anything? 

We have long felt at Mitsubishi Chemical that lightweight performance is probably our speciality. VANQUISH doesn’t pull away from our Diamana and TENSEI lines. VANQUISH lines up with premium, lightweight performance. Perfect for those curious about what lightweight can do or those losing a few ticks of speed naturally as we all age.

VANQUISH replaces our Bassara line. Grand Bassara remains. That’s our ultra-light, sub-30 gram line that VANQUISH won’t dip down into.