Friday, January 25, 2013

2013 PGA Merchandise Show Notes: Demo Day


I got to the Orange County Convention Center at 8:30 Wednesday morning. I was going to drive over to OCN after I got my badge, but decided against it since I paid $14 for parking. I'm glad I didn't as traffic to OCN was outrageous. So far, I was a bit disappointed to the point where I only made 1 trip around the range. Not really much in the way of innovation or really exciting products out there.

There was a thing called 'The Golf Robot' that was very cool. It was a golf club hooked up to a machine.



Rumor has it that the golf robot will shut down the power of an entire city block when trying to replicate Jim Thorpe's swing.

Fourteen Golf has some new blades coming out that look really nice. I like their new driver as well. I also liked the new Yonex E-Zone driver.

I experimented with a bunch of different utility irons. I liked Fourteen Golf's quite a bit. However, Titleist did not have their new U-model utility iron which was mind boggling and disappointing.

PURE Grips has a new grip out that is supposed to be their answer to the cord grip. It felt very different. Kinda like a putting a car tire on a golf grip. I think you're either going to love it or hate it.

And then there was Edel Golf...

I tried their regular model and the Faldo model.

The Faldo model has a higher CoG. I hit it pretty decent. But, I was loving the regular model cavity back irons. They look great, little offset and they feel great.

They moved the CoG away from the heel a bit more, but didn't move the scorelines away from the heel as much as they did with the wedges.

It's a different looking face. It's not exactly some modern/new wave craze, but it's not exactly old school in looks either. But, I loved the way these irons feel and how they played. They have that nice 'thump' to them without the thump being the divot and so much shaft deflection. They also will be providing a various amount of customized options like the type of toe design, top line, etc. Very interesting and just a great set of irons.

You're going to like the Torque Balanced Faldo Putters. These are more like a 'heel hang', directly opposite of the toe hang putters. Leaving the putter face open isn't an issue with these putters. My initial impression was there wasn't much to get overly excited about at the Demo Day outside of Edel.

The rest of the manufacturers were not creating anything that was eye popping or innovative, but made sense type of product. I think a lot of the publics needs are not being addressed by these bigger manufacturers.

OCN also did not have professional caterers and that was a problem. I've found OCN's staff to be great each time I've been there, but they simply weren't suited for the food service in this environment. The line was a good 20 minutes just to get your food. You had 5 people working, 3 others doing nothing but talking. Problems with getting cash change, etc. Overall a bit disappointing.

Tomorrow is Tweet-Up 3.0 at the Brick House Tavern. And then Saturday I will hit up the show again and hopefully see some better products I didn't see at Demo Day.




3JACK

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