Given the sluggish state of the golf industry, you’d have to be very rich, an out-of-the-box thinker, and perhaps a bit crazy to start a club company now. Have you met Bob Parsons? The man who created GoDaddy.com in 1997 and is reportedly worth more than $2 billion launched PXG—for Parsons Xtreme Golf —last year with the intent of building the finest golf clubs possible and selling them to people for whom price doesn’t matter. Its first full set of clubs is out, and the performance lives up to the promise.
The classic-looking irons are forged three times before an internal cavity is milled in the head and filled with a thermoplastic elastomer that provides stability and feel; milling and the 11 tungsten-alloy screws in the back provide the around-the-face weighting found in game-improvement clubs while making the irons easy to hit and control.
Along with an adjustable hosel, the driver has 16 screws of different weights in the sole that can be moved around to alter ball flight. (The fairway woods and putter also feature adjustable weights; those in hybrids and irons don’t move.) Among the most pleasing aspects of these clubs is their feel: Solidly struck shots are like butter and mishits more than acceptable (in distance, too). PXG sells direct to consumers and through top custom-fitters, strongly encouraging golfers to get fit for the perfect shaft, grip, and weighting combination. Driver: $700. Fairway woods: $500. Hybrids: $400. Irons/wedges: $300. Putter: $400
