Benoit: He put pineapple juice in his drink! It’s so dumb.
Birdie: It’s so dumb, it’s brilliant!
Benoit: NO! It’s just dumb!
You may recognize this exchange from Rian Johnson’s 2022 film Glass Onion. Spoiler warning, it’s how the murder was committed. Yet the exchange between someone who understands what is happening, and a blind follower defending an idiotic decision, it all feels a little familiar. It reminds me of something in the world of golf…
PXG.
Now, I will go on record and say that PXG does not deserve all of the hate that it gets. If you go back to 2015 their GEN1 0311 iron basically revolutionized hollow body head designs. Injecting it with a TPE/Polymer was a stroke of genius and it’s fair to say that PXG was early and influential in establishing what is now commonly known as the Players Distance category of clubs. Yes, Taylormade popularized the category with the launch of the P790 two years later, and still dominated that market, but PXG deserves their flowers for what they brough to the market in the GEN1.
If you fast forward to 2026, or rather, December of 2025 – a release timeframe that I still struggle to understand, you’ll find the launch of the PXG Lightning family of drivers. Are they the best drivers on the market? Arguably no, but for the first time they’re legitimately in the conversation and you’d be well served to test it in a fitting before spending your money. The performance is competitive with everything on the market. To my eye, they look great, sound amazing and the only way to improve it would be to add a laser engraving of Lightning McQueen on the face.
Not to mention all of the levers you can pull for an iron fitting. Are they my favourite irons on the market? No. Could I afford a set of their irons? No. Do I recommend them based on a value derived from a mixture of both performance and price, absolutely not. Yet they’re good irons that serve a purpose. I’m definitely a fan.
I’m also the first to admit that I like their putters. I love the Hellcat, a zero-torque heel-shafted blade style putter that rolls the ball beautifully, looks great and comes in at half the price of the L.A.B. Link 2.1 and 2.2 putters. Most of their other putters are perfectly fine, for instance the Battle Ready II Torpedo is excellent, but it’s a blatant copy of the Taylormade Spider Tour and it’s more expensive than the Taylormade – so why would someone buy it?
The answer to that is loyalty. PXG more than any other brand seems to have a cult feeling around it. Yes, every brand has loyalists, we all know someone who has 14 clubs, a bag, glove, golf balls and a hat that say Taylormade on it, but no other group seems to be dedicated to the brand in spite of common sense.
Callaway loyalists will admit that their wedges are not quite as good as they were when Roger Cleveland was with the company. Taylormade fans will admit that they dominate the fairway market because they bought Adams Golf. Titleist fans – well, if I’m being honest they won’t admit a damn thing, but it feels like a classist argument, not a feverish cult like the PXG corp.
And that’s where we circle back to the movie quote, this time interjecting it with a hint of that PXG spice.
The Golf Addict: The Sugar Daddy III is $434.99 CAD! It’s so dumb.
PXG Pat: It’s 3x forged, cnc milled and has precision weighting technology, it’s brilliant!
The Golf Addict: NO! It’s just dumb!
And here I was thinking that a Vokey SM11 at $279.99 was out of touch with reality…
I have hit the Sugar Daddy III, I have not played a round with it, but I have been able to hit the club. Take price out of it for a moment, and it feels perfectly nice, spins the ball as much as you could hope, and when it’s fresh out of the box it makes such dramatic contact with the surface of the ball that there will be white residue showing you exactly where the impact position was – no fiducials required.
I’m even a fan of the precision weighting aspect. If you want to hit a particular swing weight, not a problem! No need to change grinds, bounce, or add lead tape, just swap the weight and away you go! It may not be the most beautiful thing in the world, but from an engineering perspective it’s not dumb at all, it’s legitimately brilliant.
Now if you recall our revised quote, the Sugar Daddy III is 100% CNC Milled, but only after it’s forged three times from 8630 carbon steel. It’s brought to life more in line with the production cycles of a putter, and no one would bat an eye at spending $435 on a putter these days. The work to bring this wedge off of the drawing board and into your hands is not inexpensive, and the production aspect likely demands the price tag.
If you had told me that PXG was doing a limited edition run of wedges, they were going to be expensive, yet perfectly crafted, and built to order, similar in venture to Mark Wahlberg’s new golf ball, The Underground. I would have said “yes, that’s awesome, good for them, great idea, I’m jealous of anyone who has the ability to play that.”
At that point it would have been like seeing a Ferrari in the wild. You know damn well that whoever is driving that car could have made a smarter financial choice and been just fine and gotten all the performance they required for every day life, but man oh man it’s cool!
That’s not what PXG did though…
They over engineered a wedge, mass produced it, and put it on shelves in retail locations for all to see. Not just their loyalists, but everyone. Every single weekend warrior golfer that occasionally walks down the aisles of their local golf shop will have the opportunity to see the Sugar Daddy III, look at the price tag and then whisper to themselves the following statement… “what the F&#%?!”
If you know who PXG is, you’ll understand why they made this wedge. You probably won’t play it, but you’ll get why they’ve made it and why they’ve made it that price. If you aren’t familiar with the oeuvre of PXG though… you’re probably going to see that price and never again consider purchasing a club from the brand. Which is a shame, because they make some truly wonderful clubs.
Point blank, I really like PXG as a brand, and I love some of their product. I challenge you to go hit their new Lightning Hybrid and then find a competing product that feels better – you can’t. I think the Sugar Daddy III is a great wedge that performs brilliantly, but the way it has been brought to market… Brilliant? No. It’s just dumb.
XO Go Low,
The Golf Addict has worked in the golf industry in a number of roles. Starting on the turf team he has since worked in pro shops and now as a Master Club Fitter in Ontario. When it comes to writing, his bylines have appeared in over a dozen publications. On the playing side he's put in 6 serious seasons spread out over the last 30 years, he hopes to break Par once more before it's all said and done, but is happier studying and building the equipment than focusing on his own game.
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