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This French company is selling an $1,100 putter

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Move over Scotty Cameron and your $379 retail offerings… French luxury putter manufacturer, ValGrine, is introducing the $1,100 Caesar mallet.

What’s so special about this flatstick? In passing along key product details, ValGrine emphasized the putter’s alignment lines, which allow a golfer to position the ball centrally with his or her eyes positioned directly over the two lines, claiming such a setup “generates stability” and “manages the kinetics of the swing.”

The company also emphasized the Caesar’s insert, which is backed by a hollow cavity for a precisely honed sound at impact and feel. ValGrine indicates the insert cavity creates a “subwoofer” effect, amplifying the sound at impact so a player knows exactly how a putt was struck.

Yet none of this would seem to justify a price point in excess of $1,000.

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Moving onto the Caesar’s specs

  • 71-degree lie
  • Grip: Neoprene, silver cotton stitching
  • Putter head: Aluminum 2024
  • Micro-pearled finish
  • Polished finish on bottom, sides
  • 270 grams
  • 3.5 degrees of loft
  • Aluminum 2017 insert, cross-engraved
  • Red/black/pink

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And what of this $1,000-putter producing ValGrine golf? As best we can determine from the company website, the ValGrine line, which includes at least five other similarly priced putters, seems to be the brainchild of a Gregory Morea,  a “mechanical engineer” with “a passion for golf” and “beautiful objects.”

Apparently dissatisfied with market offerings, Moreau sought to “mix the utilitarian with the pleasant, and marry elegance with performance.” And the resultant putters are the “answer for golfers looking for refinement, comfort and novelty.”

With inspiration and technology from the aeronautics and marine industries, Formula 1 racing and watchmaking, the company’s putters are presented as “hand-made in France … chiseled like real aerodynamic sculptures.”

“It takes 1,000 operations and 18 to 22 trades to make a single putter, which takes two to three months of work. Each manipulation is thoughtful, precise and controlled, to provide putters of indisputable quality,” the ValGrine website states.

If you’re wondering why the ultra-premium price point, then, it seems the answer has mostly to do with labor costs (“two to three months of work”).

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So, what do you think? Compelled to drop more than a grand on the Caesar?

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26 Comments

26 Comments

  1. Gaby

    Apr 27, 2016 at 8:59 am

    Come on. Try the club first.
    I came from France, I love golf and I’ve got a ValGrine blade model since february. Maybe you hate french people but seriously these putters are worth it !!! I’m a big putting fan, I’ve almost 10 putters at home and yet I’ve never seen that before. It significantly improve performance, technologies are smart, the sweetspot is huge and feeling is amazing. I’m pretty impressed by what french people have done in this company, so I couldn’t allow you to say this without reply. Believe me they’re not putters’ specialists for nothing… Anyway, to each his own!

  2. chris

    Apr 20, 2016 at 11:12 am

    i’ve seen this before……

  3. 8thehardway

    Apr 16, 2016 at 6:08 am

    Well Supersize my Freedom Fries and call me exceptional, but they’d have been better off moving to central Africa and creating a line of Cameroon putters.
    Let’s be franc, it takes two months to build a Rolls Royce Phantom but they need 3 months to stick a hunk of metal on the end of a shaft? That’s some fishy vichyssoise right there. I hear next year’s line of ANGST putters is demo’ing well with focus groups; that figures ’cause these guys are just out to focus.

    Who puts the GRIN in ValGrine putters? Whoever buys one.

  4. Large chris

    Apr 15, 2016 at 8:23 am

    1000 operations… Hahaha
    I tried that sort of line with a customer once and it didn’t fly.

  5. :-p

    Apr 15, 2016 at 3:09 am

    The French are so weird. Why do they want to play golf anyway? It doesn’t suit their personality

    • Ezra

      Apr 16, 2016 at 7:12 am

      Yeah Yeah strangers in general are so weird… Why we Americans should even care of what’s happening outside the US? Our country is obviously the Alpha and Omega of everything 😉

      • :-ppp

        Apr 17, 2016 at 3:50 am

        No, truly, the French are weird and should not be playing golf.

  6. D Louis

    Apr 14, 2016 at 2:03 pm

    If you search, they actually have putters between 13,350 and 30,350 euros…crazy stuff

  7. Scooter McGavin

    Apr 14, 2016 at 1:24 pm

    All of the 65 year-old, pudgy, Asian businessmen will be thrilled. And they’ll try to haggle and buy it for $600 and pay with an envelope of twenties.

    • Jamie

      Apr 17, 2016 at 5:19 pm

      Racist stereotypical comments are not needed.

  8. Mark

    Apr 14, 2016 at 12:56 pm

    Looks like it should be on sale in Walmart. The standard of workmanship looks awful.

  9. eva

    Apr 14, 2016 at 12:48 pm

    If I’m going to spend over $1000 for a putter I rather have one of those gold Majesty putters. $1000+ putters are nothing new, lots of them in Korea and Japan.

  10. Philip

    Apr 14, 2016 at 12:21 pm

    What? No jewels, gold or platinum? Maybe I can get the company to invest in my idea to build a golf course on Venus – after the planet is terraformed, of course.

  11. Nolanski

    Apr 14, 2016 at 12:18 pm

    Just bought one and I got the shaft pured…

    Just kidding. Smiley face.

  12. B Hock

    Apr 14, 2016 at 12:12 pm

    The title is misleading….because I doubt they have actually sold any! 😛

  13. Fug

    Apr 14, 2016 at 11:35 am

    Please make it uglier. Thank you.

  14. steve

    Apr 14, 2016 at 10:55 am

    For his sake I hope they are made to order. Other wise he will be stuck with a lot of inventory. This has zero chance of succeeding.

  15. Richard

    Apr 14, 2016 at 10:54 am

    I wouldn’t pay $10 for that out of a bargain bin.

  16. AllBOdoesisgolf

    Apr 14, 2016 at 10:53 am

    Could be $5 and I wouldn’t buy it or anything French for that matter.

  17. ca1879

    Apr 14, 2016 at 9:20 am

    Someone will but them – we golfers have proven that we’ll fall for just about any half-baked idea.

  18. bill

    Apr 14, 2016 at 8:51 am

    Ridiculous sub-par paint fill from the top view. Have French people fall so far back behind to do this? So lazy but want to make money by calling ridiculous prices.

  19. Weekend Duffer

    Apr 14, 2016 at 8:43 am

    Trash

    $1.1K for a no-name putter that’s not even milled. I’ll stick with my $30 odyssey 2 ball.

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Whats in the Bag

Kevin Tway WITB 2024 (May)

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Driver: Ping G430 LST (10.5 degrees)
Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Black 6 X

3-wood: TaylorMade Stealth 2 (15 degrees)
Shaft: Mitsubishi Diamana D+ 80 TX

5-wood: TaylorMade Stealth 2 (18 degrees)
Shaft: Mitsubishi Diamana D+ 90 TX

Irons: Wilson Staff Utility (2), Titleist T100 (4-9)
Shafts: Mitsubishi MMT 100 TX (2), True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 (4-9)

Wedges: Titleist Vokey Design SM10 (48-10F @47, 52-12F @51, 56-14F), SM7 (60-10S)
Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 (48-56), True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 (60)

Putter: Scotty Cameron T-5 Proto
Grip: Scotty Cameron Black Baby T

Grips: Golf Pride Tour Velvet Plus4

More photos of Kevin Tway’s WITB in the forums.

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Did Rory McIlroy inspire Shane Lowry’s putter switch?

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Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from a piece our Andrew Tursky originally wrote for PGATour.com’s Equipment Report. Head over there for the full article.

The timing of Lowry’s putter changeup was curious: Was he just using a Spider putter because he was paired with McIlroy, who’s been using a Spider Tour X head throughout 2024? Was Lowry just being festive because it’s the Zurich Classic, and he wanted to match his teammate? Did McIlroy let Lowry try his putter, and he liked it so much he actually switched into it?

Well, as it turns out, McIlroy’s only influence was inspiring Lowry to make more putts.

When asked if McIlroy had an influence on the putter switch, Lowry had this to say: “No, it’s actually a different putter than what he uses. Maybe there was more pressure there because I needed to hole some more putts if we wanted to win,” he said with a laugh.

To Lowry’s point, McIlroy plays the Tour X model, whereas Lowry switched into the Tour Z model, which has a sleeker shape in comparison, and the two sole weights of the club are more towards the face.

Lowry’s Spider Tour Z has a white True Path Alignment channel on the crown of his putter, which is reminiscent of Lowry’s former 2-ball designs, thus helping to provide a comfort factor despite the departure from his norm. Instead of a double-bend hosel, which Lowry used in his 2-ball putters, his new Spider Tour Z is designed with a short slant neck.

“I’ve been struggling on the greens, and I just needed something with a fresh look,” Lowry told GolfWRX.com on Wednesday at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship. “It has a different neck on it, as well, so it moves a bit differently, but it’s similar. It has a white line on the back of it [like my 2-ball], and it’s a mallet style. So it’s not too drastic of a change.

“I just picked it up on the putting green and I liked the look of it, so I was like, ‘Let’s give it a go.’”

Read the rest of the piece over at PGATour.com.

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Webb Simpson equipment Q&A: Titleist’s new 2-wood, 680 blade irons, and switching to a broomstick Jailbird

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With seven career wins on the PGA Tour, including a U.S. Open victory, Webb Simpson is a certified veteran on the course. But he’s also a certified veteran in the equipment world, too. He’s a gearhead who truly knows his stuff, and he’s even worked closely with Titleist on making his own custom 682.WS irons.

On Wednesday at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship, I caught up with Simpson to hear about his experience with Titleist’s new prototype 2-wood, how Titleist’s 680 Forged irons from 2003 ended up back in his bag, and why he’s switching into an Odyssey Ai-One Jailbird Cruiser broomstick putter this week for the first time.

Click here to read our full story about Simpson’s putter switch on PGATOUR.com’s Equipment Report, or continue reading below for my full Q&A with Simpson at Quail Hollow Club on Wednesday.

See Webb Simpson’s full WITB from the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship here

GolfWRX: It seems like you’ve been a little all over the place with your irons in the past six months or so, and now going back to the 680’s. Is that just a comfort thing? What’s been going on with the irons?

Webb Simpson: Titleist has been so great at working with me, and R&D, on trying to get an iron that kind of modernizes the 680. And so the 682.WS took the T100 grooves, but kinda took the look and the bulk and the build of the 680’s into one club. They’re beautiful, and awesome looking. I just never hit them that well for a consistent period of time. It was probably me, but then I went to T100’s and loved them. I loved the spin, the trajectory, the yardage, but again, I never went on good runs. Going through the ground, I couldn’t feel the club as well as with the blade. So last week, I’m like, ‘Alright. I’m gonna go back more for…comfort, and see if I can get on a nice little run of ball striking.’

So that’s why I went back.

 

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OK, that makes sense. I know you had done some 2-wood testing recently. Is that in the bag right now?

It’s like day-by-day. I used it at Hilton Head every day. Valero, I used it one round. And this week, me and my caddie will do the book every morning, and if it’s a day where we think we need it, we’ll just put it in and take the 3-wood out. I love it because it’s a super simple swap. Like, it doesn’t really change much.

Yeah, can you tell me about that club? I mean, we don’t really know anything about it yet. You know? I haven’t hit it or anything, obviously.

It has grooves like a 3-wood. Spin is perfect. And it’s honestly, like, everything is in the middle of a 3-wood and driver number. Trajectory, spin, carry, all of it. So, a Hilton Head golf course is almost too easy to talk about because, you know, there, so many holes are driver 3-wood.

Valero, our thinking was we had two par-5’s into the wind, and we knew that it would take two great shots to get there in two. So instead of hitting driver-driver, we just put it in. And I used it on those holes.

Hilton was a little easier because it was off-the-tee kind of questions. But Colonial will be a golf course where, you know, there’s a lot of driver or 3-woods. It’s kind of like a backup putter or driver for me now. I’ll bring it to every tournament.

So it’s, like, in your locker right now, probably?

Well, it would be. It’s in my house [because Webb lives near by Quail Hollow Club, and is a member at the course.] It’s in the garage.

Oh, yeah, that’s right. Do you know what holes you might use it out here if it goes in play? 

Potentially 15, depending on the wind. Second shot on 10. Could be 14 off the tee. The chances here are pretty low (that he’ll use the 2-wood). But, like, Greensboro would be an awesome club all day. I’m trying to think of any other golf courses.

There’s plenty that it’ll be a nice weapon to have.

It’s interesting, the wave of 2-woods and mini drivers. Like, it’s just really taken off on Tour, and all the companies have seemed to embrace it.

Yeah. The thing I had to learn, it took me, like, at least a week to learn about it is you gotta tee it up lower than you think. I kept teeing it up too high. You need it low, like barely higher than a 3-wood. And that was where I got optimal spin and carry. If you tee it up too high, you just don’t get as much spin and lose distance, I don’t know if that’s just a mini driver thing.

And you obviously have a Jailbird putter this week. What spurred that on?

Inconsistent putting. I’m stubborn in a lot of ways when it comes to my equipment, but I have to be open minded – I just hadn’t putted consistently well in a while. And I’m like, ‘Man, I feel my ball-striking coming along. Like I feel better; for real, better.’

If I can just get something in my hands that I’m consistent with. Being on Tour, you see it every year, guys get on little runs. I can put together four to five tournaments where I’m all the sudden back in the majors, or in the FedExCup Playoffs. You can turn things around quick out here. I’m like, ‘Man, whatever’s going to get me there, great.’

My caddie, David Cook, caddied for Akshay at the Houston Open and he putted beautifully. Then, I watched Akshay on TV at Valero, and he putted beautifully. And, I’m like, ‘I’m just going to try it.’

I’ve never tried it for more than a putt or two, and I just ordered what Akshay uses. It was pretty awkward at first, but the more I used it, the more I’m like, ‘Man, it’s pretty easy.’ And a buddy of mine who’s a rep out here, John Tyler Griffin, he helped me with some setup stuff. And he said at Hilton Head, he wasn’t putting well, then tried it, and now he makes everything. He was very confident. So I’m like, ‘Alright, I’ll try it.’”

And you’re going with it this week?

Hundred percent.

Alright, I love it. Thank you, I always love talking gear with you. Play well this week. 

Thanks, man.

See Webb Simpson’s full WITB from the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship here

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