Equipment

Talking with Cut Golf, purveyors of the “best damn golf balls” under 20 bucks

Published

6 years ago

Mar 8, 2018

“The best damn golf balls under 20 bucks.” That’s the tagline that accompanies direct-to-consumer upstart Cut Golf’s wares.

What seems at first like an extremely bold claim really isn’t, as co-founder and CEO, Sam Uisprapassorn explains, the company produces the only 4-piece urethane ball that retails for under $20/dozen–in addition to three-piece and two-piece offerings, which technically fall under the “best damn” umbrella.

Thus, in bringing to market a four-piece urethane ball for markedly less than competitors, they are assuredly selling the highest quality and most sophisticated golf ball for under 20 bucks per dozen.

Founded out of Uisprapassorn’s frustration at losing pricey golf balls, Cut Golf is built on the principle that top-quality golf balls don’t have to be expensive.

I spoke with Uisprapassorn and Dennis Chang (co-founder and COO) about the company’s journey, unique value proposition, product offerings, and what’s ahead.

Uisprapassorn and Chang (Photo: JROJAS MEDIA)

BA: So take me back to the beginning. What’s inspired you to get into the golf ball business?

SU: Well. we’re avid golfers, so golf was a passion first. Other manufacturers have done a great job marketing their great products, but I thought there was room to do something different…to take a simpler approach to how we message our product benefits. But we got started right about the time Nike was exiting the golf equipment market. I was very loyal to Nike golf equipment, maybe to a fault, but I had to start looking for another golf ball. I eventually started looking at the folks in the direct-to-consumer space, and I didn’t see a value proposition in their pricing.

I was actually in the process of learning to hit a cut, and I was losing so many golf balls, that I thought, “There’s no point in this, there has to be a more cost efficient way to get the ball to the consumer.” So we started looking around for the right manufacturing partner, we found one, and then our business was born.

BA: Tell me about R&D and getting from concept to reality…

SU: To start with, we looked at multiple manufacturing options. And it was a process of looking at what the product was…understanding how the product would perform on the course and for a variety of different players.

There were a lot of designs we threw out and a lot of factories that didn’t work for us. We developed a ball that performed very well against “the other guys.” We got a baseline of what it was doing on the TrackMan and what it was doing on the course, so it was something we were confident in taking to market.

BA: Can you talk a little at selling your four-piece ball at the $19.99/dozen price point and how you’re able to do that…

Dennis Chang: Sam and I scrubbed the business model of everything we could in getting the ball from Point A to Point B. We don’t do big dollar spend at the PGA Show or pay tour pros. Ultimately the consumer pays for all of that. We manage our overhead efficiently, and we’ve grown a lot faster than expected.

(Photo: JROJAS MEDIA)

BA: Can you talk about demand and what the response has been like?

DC: I think the biggest way we’ve been able to drive sustainable growth without spending more money is awesome customer service and a great product. Word of mouth is obviously big for us. We get a lot of referrals. So we think that means that golfers are looking for a high-quality product at a very good value.

BA: How does your value proposition relate to competitors in the direct-to-consumer space?

SU: You can lump all of the competitors together. We have a four-piece urethane ball for $19.95 per dozen. The closest competitor offers a four-piece ball for $24.95, and I think that’s only with a bulk order of five dozen. With us, you don’t need to do a bulk buy to feel the savings.

BA: OK. Run through the golf ball lineup for us.

SU: We have Cut Blue and Cut Gray, which are both on the premium, urethane ball side. Cut Blue is a 90 compression 4-piece construction performance ball. Cut Grey is the softer compression performance ball with a 3-piece construction. Cut White is a 3-piece ball with a Surlyn cover ($14.95/dozen). 2-piece Cut Red is the lowest-compression ball. You can call it a “distance ball.” We’ve been asked to release some matte colors like you’re seeing in the market right now, so we’re deciding on colors. That’ll be $14.95/dozen with a 3-piece Surlyn cover. We’re leaning toward yellow and orange, and those will be out end of spring.

But we stay away from a lot of the golfballspeak. Look at how golf balls are communicated, everyone has some sort of value proposition. We have a no-nonsense approach: It’s core, mantle, urethane cover. If you want to get into dimple counts, we can get into dimple counts…but we don’t claim our golf ball is more dynamic than anyone else’s or that it’s going to fly farther than anyone else’s.

DC: Because there are so many options right now, golf ball preferences are pretty subjective among consumers. And one of the reason we’ve had such great adoption rates is we push for trial sleeves with our sample packs. So at a very low barrier to entry, without making a $20 or $40 investment, you can try our product.

(Photo: JROJAS MEDIA)

BA: Cool. Anything in the immediate future you’d like the readership to know about?

SU: We have the Cut Golf Club, which will be a middle-spring to end-of-spring launch. Back when we launched, we thought this would be a subscription service, but I knew that we needed some adoption before we could gain traction with any subscription service. We made that decision early on, but we never lost sight of the idea. So, April-or-May timeframe, folks will be able to set up a subscription/auto-ship to say, “I need golf balls every month,” or “I need them every other month.”

BA: So that’ll all be based on customer preference, not on tiers or plans?

SU: Right. We want to make sure we’re still offering top-notch service. We don’t want to be sending a monthly golf ball order to a guy in Fargo, North Dakota, in the middle of winter.

Check out Cut Golf on the web at cutgolf.co.

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Whats in the Bag

Patrick Reed WITB 2024 (May)

Published

18 hours ago

May 16, 2024

GolfWRX Staff

Patrick Reed what’s in the bag accurate as of the PGA Championship. More photos from the event here.

Driver: Ping G400 (8.5 degrees)
Shaft: Aldila Rogue Silver 125 MSI 70 Tour X

3-wood: Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond (15 degrees)
Shaft: Aldila Rogue Silver 125MSI 80 Tour X

Check out more in-hand photos of Patrick Reed’s clubs in the forums.

Hybrid: Callaway Apex Pro (18 degrees)
Shaft: Aldila RIP Phenom Hybrid 100 TX

Irons: Titleist 716 TMB (2), Grindworks PR-202 (4), Grindworks PR-101A (5-PW)
Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100

Check out more in-hand photos of Patrick Reed’s clubs in the forums.

Wedges: Cleveland RTX ZipCore (50-10 Mid), Titleist Vokey Design SM9 (56-08M @55), SM10 (60-04T)
Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400

Putter: Odyssey White Hot RX Pt Customs No. 2

Ball: Titleist Pro V1

Grips: Golf Pride MCC

More photos of Patrick Reed’s WITB in the forums.

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Equipment

John Daly’s $750 custom irons and 10 must-see gear photos from the 2024 PGA Championship

Published

18 hours ago

May 16, 2024

Andrew Tursky

Welcome to the 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky.

In the last two PGA Championships held at Valhalla, Tiger Woods won in 2000 – when he famously pointed his golf ball into the hole during the historic duel with Bob May – and Rory McIlroy won the 2014 event, basically in the dark on the final hole.

The point is, history shows that Valhalla tends to produce top-tier champions and plenty of drama.

This week at the 2024 PGA Championship, GolfWRX got its first up-close look at what some of the LIV Tour players have in their bags in 2024. We also caught back up with a few PGA Championship legends, such as Rich Beem and John Daly, and we dove into the bags of PGA Sectional qualifiers, too.

In total, we captured 47 different photo galleries this week, including 32 individual What’s In The Bag (WITB) forum threads. Click here to see all of our photos from the event, or continue reading to see my 10 equipment highlights from Valhalla.

1) Brooks Koepka’s new putter

Koepka was previously using a Scotty Cameron T5.5 putter with a slant neck, which he used to win at the beginning of the month in Singapore on the LIV tour. This week, however, he tried a T5.5 with a plumbers neck instead of the slant neck, and it’s immediately going in the bag. According to Scotty Cameron Tour rep Drew Page, Koepka already loved the head, and now finds the plumbers neck a bit more familiar to the blade-style putters he’s used throughout most of his career.

See Koepka’s full WITB here

2) The lead tape king returns, with putting goggles

Phil Mickelson has always been one of the GOATs when it comes to lead tape usage, so it was no surprise to see his 64-degree custom Callaway wedge slathered with slabs of lead tape on the back.

The big surprise was that lefty was spotted using ProAim putting training goggles on Wednesday during his warm-up session.

The ProAim goggles are helpful to find center lines and ensure proper alignment to the target.

See Phil Mickelson’s full WITB from the 2024 PGA Championship

3) Dobyns’ old-school gamer setup

Speaking of lead tape, check out Matt Dobyn’s old Titleist 718 T-MB irons, which are so loaded with lead tape that the club is nearly unrecognizable.

Respect.

The head professional at Meadow Brook Club is making his sixth start in a PGA Championship, and he’s using a throwback Callaway GBB Epic driver with MOI-boosting lead tape and adjustable weight placements.

As GolfWRX Forum user “InTheBag” pointed out in our Matt Dobyns’ WITB thread, he has the type of setup that makes you want to hide your wallet: “I don’t know Mr. Dobyns, but one look at that bag tells me he can take your money,” writes InTheBag.

Spot on.

4) John Daly’s custom Sub70 irons and wedges

We first saw John Daly using $750 direct-to-consumer Sub70 659-CB irons and TAIII wedges at the 2023 PNC Championship, and he still has them in the bag, but he’s since stepped up the customization on the Sub70 clubs.

Does Daly ever NOT keep things entertaining?

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A post shared by GolfWRX (@golfwrx)

A true showman.

See Daly’s full WITB

5) DJ’s custom putter

Dustin Johnson has always been one to test multiple putters week-to-week, and he has a keen eye for different alignment lines and crowns. This week, he’s opting for a completely gray TaylorMade Spider Tour “T3.0” prototype with a short slant neck.

See the rest of DJ’s WITB from the week here

6) Patrick Reed still rocking GrindWorks irons

Patrick Reed knows his stuff when it comes to equipment, and he’s a prolific tester. Still, however, the GrindWorks PR-101A irons are squarely in the bag after his departure to the LIV tour.

The most notable new addition to Reed’s bag is this Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond 3-wood.

Click here to see Reed’s full WITB from this week

7) Beem’s Scratch set

Rich Beem, who won the 2002 PGA Championship at Hazeltine National, came to the 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla with a bag full of Scratch Golf irons, which are loaded with lead tape and equipped with some of the coolest custom ferrules in professional golf.

See Rich Beem’s full WITB here

8) Jon Rahm’s 10-iron

Before going to LIV, Rahm was using a Callaway Apex TCB pitching wedge.

Now, he’s using a Callaway Apex TCB “10 iron.”

He’s also since upgraded to three Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke metalwoods, and fresh stampings on his Jaws Raw wedges. Click here to see Rahm’s full WITB from the 2024 PGA Championship.

9) “Why so serious?”

Tyrrell Hatton, another LIV player in the 2024 PGA Championship field, channels his inner Joker to ask everyone, “Why so serious?”

See Hatton’s full WITB here

10) Block’s “Proto” iron, from address

As you probably know by now, Block switched out of his old TaylorMade Tour Preferred MC 2014 irons, and into a full set of TaylorMade’s new “Proto” irons. We’ve already seen the Proto 4-iron in the bags of Rory McIlroy and Collin Morikawa, but this is our first look at the higher-lofted irons in the set.

Here’s a look at the 7-iron from address:

See what GolfWRX members are saying about the Proto irons in our Forums

And, with that, we say goodbye to Louisville, and the second major championship of the 2024 season. We’ll see you next week at the 2024 Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas after a champion has been crowned.

Until then, don’t forget to check out all of our photos from this week at the 2024 PGA Championship!

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Whats in the Bag

Club Junkie WITB, league night week 5: Another L.A.B. putter arises

Published

21 hours ago

May 16, 2024

Brian Knudson

We will be one quarter of the way through Thursday night men’s league season after this week. BK played much better last week, so he is hoping to continue that success and post another good score.

Here are the 14 clubs that will hopefully win him some skins!

Driver: PXG 0311 Black Ops (9 degrees, neutral setting)
Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Blue 6 X (2024)

3-wood: Cobra Dark Speed LS Titanium (14.5 degrees, set +1)
Shaft: Graphite Design Tour AD IZ-7x

Fairway: Callaway Apex UW (19 degrees)
Shaft: Fujikura ATMOS Tour Spec Blue 8 X

Hybrid: PXG 0311 Black Ops 4h (22 degrees, Flat Setting)
Shaft: KBS Tour Graphite Hybrid Prototype 85 S

Irons: TaylorMade P770 Phantom Black (5-PW)
Shaft: KBS Tour 120 Stiff

Wedge: PXG Sugar Daddy II (50-13 BP)
Shaft: Nippon Modus3 Tour 120 Stiff

Wedge: PXG Sugar Daddy II (56-13 BP)
Shaft: Nippon Modus3 Tour 120 Stiff

Wedge: PXG Sugar Daddy II (60-13 BP)
Shaft: Nippon Modus3 Tour 120 Stiff

Putter: L.A.B. Mezz.1 Max
Shaft: Accra x L.A.B. White

Ball: Titleist ProV1 Enhanced Alignment

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