ORLANDO, Fla.—The Masters Tournament is the first sign of spring for many northerners, frostbacks and frozen tundrists (a word I invented for your reading pleasure).

The PGA Merchandise Show annually held here in January at the sprawling Orange County Convention Center is not the first sign of anything. It is merely a merciful timeout from short, dark days and wind-chill factors. Spring remains just a rumor Up North where I live (balmy Pittsburgh), especially days after New Orleans shockingly increased its all-time snowfall record from 2.6 to 8.0 inches. The golf equivalent would be Tiger Woods winning the U.S. Open by about 51 shots.

At least the PGA Merchandise Show brings hope even when the thought of spring is mostly ironic. We, the fortunate PGA Merchandise Show attendees, get the first looks at new drivers made of carbon fiber and titanium and other sexy materials, shiny irons beckoning like mythic Greek sirens, putters glimmering with optimism, still unmarked golf shoes, freshly folded apparel, golf balls built on bold claims and all the rest. It’s just enough fantasy to give us the strength to face the rest of January, maybe even February, a month whose only plus is that it has only 28 days.

In search of golf’s most interesting new gear, I attended Demo Day at Orange County National’s superlative 360-degree range. I usually try out some of the new clubs but this year it was so rainy, chilly and breezy that it was pointless. Not to mention that my aging physique felt as limber as a cement leisure suit in that weather, so trying to make a decent swing was twice as pointless, if that’s possible.

So most of the items mentioned below will require additional testing before I make recommendations but they got my full attention after I defrosted. Here is my PGA Show All-Star lineup of the absolutely most memorable stuff in the building (not including Elvis, who obviously had already left) …

Lord Stanley, would you care for more champagne?

Caliber Golf makes the team for the second straight year, an unusual feat. Yes, it’s still a putter disguised as a hockey stick—a golf shaft inside the hockey-stick shell makes it legal for play. It sounds crazy, it looks crazier but you don’t have to be Sidney Crosby or Conor McDavid to putt the puck—er, ball—into the hole. This putter is the closest thing I’ve seen to a cure for putting yips. Co-founder Tim Wright’s 2025 model has a lighter, stronger shell with rippled grip lines, a nice improvement and its strong point is that Wright can install any putter head on the shaft, which is why pricing varies from $375 and up. But that’s not why Caliber is back on this list. Wright produced a Stanley Cup putter, an honest-to-goodness usable putter whose head is silver and shiny and in the shape of the Stanley Cup, hockey’s greatest award. You can hit putts with it using the Cup’s base. Here’s the catch: Only a handful were made and they’re for ceremonial purposes. One now sits in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. The Stanley Cup putters are not for sale. But maybe they should be. Flipped upside down, you could pour a few thimbles of your favorite liquid onto the Cup’s shallow underbelly and technically drink from the Cup. That alone should be enough to make producing this putter a priority and an attainable goallll!

33 and me

Once upon a time, Baskin-Robbins stocked a shocking 31 flavors of ice cream. Wowie, Grandpa! Now it wields over 1,400 flavors like weapons of mass destruction. Cobra did something sort of similar with its DS-Adapt lineup of four new driver models ($549). The adjustable hosel and weights on this baby offer 33 different combinations of settings. Actually, it has 64 settings but 31 are duplicates. Does that sound too complicated? It’s not. In fact, this is a ridiculous option to have. It’s like having an entire fitting cart all in one club. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing (come on, Cobra naturally provides an easy how-to guide), you can trial-and-error your way to the Magic Kingdom of Drivinitbetter. Two of the four DS-Adapt models have additional customization options with movable weights, virtually guaranteeing a good fit and allowing users to fine-tune ball flight, shot shape, launch windows and ensuing quality of life. 

Let’s roll

Titleist has two new versions of the Pro V1 and Pro V1x balls coming out and says they perform slightly better (as in longer and higher) than the previous models. The Earth thusly wobbles on its axis for a few moments in the wake of such big, big news. (And by the way, it’s an educated guess that these might be the last Pro V1s released before the 2028 ball rollback.) The Pro V1 ($55 per dozen) is better than ever? You shouldn’t really need to know anything else. Now move along, people …

Beam me up, Scotty—I’m still away

I’d like to report a Scotty Cameron avalanche. It’s the 20th anniversary of Scotty Cameron’s original Studio Style putters so he has delivered 12 new models of his popular classic designs ($499). Cameron putters are what golfers aspire to deserve, much like Ben Hogan blades were once the pinnacle of irons that you dreamed of being good enough to use. You don’t have to be a good player to use a Scotty, if I may be permitted to be on a first-name basis with The Man, but you might be a good putter because you use a Scotty. What’s new in this dozen, including the classic Newport, Catalina and Fastback models, is the use of chain-link milled face technology. Look closely at the putter face. You don’t need Superman’s x-ray vision to see the links, which create a softer sound than previous versions, a sweet roll and speed control—in other words, the hallmarks of the Scottys that make them one of putting’s gold standards. (Ping is another, fyi.) They’ll be available in mid-March. Scottys are in their own world—the limited-edition putters and headcovers are eminently collectible, some of them worth thousands of dollars. That’s great but making all your 5-footers? Priceless. 

North by Northwestern

The Mongolian Reversal of the PGA Show was pulled off by Northwestern Golf, also the star Underdog of the Show. If you’re an old-timer, you remember Northwestern’s glory days when stars such as Tom Weiskopf and Chi Chi Rodriguez proudly played the flagship line. Northwestern was founded in 1929 and, according to MyGolfMuseum.com, has “sold more golf clubs than any company, ever.” But who’s counting? Northwestern quietly ceased production around the turn of the century but now it’s back and, curiously, based in West Virginia. The New Northwestern Golf has a smart business plan. Does anybody remember this concept—affordable golf clubs? In a world of $600 drivers, apparently not. But here comes Northwestern with a set of sleek cavity-back game improvement irons that look like low-handicapper sticks. And the driver is an attractive black beauty. I watched video of a former PGA Tour player (and former Ryder Cupper) who cannot be named take a swing with the driver, which had a shaft not well-suited to his swing speed. After his follow-through, he laughed out loud in surprise at how well he crushed the shot. That accidental endorsement would be all you really need to know except for this: the Northwestern driver’s suggested retail price is $200 for the driver, $60-$80 per iron and $120 for a sharp-looking milled putter. Northwestern is in the right place at the right time, the clubs will be hitting retail stores in May, as new golfers from simulator play and Topgolf move to the outdoor game but don’t want to shell out a few thousand bucks for a full set in case they’re not as hooked as they thought. Northwestern Golf is back. Northwestern University football? Uh, I’ll have to get back to you on that.

Gravity rises

I got hooked on Newton Golf’s Gravity putters in November when I used the model known as The Deuce to run the table at a certain high-end golf course on Sea Island during the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic. (I was absolutely not playing golf when I was supposed to be working, boss. Honest.) The new-putter magic wore off slightly after 36 holes but that two-day streak for a guy who is an average-at-best putter made me a believer. The Gravity putters ($450) are revised editions of the old Sacks Parente line and they’re ingeniously designed—milled and made from carbon steel and aircraft-grade aluminum. Pick the putter up by the head and swing the shaft, it feels as light as a pencil. While the overall putter is light, the head nonetheless provides the relative weight difference to give it a substantial feel. The ultralight design works because it includes an ultra-low balance point (ULBP in Newton-speak). It comes in five models. I wielded the center-shafted Deuce. There’s also the Prism, a big rounded mallet; the Drac, which has two back-end fangs; the Classic, an Anser style; and the Duke, a heel-shafted, rounded half-mallet. All the putters come in black with red sight lines or dots, which are customizable. You can get my Deuce only by prying it out of my cold, dead hands.

The two-bagger

What would late Baseball Hall of Famer Ernie Banks say about Sun Mountain’s new golf bag offerings? Probably his usual line: “Let’s play two.” Sun Mountain has been a frequent innovator and its newly updated Eclipse lineup of stand bags ($249-$279) features a savvy wrinkle. Instead of a small foot pedal to make the legs spring out for standing, a quarter of the bag’s bottom hinges, pushing the legs out. Without the foot-spring, the Eclipse is easier to get in and out of a cart and Sun Mountain accomplished that feat by giving the Eclipse a two-piece base. It’s clever. Even better in the second part of this doubleheader, however. It is the limited edition/display model Marucci Eclipse bag that Sun Mountain may (or may not) put into a limited-edition production with a don’t-tell-anybody rumor of a July launch date and hey, isn’t baseball’s All-Star Game coincidentally in July? At the PGA Show, several models in white, copper and black were accompanied on display by matching baseball mitts because the Marucci bag’s long side pocket is made of the same leather-stringing pattern of a mitt. It would be a must-have for baseball fans, not to mention many major leaguers who are avid golfers, due to its striking appearance. Not making more Marucci’s at any price, Sun Mountain, would be like striking out. 

If we can print golf clubs, why can’t we print money?

My grandson, who just turned 9 last week, had a short Christmas list—chewing gum, mints and, oh yeah, a 3D printer. He got all three and now he’s busy on his 3D printer creating, I don’t know, an army of robots or an Edmund Fitzgerald replica or something. It’s shocking but 3D printing is already semi-common. Cobra Golf put out a 3D printer-made putter a few years ago and now have a set of irons, LIMIT3D. I got an early sample of a 7-iron last fall and it performed even better than the Cobra King Tour 7-iron already in my bag. I nearly took the 6-iron out but I thought that would prove confusing. I hit the 3D 7-iron a little higher and 7-10 yards farther. Cobra says the irons are 33% lighter, which translates to more speed, higher launch and better results. My mis-hits were definitely better. There’s always a catch, of course. The Cobra LIMIT3D full set of irons sells for $3,000. The old guy in me thinks, geez, my first new car, a 1972 Plymouth Duster, cost $3,200—what world am I living in now? The golfer in me thinks that 7-iron was sweet, and buying the whole set would be money better spent than wasting it on dumb stuff like a new washer and dryer. The Cobra website offers a payment plan of $153 per month. That equates to 19.5 months, not including interest. The dilemma lingers. A man can dream/drool, can’t he?

The little putter that could

The Show’s Cinderella Story of the Year Award goes to the Void putter, a dad-and-son operation that has created a startling good putter. The key to the Void is its trademarked Gravity Drive insert. There’s a lot of heavy science involved here—the elder John Hill worked in the aerospace industry and knows his way around metals, polymers and physics. Basically, the insert is slightly thicker near the edges of the impact zone, which adds more energy to mis-hit putts. (Mis-hit putts? That never happens to me. I also climbed Mount Everest and am an admiral in the Space Force. Are you calling me a liar?) The result of that added energy is consistent distance on putts, especially the off-center strikes. The secret of golf, the Void website suggests, is fewer three putts and that might be true. Better distance control on putts is a direct path to that noble goal. Anyway, Void’s Saber putter ($279), is a half-mallet with a gooseneck heel shaft while the Goliath ($299) is a full boxy mallet. Void putters also come in six colors, including teal, crimson, cobalt blue and black and both models come with center-shafted versions called Centerfire.

The Vice is Right

The game’s best marketing slogan may be Vice Golf’s “Pay Less Play More.” That certainly tops my “Am I still away?” line. Vice Golf is known for its cut-rate, high-performance golf balls that have a national following. It is surprising how often I find lost balls with the Vice stamp. The good news for Vice users—are they called Vicers, Viceroys, Vice-ants?—is that Vice is in the golf club business now, a decision that stems from Vice’s 2023 merger with HIO, a large European club-fitter with a huge database of fitting information. Vice relied on that data to design balls and then clubs. The irons have a low center of gravity, high launch and simply have a strong appearance. The VG1 irons also come in black and both models can be customized in trim colors such as orange, lime green, white and pink. They are smart-looking sticks. The drivers have a shimmering speckled crown and a nice shape but won’t be available until later this year. 

A high five for Callaway

Callaway has quietly become the most popular fairway wood maker and its new Elyte models are hot stuff. I was Today Years Old when I learned the Elyte moniker was a tribute to company founder Ely Callaway—how did I miss something so obvious? Some of my favorite fairway woods ever were the old Adams Tight Lies, which featured shallow, easy-to-hit faces. The Elyte fairway woods use titanium, are shallow and without the traditional Callaway draw bias so they’re easier to get airborne. I’m picking the 5-wood as the focus of the group because, really, how often do you hit a 3-wood well? Meanwhile, a 5-wood and a 7-wood have so much loft they’re easier to get airborne and more satisfying to hit. Let’s not get too technical here but Callaway moved some tungsten weight forward in the head to help golfers striking the ball low on the face, a common issue. The Elyte woods and the driver may well leave Callaway’s previous AI Smoke generation in its dust. We’ll see.

Welcome to the Homecoming

It only seemed as if Bridgestone got out of the golf equipment business a few years ago. In reality, it simply stopped distributing clubs in the U.S. That was a curious choice, given that Bridgestone’s balls are repped by that Tiger Woods guy who is kinda famous. That tie-in seems like the time to cash in on Tiger’s name. Well, Bridgestone jumped back into clubs in America and, being a very conservative company, returned with three lineups of noteworthy, no-frill irons. The 220 MB ($1,050) are muscle-backs; the 221 CB ($1,050) are modified cavity backs; and the 222 CB ($900) are the straight cavity backs and the most forgiving. The clubs have a clean, simple and traditional design. Following its conservative approach, the irons will initially be available only through Club Champion fitting outlets. It’s still a bold move by Bridgestone to get back into clubs. They’ve got balls and they sell a lot of them.