A couple months back a twitter user posted a photo of a PXG-branded golf ball he found on a course in Arizona. Is PXG making a ball?
Further speculation was fueled by the appearance of a PXG ball on the USGA’s conforming list. $200 a dozen sounds about right (FYI, I have no idea what a PXG ball might retail for, I made that number up).
And then yesterday, Dave Dawsey at Golf-Patents.com posted a snippet of a recently approved patent for a golf ball manufactured by Slick Golf. What makes the Slick patent notable is that inventors are listed as Robert R. Parsons and Bradley D. Schweigert.
You can read Dawsey’s story here.
Parsons is, as you should know by now, the Go Daddy guy who puts the P in PXG, and Schweigert is the former PING guy who runs his R&D department.
What you might not know is that when Schweigert left PING certain legally binding entanglements prevented him from getting to work on golf clubs Day 1. While waiting for the sand to trickle through metaphorical hourglass, the engineers for the company that would become PXG set to work designing a golf ball.
Whatever it takes to pass the time, amiright?
I say would become because Parsons Xtreme Golf wasn’t the first name on the table for Parsons’ golf brand. Before the company was really a company at all, there was consideration given to naming it Slick Golf. In fact, the first run of what we’re confident is the PXG ball found in Arizona actually bears the Slick Golf Logo. The two balls also share the same “Tour X6” name.
Sufficed to say there’s a bit of a branding conflict between PXG’s high-end image and a ball called Slick. It appears, for reasons that should be obvious enough, whatever the plans are for a PXG ball, the Slick brand probably won’t be part of them.
PXG has said that it has no plans to release a ball to retail. If that’s the case, why pay to accelerate a patent application? Maybe there are tour plans, maybe it’s as simple as Bob Parsons wanting to have the option of playing what could prove to be the most exclusive ball in golf.
Time will tell, or perhaps it won’t. It’s interesting nonetheless.
For even fewer details, visit the Slick Golf Website.
Corey R
11 years ago
I actually found one of these Slick 4 balls on a course in WA, and had never heard of it. Could find very little about it until this quick tid bit. The ball does feel like a “tour” ball, I play Titleist and Monsta balls usually. I used it for a few shots while playing just to see how it felt and it had a good feel, similar to that of Monsta. I haven’t used it much more than that. But now, I think I might give it some more testing on the practice greens.