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In the 1970s, Slotline shook the golfing world by developing quality putters that focused on Moment of Intertia (MOI). A buzzword thrown around often today, MOI is basically the idea that a more heavily weighted club would be less prone to twisting at impact and would make poor impact do better than it otherwise would.
It was a revolutionary concept at the time for the putter. Slotline found Duke Duclos and his idea propelled the company to sell over a million of the original Inertial putters in the 1980s. The company remained prominent into the early 1990s, but then fell on hard times that resulted in the near extinction of the company. In late 2007, though, Slotline was purchased by Dynamic Brands and the putter line revived under the brand name.
Enter Chad Lehr. Lehr is a two-decade veteran of the golf industry. During the early 1990s, Lehr picked up a R&D job at Hogan golf in the Richmond, Virginia area. He then moved to California and worked for over a decade at Royal Precision as a sales representative. In that time, he picked up a lot about the industry through “osmosis,” as he calls it. When Slotline was revived by friends of his at Dynamic subsidiary Bag Boy LLC, Lehr was brought in to manage the brand and develop new putter designs under the Slotline name.
Lehr now manages a Slotline product line with three tiers of offerings – the 300, 500, and 700 series. All use multi-piece and multi-material construction to reach the final product, just like the original Slotline putters. Each putter enters the market at a different price point and offers different features to the player.
The 300 series is priced at just below $100 and is the top seller to date. It is made from cast 431 stainless steel and then thirty grams of tungsten are added at the sole of the putter to achieve its final weight and shape.
Coming in at $159, the 500 series forges a single piece of aircraft-grade aluminum. It offers a higher MOI than the 300 series due largely to more tungsten weighting. After undergoing the milling process, somewhere between 130 and 200 grams of their Tungsten blend are added to achieve the final putter weight.
Last, the 700 series is highest priced at $199. It offers the same milled 6061 aluminum as the 500 series, but more of it. Also, the 700 series features between 60 and 166 grams of pure Tungsten to achieve the final shape and weighting of the putter. It offers the highest MOI of the line.
Sales of the 500 and 700 series are in line with expectations, according to Lehr. In this economy, Lehr says that Slotline is finding that golfers are committing to buying a $200 putter instead of a $400 driver. With so much competition in the putting world, though, Lehr had to assure himself that his putters were among the best in the industry.
To achieve that kind of confidence, Lehr took two approaches.
First, Lehr bought the competition. He went out and purchased twenty putters that compete with Slotline. Gathering MOI readings from each of the putters, Lehr discovered that Slotline did deliver on its original promise of the highest MOI in the market. The only putter that had a higher MOI reading than Slotline was Callaway’s Odyssey 3 Ball putter – a look that may not suit the eye of many golfers.
Second, he consulted the pros of the Champions Tour to verify his designs and hunches. In recent memory, the Champions Tour has been the proving ground for up-and-coming golf technologies and companies before they become mainstream. Odyssey and Adams Golf became well known among the 50 and older set long before they were big names in the golf world with revolutionary putters and hybrid technologies.
Lehr attributes the success of those brands to the openness of Champions Tour players to try something different. The Champions Tour has been called a “putting contest” by observers. At the players’ advanced age, putting woes can be more frequent and sudden. This results in a lot more experimentation with the bag.
There are more long and belly putters on the Champions Tour than the other major tours, but they only make up 2% of retail putter sales. The Tour features fewer reps – maybe a handful compared to the 70 or so on the PGA Tour – which allows intimate player access and feedback for the small group of companies that invest time on that Tour.
Champions Tour players already had a familiarity with Slotline from its glory days. This made them quicker to try the new brand under Lehr’s guidance. There is little need to reminisce about Slotline now that they are back in business with a full line.
That line came to market in a much shorter timeframe that it took the original Slotline push to saturate the market. Lehr says that a lot of that is aided by computer design technology (CAD) that allows for a putter concept to be created without ever building a physical prototype. A sketch can be turned into a 3D model and revised extensively with instantaneous performance on feedback. Wax models can be built and altered more quickly, yielding a live prototype much more rapidly. The virtualization of putter design has allowed the industry to develop concepts with better refinement and get them to the market quicker.
Lehr said that this experience has been the most enjoyable in his career. “Relaunching a brand with Slotline has been great,” he said. “There was no need to reinvent the wheel. Duke [Duclos] was ahead of his time.”
In other words, Slotline is making a trip Back to the Future. Twenty years ago, the line introduced the game improvement concept that would change wood and iron design. Now, in the 21st century, MOI is all the rage in putters. What better time, then, for the company that started the craze to get back into the fray.
It was a revolutionary concept at the time for the putter. Slotline found Duke Duclos and his idea propelled the company to sell over a million of the original Inertial putters in the 1980s. The company remained prominent into the early 1990s, but then fell on hard times that resulted in the near extinction of the company. In late 2007, though, Slotline was purchased by Dynamic Brands and the putter line revived under the brand name.
Enter Chad Lehr. Lehr is a two-decade veteran of the golf industry. During the early 1990s, Lehr picked up a R&D job at Hogan golf in the Richmond, Virginia area. He then moved to California and worked for over a decade at Royal Precision as a sales representative. In that time, he picked up a lot about the industry through “osmosis,” as he calls it. When Slotline was revived by friends of his at Dynamic subsidiary Bag Boy LLC, Lehr was brought in to manage the brand and develop new putter designs under the Slotline name.
Lehr now manages a Slotline product line with three tiers of offerings – the 300, 500, and 700 series. All use multi-piece and multi-material construction to reach the final product, just like the original Slotline putters. Each putter enters the market at a different price point and offers different features to the player.
The 300 series is priced at just below $100 and is the top seller to date. It is made from cast 431 stainless steel and then thirty grams of tungsten are added at the sole of the putter to achieve its final weight and shape.
Coming in at $159, the 500 series forges a single piece of aircraft-grade aluminum. It offers a higher MOI than the 300 series due largely to more tungsten weighting. After undergoing the milling process, somewhere between 130 and 200 grams of their Tungsten blend are added to achieve the final putter weight.
Last, the 700 series is highest priced at $199. It offers the same milled 6061 aluminum as the 500 series, but more of it. Also, the 700 series features between 60 and 166 grams of pure Tungsten to achieve the final shape and weighting of the putter. It offers the highest MOI of the line.
Sales of the 500 and 700 series are in line with expectations, according to Lehr. In this economy, Lehr says that Slotline is finding that golfers are committing to buying a $200 putter instead of a $400 driver. With so much competition in the putting world, though, Lehr had to assure himself that his putters were among the best in the industry.
To achieve that kind of confidence, Lehr took two approaches.
First, Lehr bought the competition. He went out and purchased twenty putters that compete with Slotline. Gathering MOI readings from each of the putters, Lehr discovered that Slotline did deliver on its original promise of the highest MOI in the market. The only putter that had a higher MOI reading than Slotline was Callaway’s Odyssey 3 Ball putter – a look that may not suit the eye of many golfers.
Second, he consulted the pros of the Champions Tour to verify his designs and hunches. In recent memory, the Champions Tour has been the proving ground for up-and-coming golf technologies and companies before they become mainstream. Odyssey and Adams Golf became well known among the 50 and older set long before they were big names in the golf world with revolutionary putters and hybrid technologies.
Lehr attributes the success of those brands to the openness of Champions Tour players to try something different. The Champions Tour has been called a “putting contest” by observers. At the players’ advanced age, putting woes can be more frequent and sudden. This results in a lot more experimentation with the bag.
There are more long and belly putters on the Champions Tour than the other major tours, but they only make up 2% of retail putter sales. The Tour features fewer reps – maybe a handful compared to the 70 or so on the PGA Tour – which allows intimate player access and feedback for the small group of companies that invest time on that Tour.
Champions Tour players already had a familiarity with Slotline from its glory days. This made them quicker to try the new brand under Lehr’s guidance. There is little need to reminisce about Slotline now that they are back in business with a full line.
That line came to market in a much shorter timeframe that it took the original Slotline push to saturate the market. Lehr says that a lot of that is aided by computer design technology (CAD) that allows for a putter concept to be created without ever building a physical prototype. A sketch can be turned into a 3D model and revised extensively with instantaneous performance on feedback. Wax models can be built and altered more quickly, yielding a live prototype much more rapidly. The virtualization of putter design has allowed the industry to develop concepts with better refinement and get them to the market quicker.
Lehr said that this experience has been the most enjoyable in his career. “Relaunching a brand with Slotline has been great,” he said. “There was no need to reinvent the wheel. Duke [Duclos] was ahead of his time.”
In other words, Slotline is making a trip Back to the Future. Twenty years ago, the line introduced the game improvement concept that would change wood and iron design. Now, in the 21st century, MOI is all the rage in putters. What better time, then, for the company that started the craze to get back into the fray.
