PXG is on a fascinating trajectory.
They started as a small company selling some of the highest-priced, hardest-to-find equipment in golf. The headlines -- including from us -- were about shelling out $5,000 for a full bag of equipment, wondering how deep the customer pool would be for a company insistent on that kind of price tag.
And then they started dropping prices. That doesn't happen much in golf these days. The price hikes are incremental, over years. But for PXG, they're in a place now where they're coming back toward the market mean in what they charge for their equipment. They're still more expensive, yes, but the differences aren't nearly as staggering as they once were.
Now PXG is taking another step to offering more mainstream golfers the chance to purchase their equipment. With the new PXG 0211 irons, the company is offering technology and design similar to their 0311 forged iron line in a cast package.
Company founder Bob Parsons has routinely mentioned he has charged what he has because that's been a function of the cost to bring it to market. As more golfers play PXG and the manufacturing cost curve changes, so too could prices -- and, by extension, how their technologies could get in the hands of more golfers.
For the company, they've realized there's not much difference in how a cast version of their irons perform versus the forged version. So why not create a cast version and pass those savings to the consumer?
The 0211 irons are hollow-bodied, have the same HT1770 steel face insert and same behind-the-face polymer compound as the 0311 irons. The body and face are welded together similarly. Those features, in PXG's view, are the selling point more than how the body is built. The insert-polymer combo is what the company believes will make golfers buy into PXG.
Now, the body differences are important. The 0211 irons will not have the screw weights found in the 0311 irons used to dial in weighting. The 0211 irons will only have one model instead of the four in the 0311 Gen2 series. The 0211 iron heads are somewhat a mixture in shaping and size from those four 0311 sets, meant to appeal to a broader audience.
There are some sacrifices a golfer will make going from the 0311 irons to the 0211 irons. Otherwise there wouldn't be a distinction. However, PXG is hoping to get more golfers on board with their brand with a set of irons that still get them the company's core differentiating technologies. It'll be interesting to see who responds.
The PXG 0211 irons will be available May 21 for $195 per iron with True Temper Elevate and Elevate Tour steel shafts and $210 per iron in the Mitsubishi MMT graphite shafts.
