By ADAM SCHUPAK
Senior Writer
Dave Glod is Tour Edge’s answer man.
For the past few years, Glod, the company’s founder and president, has fielded a frequent question about Tour Edge’s Exotics line: Why can’t he make a driver that is as advanced as the company’s CB2 fairway wood?
It’s not as if Glod hadn’t tried. But when he chemically bonded CB2’s titanium cupped-faced technology with a heavier hyper-steel body, Glod could only make a 300 cc driver. The steel body weighed too much to make the clubhead any bigger.
“Drivers are all about being large,” Glod says. “460 cc – or don’t bother making it.”
At last, he discovered a solution to get the size he needed. Tour Edge’s Exotics XCG driver incorporates lightweight magnesium into its crown, enabling it to accommodate the weight issues of cupped-faced technology and reach the desired 460 cc size.
Efforts to introduce the new driver took longer than expected. It’s the first new Exotics driver since August 2005 (besides a Tour model that was launched in 2006). The XCG will be priced at $399, and the company hopes to capitalize on the momentum of the CB2 fairway wood, which has made Exotics accountable for 40 percent of Tour Edge’s total sales. Glod also answered the wishes of golfers who lobbied him for Exotic products they could afford more easily.
“I’m not used to hearing that as the Bazooka Guy,” he says, referring to Tour Edge’s affordably priced line.
The company introduced two new drivers under the Exotics label, adding the XLD, a pentagon-shaped driver priced at $299. That fills a price gap in the company’s lineup and marks a re-entry into the so-called “sweet-spot” sales zone in the driver category. (Tour Edge’s V25 model occupied that price niche in 2006.) The XLD is the least expensive Exotics driver.
Says Glod: “We want to get the Exotics brand in more people’s hands.”
• • •
Adam Schupak is
a Golfweek senior writer. To reach him e-mail
aschupak@golfweek.com.
Posted: 3/3/2008
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