“Feedback we received from users of the original PTx was the short irons had a tendency to balloon a bit,” says White.
Like the old irons, the new PTx PRO feature the forged frame and face, with lighter titanium cores to help lower the CG, but there are slight differences. The scoring irons (8-PW) are also fairly similar in construction to the original PTx irons. Tungsten weights are placed in the toe area to fine-tune CG, launch angles and spin. Both sets’ long irons feature hollow-bodied, three-piece co-forgings, with forged 1025 carbon steel frames and forged MS300 faces. In fact, other than aesthetics the long irons in both the old and the new PTx irons appear to be virtually identical. In that sense, Hogan isn’t breaking any new ground with the new PTx PRO’s. That line, however, continues to be blurred by OEMs offering multi-piece heads with forged components. If you define forged irons as an iron forged from a single piece of steel then no, the PTx PRO doesn’t qualify. “Going forward you’re going to see more and more products that look like and have the aesthetics of the PTx PRO.” “If I have any criticism of our product line is there’s not a lot of consistency in how our irons look,” says White.
The new PTx PRO still doesn’t fit with the other two irons sets, but it does look enough like the Apex Plus and its Spalding/Callaway progeny Apex Edge and Apex FTX to be listed as a direct descendant on. They’re all members of the same family but look like they all came from different fathers. Worth blades, the old PTx cavity backs, and last year’s Edge game improvement irons, while all fine sticks in their own right, had no branding consistency. The new new Ben Hogan Company has had a bit of a branding problem. “We wanted to get back to the Hogan history and heritage, and we wanted something people would instantly recognize as being a Ben Hogan design.” White said sales have doubled in 2019.“We spent a lot of time on the graphic presentation as much as we did the technology,” says Hogan CEO Scott White. White, honoring Hogan’s promise of quality, made sure the products weren’t rushed to market.
It took a full year of development to come up with putters, fairway woods and a driver. “When we came back, so many customers asked us, ‘When are you coming out with a driver? I don’t just want the irons, I want the full line - woods, umbrellas, bags, the whole thing.’ So earlier this year, we brought out all of the products we thought were worthy and became a full-line golf company again.” “We had some good irons and wedges that were developed before our last bankruptcy,” White said. It focuses on its bread and butter, forged irons and wedges, but now offers a full line of equipment, including drivers, fairway woods and putters. While the company is now more competitive on price than ever, it still pitches traditional Ben Hogan Golf quality, what Hogan once insisted upon. This is a way to keep overhead down and prices low for a new generation of golfers who aren’t averse to internet purchasing and, in fact, prefer it. There are no store sales, no golf shop sales, no demo days, no club-fittings and no tour players being paid to use Hogan clubs.