Gear: PXG Battle Ready II putters
Price: $389.99 each
Specs: 303 stainless steel with internal polymer filling and adjustable sole weights. Length: 33″-38″. Loft: 3 degrees (arm-lock style, 7 degrees). Lie angle: 70 degrees
Who It’s For: Golfers who want a more forgiving putter that also offers a soft feel and a consistent roll.
The Skinny: By making the Battle Ready II putters hollow, then filling the inner chamber with a vibration-dampening polymer, PXG claims its newest putters offer soft feel, better sound and significantly more forgiveness thanks to a boost in MOI.
The Deep Dive: When PXG started making irons a decade ago, everyone who saw the new brand’s clubs commented on the unique tungsten screws that ringed the back of each club. The weighting system was eye-catching, to be sure, but the real secret sauce that PXG designers have added to their irons over the years is an ever-evolving blend of polymers injected inside each club. PXG irons are hollow and made with ultra-thin faces to create more ball speed, but the internal polymer supports the face while also soaking up excessive vibrations, so shots feel and sound better.
Now, with the release of the Battle Ready II family of putters, PXG engineers are taking that recipe and incorporating it into a nine-club family of flat sticks.
Most blade-style putters are solid metal steel, while high-MOI mallet putters, which offer more forgiveness, tend to be designed with multiple materials that take weight out of some areas and shift it to the perimeter of the head to make it more stable on mis-hits. The Battle Ready II putters try to take that formula to the extreme. They have been designed with thin faces, to reduce weight in the front, and hollow chambers that have been filled with a polymer that PXG calls S COR.
The S COR material improves the sound and feel created at impact, as it does in clubs like the 0311 irons, but it is significantly lighter than the steel it replaces. That created significant amounts of discretionary weight that could be shifted to the perimeter of the blades and mallets, which makes them more forgiving on mis-hits. According to PXG, the moment of inertia (MOI) is 10 percent higher in the Battle Rady II putters compared to the original Battle Ready putters.
The hitting area features PXG’s Pyramid Face Pattern, which is a tightly-packed groove design that helps to increase the consistency of how the face interacts with the ball’s dimples and each putt’s roll. Each putter also has a series of weight ports in the sole that allow fitters to increase or decrease the putter’s swing weight based on the club’s length or a player’s preferences. Finally, all nine Battle Ready II putters are being made available in four different hosel configurations—plumber’s neck, double bend, heel-shafted and armlock.
Among the nine PXG Battle Ready II putters are four blade style offerings, including the Dagger +, Brandon, Mustang and Closer.
There are also four mallets, including the Bat Attack, One & Done, Blackjack, Hercules and Apache. All nine putters feature PXG‘s Darkness Insignia (a skull with the number 26), which honors founder Bob Parsons’ service with the 26th Marine Corps Regiment during the Vietnam War.
