Vice Squad

Relatively slow equipment news weeks always give us the chance to look back over the last month or so and feature something we found interesting and thought you should know about if you didn’t already, but which we didn’t have space for.

A perfect example is Vice Golf’s recent launch of its Boost Starter Set. Vice Golf is a fascinating company founded in Munich, Germany, 13 years ago (entering the U.S. market ten years ago) by two young lawyers/entrepreneurs/golfers—Ingo Düllman and Rainer Stöckl —who actually met while surfing and who, in their own words, sought to revolutionize the golf equipment industry.

Dozens of companies claim they are revolutionizing golf; at least making revolutionary, ‘game-changing’ equipment and, while much of it is certainly interesting and worthy of your attention, ‘revolutionary’ might be a bit of a stretch.

Vice Golf’s claim has a good deal more veracity than that of most other companies, though.  Not only was it one of the first (it might have been the original) companies to sell golf balls on its website, thus cutting out the middle-men who all take their cut and, consequently, offering its products at terrific prices, Vice Golf also produced top-quality golf balls it claimed performed as well as balls twice the price.

Not surprisingly, given how slowly the golf industry can adapt to new business models and ventures at times, it took a while for Vice Golf to become established. The Direct-to-Consumermethod, golfers’ satisfaction with what they currently use, the fact these balls came from Germany which isn’t known for the size of its golf market, its kookie-colored golf balls, and possibly the name (weakness and criminality are bad things, right?) meant a few years elapsed before people began taking it seriously.

Slowly, however, a certain demographic of golfers (younger, newer) realized they really could get top-performing golf balls at very reasonable prices. And, with inflation reaching worrying levels in every other part of the consumer’s life, significant savings in their golf budget were welcomed.

Last summer, Vice Golf took the next significant step in its evolution by introducing its first clubs in association with partner HIO, Continental Europe’s largest club fitter with its own in-house brand – Helix – and whose founders, Benny Pfister and Marco Berger, also have positions in Vice Golf’s corporate office now.

Since launching in 2007, HIO has logged every swing by every customer (over five million shots from more than 100,000 fitting hours) enabling it to create a huge database of swings that enables it to identify trends, peculiarities, habits, and shortcomings. That data helped the Vice/HIO partnership create the club line, the flagship of which was a handsome, forged, players-distance iron (VG101 – $170/club) that came in various colored accents/styles as well as the standard C455 Stainless Steel look. A lightweight, cavity-backed, game-improvement model (VG102 – $145/club) with some interesting graphics and a C450 steel face was created for slower-swing speed golfers, and there were forged, blade wedges ($150 each), a blade putter ($270) and a mallet putter ($320).

Two weeks ago, Vice Golf, together with HIO, launched a ten-piece beginner’s starter set –Boost – featuring a driver, hybrid, four irons (6-9), two wedges (PW, SW), blade putter, and stand bag. The titanium driver (headcover included) has 10.5˚  of loft and a 44.5-inch shaft that will help newer golfers control their swing better (women’s version – 12˚  of loft and 43.25-inch shaft). There is no fairway wood, just the 22˚ hybrid (25˚ for women; headcover included), and the oversized irons have a deep and forgiving cavity back.

Made from quality materials/components, the Boost Starter Set is just about ideal for the game’s newest players.

$470
Shafts – Steel or graphite.
vicegolf.com