Our staff’s favorite moments, products

ORLANDO, Fla. — After spending two days roaming the aisles of the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando for the 2025 PGA Show, our staffers are filled to the brim with new ideas and enthused by everything we saw, heard and experienced. Below, check out our takeaways from our time on the show floor.

Jessica Marksbury, senior editor: One thing I loved about attending this year’s show was the energy. After a couple of down years post-Covid, the show came back in force for 2025, and is the largest show in terms of physically occupied vendor space since 2009. That was great to see! Floods of people were on hand to check out all the new and cool products, but there was also a lot going on each day on the show floor. PGA Tour players and influencers made appearances with their brand partners, moderated roundtables on numerous topics were conducted throughout the day live on the main stage, and several brands had fun activations to draw you in, like claw machines filled with cool swag.

One area that drew a lot of attention was GOLFZON’s simulator setup, where GOLFZON Tour’s match-play final played out in front of a live show-floor audience. GOLFZON Tour is basically like TGL for recreational players, and on Thursday afternoon, a team of three players triumphed over their competitors and took home $150,000! The growing popularity of simulator golf is proof that the game can be enjoyed in many ways, and the PGA Show was a great venue for exposure to the concept. 

Jack Hirsh, associate equipment editor: MacGregor and Ben Hogan are back making forged irons. Two legendary companies are now under the same roof with Golf Brands Inc. (along with a few others) and churning out some incredible looking products.

Hogan has a bit of a soft spot in my heart, as my dad played them for years and I have a set of his blade irons, in a 1-iron through equalizer with a couple of persimmon woods, for when I want to go out and have fun. Ben Hogan irons were also my first set of adult clubs when my dad cut down a a set of Apexes for me. Now Hogan has five new iron models and they have the same great looking lines and shapes from their most recent incarnation with some updated tech. I will be very interested to see what they can do on the course. 

I’m also wowed by what some of these bespoke and premium headcover brands are doing. From Swag, Seamus, Pins and Aces, Dormie, Tremont, Smathers and more, it’s really cool to see headcovers turn into a true art form for your golf bag. 

Maddi MacClurg, editor and producer (game improvement): I loved having the chance to be able to talk to some of the brightest minds in the golf industry. From Top 100 Teachers to tour pros, there was no shortage of knowledge or advice. But while talking with some of these industry leaders, I noticed that there was one product that kept coming up in conversation: BAL.ON.

BAL.ON is a brand-new piece of wearable performance technology that essentially puts pressure plates in your shoes. Just pop the smart insoles in your shoes to start recording key swing data on your weight shift in the golf swing. Plus, you can access the data in real time using their app, and it even presents the information as a heat map, so it’s easy to understand. This kind of technology is revolutionary for teachers because it allows them to see details of a player’s movement that would otherwise be invisible. With BAL.ON, teachers can see how your weight shifts in your swing, and because it’s almost unnoticeable while wearing it, you can even use it on and around the greens, where a proper weight shift is just as critical to your success.