Why PXG founder Bob Parsons is modern golf's most exciting disruptor

There's no mistaking a PXG ad on television.

Something about the combination of hard-rock background music, stark black-and-white graphics and the enthusiastic, gravelly voiceover makes it instantly recognizable. "Nobody makes golf clubs the way we do. Period," it booms.

Bob Parsons, the owner of that voice, is correct on two accounts, even if he only means it on one. His decade-old golf company, PXG, has cut a unique path in the traditionally set-in-its-ways world of golf equipment. And his Scottsdale National Golf Club is one of the most stunningly over-the-top places to play the game in the world. He claims he's invested more than $300 million into it.

Even though his father was an avid and skilled player, Parsons didn't fall in love with golf until his 30s, when he and a group of colleagues took the game up together. "We'd take Wednesday afternoon off and go beat it around," Parsons said in a recent interview with GolfPass. "Then we took Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. Then we took Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, then Saturday, then Sunday."

Parsons' fall from hobbyist to full-blown golf obsessive was fast. "Somebody would find a seminar or convention that would roughly be what we did in Florida or Arizona during the winter," Parsons said, "and we'd never go to one session," instead using the time as a golf trip.

The Baltimore native and Marine who served in Vietnam forged a business empire in financial software and, later, website hosting, founding GoDaddy in 1997 and selling it in 2011 for a reported $900 million.

In 2013, Parsons bought what was then called Golf Club Scottsdale, taking advantage of golf's post-Recession hangover when many clubs were struggling financially. He rechristened it Scottsdale National Golf Club. He made headlines later that year when he announced radical changes to the club, charging members $100 per day of use and $200 per guest fee, signaling his desire to make the club more exclusive and upscale than it had previously been.

With the original course now named "The Mine Shaft" after a 13-foot deep bunker behind the par-5 15th green, Parsons later commissioned architects Tim Jackson and David Kahn to build a second 18-hole course on property, which is called The Other Course and has earned rave reviews for its routing of six par 3s, 4s and 5s and its overall embrace of fun, sometimes devilish golf. But Scottsdale National's most significant impact on golf design, however, comes in the form of its Bad Little Nine par-3 course, also designed by Jackson and Kahn and opened in 2016. The Bad Little Nine leans harder into unconventional, bizarre and occasionally downright unfair golf design concepts harder than any course built before it.

Many holes have a great mix of hole locations ranging from the friendly to the downright terrifying, but on Fridays, cups on the Bad Little Nine are cut in the toughest spots on every green, with a $1,000 bar credit up for grabs for anyone who can break par on their first loop of the day. No one has done it yet.

"You would think because of the difficult and unfair nature of this little course that golfers wouldn't play it," Parsons wrote in his 2024 autobiography Fire in the Hole! "Exactly the opposite is true." Scottsdale National's smallest course is arguably its most popular.

Although Parsons' initial sea change at the club rankled dozens of members who ultimately left, his forging of a super-high-end enclave proved to be ahead of its time. Several clubs built in recent years have a similar philosophy to Scottsdale National. "[T]his is what our members want: exclusivity, privacy, and to play one of the best damn golf courses available," Parsons wrote in Fire in the Hole! "I'm happy to provide that opportunity."

Parsons hatched the idea to make golf equipment shortly after buying Scottsdale National. Despite the daunting task of building a golf equipment company from scratch, his financial position gave him an advantage over his competition from the start. "I never thought about making money or losing money," he told me. "I only thought about making outstanding golf clubs."

PXG - a.k.a. Parsons Xtreme Golf - is as much a business as it is a thought experiment - What could golf clubs be like if the constraints of development costs and hard deadlines were removed? The company was first conceived in 2013, but the first clubs - irons priced at a headline-grabbing $325 each - didn't start selling until July of 2015. The price tag and Parsons' brash brand of advertising polarized golfers at first. "I wanted the golf industry and customers to know: Think what you will [about PXG], but we make great stuff," he said.

Parsons' stated money-is-no-object approach is the first of two truly disruptive aspects of PXG. While mainstream OEMs adhere to a relatively rigid 12- or 24 month rhythm of new golf club releases, PXG claims to only release new products when they feel they have made real progress.

PXG has also run against the grain in golf equipment sales by eschewing the wholesale-to-retail model that other companies rely on. PXG sells their clubs direct to consumer only. In addition to a growing number of retail locations, fitters are spread throughout the country and available to custom-fit golfers to their clubs. By eliminating the middleman of retail channels, PXG can afford to pour more resources per club into research and development because golfers are effectively paying them a wholesale price for a wedge, driver or iron set. Direct-to-consumer brands in golf and beyond have proliferated in recent years; Parsons was on the cutting edge of that trend.

Parsons' bombast rubs some traditional golfers the wrong way, which is fine by him. In fact, that differentiation is a core philosophy. "[I]f you want to go into an established market where everybody is doing business the same way, don't do business the way they're doing it, because you'll get clobbered," he wrote in Fire in the Hole! Golf's post-COVID boom has been a strong tailwind for Parsons because millions of emerging golfers are less tied to the traditions of the past than the entrenched set. PXG's personality is as likely to resonate as any other brand's approach, if not more.

What does the next decade hold for PXG? One factor that will add new wrinkles to the golf equipment business is the USGA and R&A's upcoming adjustments to golf ball regulations, intended to address hitting distance by elite players, as well as hints at potential future regulations on driver heads.

Parsons has his reservations but is less openly combative than some other equipment manufacturers have been in their public statements. "The USGA ought to think a little more about all the stuff that they're doing," he said, asserting that golfers he's spoken to who hit the ball short distances won't take kindly to any further distance challenges. "If you had a driver that gave you another 10 yards but didn't meet USGA specs, would you use it? [My friend] said, 'Where is it?'"

"I have no bones to pick with the USGA," Parsons said. "When it comes time to fight about the golf ball, I'll let Titleist, Callaway and TaylorMade do the fighting, and after the smoke clears, I'll decide where to stand."

If his recent track record in golf is any indication, Parsons is likely to be standing on the side of golfers who want to wring as much enjoyment out of the game as he has.

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