The Power Fade Golf Blog

Last year, for the first time in our relatively short blog history, LG celebrated the turning of the year of PF awesomeness with a gift for himself and for me, Stanley Mayhem scorecard and yardage book wallets, which he reviewed in detail here: https://thepowerfade.com/2012/11/15/review-leather-scorecard-wallets/. After fully agreeing with LG’s analysis, it became apparent that this should be a yearly exercise for the PF–not only to review excellent equipment, but to support the artisans who make them.

This year, I stumbled upon a tremendous offering from a friend of the PF, LaMont Mann. I’ve known LaMont Mann since he lovingly crafted my putter, which is reviewed here: https://thepowerfade.com/2011/05/02/review-sunset-beach-golf/. LaMont is one of the kindest and most humble people you will ever meet, but he is also one of the most talented in crafting putters. His custom and hand work has become a springboard for a great business. LaMont is capable of making things in the golf world that few can, and he offers his services at a reasonable price to those lucky enough to find him in a world where marketing often wins out over true craft.

I’d recently noticed LaMont’s postings on his Facebook page about some new divot repair tools. His initial offerings were single-prong tools. While those appeared to be well-crafted and of tremendous quality, they did not pique my interest for the simple reason that I never have liked to use single-prong tools. I’m sure someone was in his ear telling him “you have to make these in a two-prong shape.” Well, he did.

Coinciding with LG’s birthday, LaMont released his two-prong version. The moment I saw it, I knew this had to be the PF equipment of the year. I purchased one for LG’s birthday and one for myself. I asked for LG’s to be stainless steel and torched, while my tool is carbon steel and torched. LaMont not only sent me pictures of them in process, he returned my request to produce LG’s especially quickly knowing he had a birthday upcoming. The beautiful results are shown below:

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As you can see, these tools are custom milled, torched to perfection, and hand paint filled by LaMont himself. The cost was $86 for both tools with shipping included–certainly not inexpensive, but not as much as I would have expected for custom-made equipment.

So, any downsides? Well, the answer to that is a “sort of.” These tools are really, really cool items–especially for someone who knows custom equipment and/or knows who LaMont is. For the casual golfer, the reaction might be “why did you pay so much for something that nice clubs give away for free?” Or “I bought one of those at the Tour Championship for $36 and it had the Tour Championship logo on it! That’s an absurd price!” I understand where those people are coming from. I think these are tremendous. The personal craftsmanship is there. They are milled steel, paint filled, and made just like I wanted. On the other hand, these are not performance golf tools; they are being used to fix pitch marks in the green. They don’t have to be perfectly balanced to strike a ball correctly or milled to tight tolerances to avoid defects. However, when I use my custom tool by LaMont, I’ll know that I have exactly what I want in my hands and that it is as good of a tool as I could’ve gotten. That alone will give me confidence not to think of the wrong things on the course.

Cost: 6
Quality: 9
Customization: 10
Speed of Production: 10
Customer Service: 10
Overall: 8 (and it’s 8 only because it’s not required for everyone, but for those that do get it, it’s a 10 all the way)