Entrepreneur with extensive international experience in the sports industry
We live in times when comfort and immediacy have become the norm. Younger generations want quick results, simple processes, and frictionless rewards. Everything should be easy, instant, and—if possible—require minimal effort. But neither golf—nor life, nor business—works that way. No lasting achievements are born from comfort. Progress requires friction, attention, and commitment. This principle, as simple as it is uncomfortable, is what guides the design of the putters I brought to market in October 2023.
In too many areas—and especially evident among younger generations—the idea has become normalized that improvement should be almost automatic. If something is difficult, it is discarded; if it takes time, it is replaced; if it requires self-correction, it is avoided. Golf is not immune to this trend. On the contrary, it reflects it clearly. And perhaps that is why golf remains such an honest sport: it does not allow you to hide for long what you are unwilling to work on.
For years, innovation in golf equipment has been oriented almost exclusively toward a single concept: forgiveness. More tolerant clubs, cushioned mistakes, instant results, and marketing campaigns filled with grandiose language. A tempting promise in an era dominated by haste. Yet authentic progress has never come from shortcuts, but from discipline, repetition, and conscious demand. In golf, as in any pursuit that aspires to excellence, there are no real substitutes for work done well.
I have been fortunate to work from a very young age with Seve Ballesteros across multiple areas of the golf industry, and from him I learned an idea that remains fully relevant today: equipment should help the player improve, not hide their mistakes. That simple, direct phrase summarizes a way of understanding golf—and design. To a large extent, his inspiration and teachings were the driving force that led me, at the end of 2023, to bring a new range of putters to market.
Design and Truth: When Equipment Stops Teaching
From a design standpoint—and especially in putter design—I believe excessive comfort is a problem. When equipment hides errors, the player stops receiving reliable information. And without honest feedback, learning is impossible. The player believes they are executing well when they are not, repeats incorrect patterns, and consolidates flaws that, over time, become structural.
That is why the key question is not whether a club “helps,” but how it helps:
Does it correct or disguise? Does it teach or protect?
A design that protects too much may feel pleasant in the short term, but it impoverishes the improvement process. By contrast, a demanding design provides clear, direct information—even if it feels uncomfortable at first. That discomfort is precisely the starting point of progress. Without it, the player settles into a false sense of control that rarely translates into sustained improvement.
Forgiveness vs. Demandiveness: A Conscious Decision
After the pandemic, and following many years involved in a wide range of projects across the sector—including golf equipment design between 2004 and 2008—I made a clear decision: to place demand at the center of design. Helping the player who truly wants to improve necessarily means abandoning forgiveness as the primary argument.
Thus was born what I call demandiveness. Putters designed with reduced margins for error that require the player to be present, aligned, and committed—forcing a better motion. This is not an aesthetic stance or an empty declaration of intent; it is a functional decision. A demanding putter offers something extraordinarily valuable: truth.
A well-executed stroke can be felt, heard, and repeated. A poor stroke can as well. There are no filters or artificial dampeners. That direct relationship between action and result accelerates learning, because the player understands what they do well and what they must correct. Improvement ceases to be a promise and becomes a tangible, measurable, honest process.
The Green Allows No Excuses
If there is one place where design must be honest, it is the green. Putting allows no excuses. There is no power that can compensate for a technical error. Here, everything is precision, control, tempo, and alignment. Every small detail matters, and any flaw reveals itself immediately.
Under this premise, the iBPUTTER SWEET SPOT 373G was born, presented in October 2023 at the Old Course at St Andrews. This was no casual choice. Introducing a demanding putter at the home of golf carried strong symbolic value: doing so in a historic setting was a sign of respect for the essence of the game and its inherent difficulty, while also evoking a place that, in 1984, witnessed one of the most iconic celebrations in golf history following the victory of the man from whom I learned so much—Seve Ballesteros—at The Open Championship.
There, on holes 1 and 18, we presented a design that did not aim to please everyone, but to challenge the demanding player with a genuine desire to grow. A putter conceived for those who accept that improvement requires taking responsibility for one’s own motion and leaving the comfort of shortcuts behind.
Over time, feedback has been consistent: players who commit to demanding models such as the 373G or the 410G gain regularity, confidence, and reduce strokes—especially in the decisive 2–3 meter range, where many scorecards are built—or broken. Not because the putter “does the work,” but because it forces the player to do it better.
Despite having been on the market for just two years, our putters have quickly found their place in several international markets. Particularly significant has been their positioning in the United Kingdom—the most important golf market in Europe—driven by a partnership with American Golf, the largest golf equipment retailer on the continent. They are also present in markets such as China, Australia, and France. On the Costa del Sol, they are available through the stores of GolFriends.
Design, Geometry, and Technical Coherence
Today, much is said about zero torque, often as if it were a recent innovation. In essence, it means that the putter does not tend to open or close involuntarily during the stroke, allowing for a more neutral path and a clean reading of impact. This principle has always been present in our designs—not as a commercial argument, but as a technical foundation.
Demanding more from the player does not mean designing without criteria; on the contrary, it requires maximum technical coherence. That is why, even in later models I have designed—with a more conventional look—the DNA remains intact: total symmetry, cylindrical geometry, a centered shaft, true balance and zero torque, along with continuous alignment lines running from heel to toe across the putter head.
Demanding to Improve
Ultimately, demandiveness does not aim to make golf harder, but to make better players. In times dominated by comfort and immediacy, choosing to demand more is a conscious—and often countercultural—decision.
There is no real progress without challenge, no reward without effort. The example is simple: run 5 or 10 kilometers every day carrying a 3–4 kilogram backpack; at first it will be hard, but after a year, you will fly. In golf, the same applies. Body, mind, and motion adapt to what they are consistently and coherently asked to do.
Authentic innovation in golf equipment does not consist in smoothing the path or promising easy results. It consists in designing with honesty, respecting the player’s intelligence, and clearly showing the way forward. Because only when equipment stops hiding mistakes does the player truly begin to improve.
