A club professional who built his own.

Tour Edge Golf was founded in 1986 by David Glod, who started the company in his garage, Chicago District Golfer, the Chicago District Golf Association’s magazine, reported in August 2026. As a high-school golfer he picked up damaged clubs and repaired them in his father’s garage, the magazine wrote, and he later designed and made clubs in his own house.

The company’s own account fills in the rest. It says Glod’s hobby of repairing and reshafting his clubs grew into a repair service for country clubs near his home; that he played college golf at Florida Southern College, alongside Rocco Mediate and Lee Janzen; and that he then became club professional at the Village Links of Glen Ellyn, the course in Chicago’s western suburbs where he had learned the game, before deciding that designing and making clubs was his true calling.

Forty years on, Tour Edge is still privately held and still run by its founder. Glod is chief executive and remains closely involved in designing the clubs, Chicago District Golfer reported. In 2024 the company named Tim Clarke, a longtime executive and former chief executive of Chicago-based Wilson Golf, as president, taking over that title from Glod. The company is based in Batavia, Illinois, west of Chicago.

Clarke summed up the founding idea for the magazine: “The DNA David brought to golf is you don’t have to break the bank.”

From Bazooka to Exotics.

For its first two decades Tour Edge made game-improvement clubs — forgiving equipment for everyday golfers. The company says Glod spent 19 years on such designs, including the Bazooka line, before turning in the early 2000s to an ultra-premium range aimed at the best players.

That range, Exotics, launched in 2005 with fairway woods and hybrids. Later Exotics generations, by the company’s account, brought its first adjustable-hosel driver, a “Diamond Face,” a crown frame it calls Ridgeback, and, in the 725 series, its first driver with a moment of inertia above 10,000.

Today the company sells two main families: Exotics at the top and Hot Launch for game-improvement golfers. “Exotics is the halo of this company,” Clarke told Chicago District Golfer, and he said the company grew by double digits in 2025, mainly through Exotics.

Its professional following is concentrated on the over-50 PGA Tour Champions. Bernhard Langer joined Tour Edge’s staff on a multi-year deal in February 2021, Golf Business News reported, having already used Exotics clubs, including a hybrid he played at the Masters; “I have been playing many of the clubs in my bag for a long time,” he said.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make golf clubs: Cobra, Ben Hogan, Cleveland, PXG, Tour Edge, XXIO and Sub 70. A golf club brand has to work inside a narrow set of rules. The R&A and the United States Golf Association set what shapes and physical characteristics of clubs are allowed in competition, and the Rules of Golf limit a player to a maximum of 14 clubs in the bag, English Wikipedia notes — so every maker is designing variations on the same few objects: woods and drivers, irons and wedges, hybrids and putters.

Because the objects are so tightly defined, identity tends to live in the details: the shape of a head seen at address, the finish on a forged or cast iron, the name or number stamped on the sole, the colour of a headcover, and the way a brand sells and fits its clubs. Many modern iron heads are investment-cast from steel alloys, while forged irons remain popular with skilled players, English Wikipedia says, and heads, shafts and grips can be combined and fitted to a player in a great many ways.

The brands here differ in age, in ownership and in how they sell their clubs; two of them, Tour Edge in Batavia and Sub 70 in Sycamore, are Illinois companies, according to their own websites. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who founded it, who owns it now, where its clubs are designed, made and assembled, and how its marks have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A 1980s logo, redrawn for the 40th year.

Tour Edge’s identity changed as it approached its 40th year. On 23 September 2025 the company launched its first golf balls, led by the three-piece, urethane-covered Exotics ball, and said the launch “also introduces Tour Edge’s refreshed logo and brand identity.” Chicago District Golfer reported that the old mark dated from the 1980s and had cost very little; that Clarke found its lettering and underline dated and pushed for a sleeker design aimed at golfers aged roughly 25 to 48; and that Glod approved the change. “They didn’t know who we were before,” Glod told the magazine.

On manufacturing, Tour Edge says all its premium clubs, Exotics and Hot Launch, are hand-built at its world headquarters in Batavia, and it guarantees to ship custom orders placed in the continental United States within 48 hours.

The ball widened the business. Its design brief, said Matt Neeley, Tour Edge’s vice-president of research and development, was to “deliver superior performance in the wind without sacrificing spin around the greens,” and Clarke told Chicago District Golfer that the balls had opened the brand to about 550 more shops. A Hot Launch ball followed in January 2026, and in September 2026 the Exotics ball became the official ball of the NXXT Faldo Junior Tour and NXXT Women’s Pro Tour. The company’s 2026 releases also added a mini driver, Zero T putters, milled wedges and Max-J junior sets.

For a design guide, Tour Edge shows how a 40-year-old value brand can redraw itself around a premium sub-brand without changing owners. Compare Sub 70 and Ben Hogan Golf, two other American club makers. For this guide we use black, steel grey and a signal orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Tour Edge’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.