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Old is new again

Simon Millington is pumping new life into once-great golf brands such as MacGregor and Ben Hogan

In spring 2023, there were pictures of a gorgeous new iron circulating in the media. This curvy, forged beauty was a refined-looking muscle-back that could quite easily be imagined in the bags of plus-handicappers at the local club and, yes, even among tour pros. 

But something wasn’t quite right. 

Though eye-catching, it had "MacGregor” engraved on its back in a font familiar to many. Anyone with some vague recollection of MacGregor, one of the game’s most successful and revered brands throughout much of the 20th century, knew it had fallen on hard times. The brand, whose clubs were used to win 59 major championships, went through several different owners (including Jack Nicklaus) and was now given up for, more or less, dead. Dick’s Sporting Goods had bought the brand from GolfSmith, and was now pumping out bargain basement-priced boxed sets.

So where did this exquisite golf club — the MT86 Pro — come from? Who made it, and just how many copyright laws were being infringed?

Over the course of a few weeks, the story emerged that, far from any bogus, loophole, forgery going on, the MacGregor brand was under new ownership, who had very different plans than those of the recent predecessors. 

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Simon Millington

Simon Millington pictured a revival. It was never going to match the glory days, but Millington wasn’t about to let MacGregor lose every last shred of its dignity. 

An Englishman who moved to Henderson, Nevada, in 2017, Millington had done the same with other former industry greats, buying up Ram, Zebra and Teardrop with the hope of putting them back squarely in the golfer’s conscience. Millington was an innovative entrepreneur who’d enjoyed over three decades of success in the golf business and who firmly believed these brands still had much to offer. 

Shortly after arriving in the United States, Millington formed Golf Brands Inc., the umbrella under which all of his brands reside. He purchased MacGregor in 2020 and spent a couple of years devising the long-term goals while launching a few adult and junior complete sets. He also spent time alongside veteran clubmaker Austie Rollinson designing the iron that would pique so many golfers’ curiosity. 

The MT86 Pro and MT86 OS certainly helped put Millington and Golf Brands Inc. on the map. But if he was to sustain that initial impact and avoid it being a one-hit wonder, Millington would need the follow-up to be equally as impressive. 

In April 2024, the new MacGregor proved that the rejuvenated company’s opening salvo was not a one-off as it released three similarly elegant irons developed by free agent clubmaker Larry Tang, Callaway’s principal concept designer from 1997 to 2020. The MT Milled and MT Pro are both handsome forgings crafted from 1020 carbon-steel while the MacSpd is a multi-material, hollow-body, foam-filled player’s distance iron. All three scored high marks on golf review sites.

The obvious commitment to quality assuaged any doubts golfers might still have harbored about Millington’s intentions, though they had probably been put to rest months before when he inked his biggest asset to date — the Ben Hogan Golf Equipment Co. Unlike the various brands he owns, Millington licenses Ben Hogan from its owner, Perry Ellis, a deal that was signed in September 2023.

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The Ben Hogan Legend irons are being introduced at the 2025 PGA Show, along with three other models and two drivers.

With the new deal came plenty of product inventory, which is currently available on the Ben Hogan Golf website. To give the brand the status and focus it deserved, Millington brought in Gavin Wallin, an experienced full-time clubmaker. Wallin was a senior designer at Adams Golf and created the existing range of Ben Hogan clubs, including the highly-acclaimed PTx Tour and PTx Pro irons. He also designed the Pivot driver, which finished runner-up in Golf Channel’s 2016 “Driver Vs. Driver” reality show.

Wallin has updated Ben Hogan’s line-up with two new drivers — the PTx Max and PTx LST — and four handsome iron models of which the company’s namesake would no doubt approve. The irons are the FT Worth MB and CB, a players distance M50-01 model, and the equally attractive Legend, built using AI and which features forged faces and clubheads filled with vibration-dampening foam. As with all of Golf Brands Inc. products, the clubs will be available direct-to-consumer — a business model Millington believes in strongly.

Because DTC is relatively new, it has taken some time for consumers to accept it. But if a company sells irons that perform as well, or almost as well, as the industry’s best sellers at very attractive prices — the three MacGregor irons introduced last year cost between $499 and $599, and the 2025 Hogan Legend is priced at $950 a set — then a company is sure to attract a lot of attention.

“The fact we’re independent and privately owned also allows us to release clubs when they’re ready,” Millington says. Bigger manufacturers typically have much quicker product cycles, of course, which can mean a specific product might not be all that different, or have advanced much, compared with what came two years previously. 

Millington, though, says he is under no pressure to release a new product before he thinks it’s as good as it can possibly be. "The PTx driver was actually ready last spring,” he says. “We know it was made as well as anything else because it’s created in the same Chengdu, China, factory as the best clubs in the game. But we didn’t release it because I didn’t think it was quite right. It would have performed and sold well, but I thought that particular driver could be better. And I think Hogan loyalists appreciate that. They’re happy to wait.”

The business Millington is building in Henderson, together with his two sons, has found its niche and will carry a lot of momentum into 2025, especially at this week's PGA Show in Orlando, Florida. It’s an exciting time not only for his family but also the huge number of golfers who are discovering just how good, and how affordable, Millington’s clubs are.


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