If there’s any golf equipment company on roll, pun intended, it’s OnCore Golf.
While over the past 10-plus years, the brand may not have won a most-recognized award, its Buffalo, NY-based brain trust continues to assemble extraordinary product development and creative teams.
Recent conversations with OnCore Chairman and CEO Keith Blakely yielded contemporary plans to elevate its high-performance golf balls and complementary technology above all things conventional.
OnCore’s promotional ingenuity and timeliness in custom logo balls represents a core competency. The latest is a limited-edition Eclipse Ball inspired by the cosmic spectacle of tomorrow’s total solar phenomenon. Replete with a Total Eclipse 04.08.24 logo –incorporating the OnCore logo that coincidentally looks like the moon and sun aligning – the commemorative ball is available in award-winning, perimeter weighted EXILR and Vero X1 and X2 models. The next eclipse won’t be until August 2044, so there’s collector opportunity here.
From tactician-orientation to visionary, Blakey’s baby is the formation of OnCore Innovations and boundless imagination thereof. It’s effectively a hub that develops, acquires, licenses and brings to market groundbreaking technology for golfers to conquer their most vexing challenges and, in turn,play better and more with greater enjoyment.
Here goes transformation:
- The GreenBreaker smartphone app applies AI and augmented reality imagery to map the topography of greens, so golfers find the perfect putting line. It’s practical and purposeful, especially given more than 40% of all strokes require flatstick proficiency.
- To optimize swing mechanics and performance, GolfBoost AI requires only a smartphone video camera to capture and instantly analyze tempo, position rotation, momentum, balance and other data. The technology then delivers instructional videos offering ways to improve.
- Perhaps the most intriguing product is the soon-to-be-released GENiUS smart ball. In development for five years, the first-ever “ball with a brain” features electronics inside the ball. Capturing performance data by measuring all elements of ball movement, the GENiUS opens a new world for golfers to learn about and improve their game on the course and at home.
Blakely isn’t alone in his optimism. Capital backers include formidable institutions as well as Tour standouts Talor Gooch and Harold Varner III, Buffalo Bills star quarterback Josh Allen and other golf, sports and business luminaries.
Of course, OnCore can pull this off as a disruptor destined for ubiquity. After all, its inaugural golf ball design highlighted by a hollow metal core caused it to become only the second company in roughly 100 years to prompt the USGA to rewrite the rules governing golf ball construction and conformance.
Post-Script: With hordes of technological advancements, OnCore doesn’t allow its altruistic DNA to play second fiddle. In partnership with PGA Hope, limited edition custom PGA Hope Logo Golf Balls provide $5 from each dozen sold to benefit the physical, mental, social and emotional well-being of veteran and active-duty military men and women through golf programming and instruction.
