Golf Blog by The Orlando Golf Blogger

Back in early 2010, during the PGA Merchandise Show, I had the opportunity to interview Sumi-G, or more specifically, Tony Korologos,  who started working for the company after meeting them at the 2009 PGA Merchandise show. He also writes hookedongolfblog and is one helluva guy.

Sumi-G is a golf accessory company, who’s flagship products are the hybrid, fairway and driver head covers. They’ve put a big emphasis on durability and ease of use.

Features:

• Unique mechanical closure
• Convenient one-handed operation
• Rigid exoskeleton protects both club and shaft
• Easy to pick up from ground with club
• Fits right-handed clubs only
• Fits 460cc drivers (not all square clubs)
• Patented

They’re available in black and white and now offer customers the ability to customize the head covers with embroidered logos. It broke my heart when I found out that these puppies are right-handed only, because, how awesome would it be to have the OGB logo stitched on a white driver head cover?

The MSRP on the head covers is $38.00

In addition to club head covers, Sumi-G also offers a variety of golf accessories, such as bags, hats, scorecard wallets, towel brushes, divot tools, money clips and new this year, belts.

Sumi-G Dormie Belt

In an effort to get the word out about the belts, they sent me one to try out and review, as well as the towel brush, divot tool and money clip.

I was sent the Dormie – Black belt, and no, they do not give you supernatural Kung-Fu skills, regrettably…

Cool features of the belt

• It’s ambidextrous, meaning, it can be used by both right-handed golfers and left-handed golfers (hah.. sorry, couldn’t resist).
• The belt is a two tone , black on the outside, red on the inside, not presently reversible.
• It’s a high quality belt, made out of good thick leather.
• On the buckle, there’s a removable ball marker that’s attached to the buckle by a magnet. This frees up having to fumble for it on your glove or digging through your pocket of tees, change and golf balls to find one. This ball marker is interchangeable with the ball marker on the Sumi-G divot tool.
• The belt comes with two additional ball markers.

The belt is awesome and eye catching, I noticed more than one pair of eyes glancing down to check out the buckle, at least, I think that’s what they were checking out..

There’s a few things I noticed, that one should be aware of. The thickness of the belt caused me problems when I wore it with slacks. It was too wide and I had to muscle the belt tip through the loop on the second pass.

The mirror finish on the buckle is beautiful, but it shows fingerprints and smudges. Lastly, and this is something they’re working on, the buckles/belts aren’t interchangeable, which will be a great feature.

The MSRP for the Dormy is $85.

Sumi-G Divot Tool

The Sumi-G divot tool will leave your ball marks quaking in their depressions. It’s not one of those flimsy plastic numbers, it’s made from sculpted forged stainless steel.

It’s innovative design has prongs that are curved and angled to make repairing divots simple and less harsh on your favorite putting surfaces.

It’s large enough to handle your best(or worst, however you want to view it) divots, but also small enough so it doesn’t leave puncture wounds in your thigh when carrying it in your pocket.

The divot tool is durable enough to last a lifetime, assuming of course, that it doesn’t get lost in that black hole you call a golf bag.

The MSRP of the divot tool is $24.99.

Sumi-G Towel Brush

The Sumi-G towel brush, is, as the name might imply, a brush that’s used to clean grass, dirt, sand, pieces of skull, etc.. out of the grooves in your golf clubs.

This brush uses a V-cleat nautical fastening design to fasten it to the towel on your golf bag. Being the incredibly intelligent blogger than I am, I’m using this in conjunction with the Spotless Swing Golf Towel, so I can get the majority of the gunk off my club face with the brush and use the inside of the towel for the finer turf that’s missed.

It’s made out of forged stainless steel. Being the good product reviewer that I am, I had to test just how strong the V-cleat was. My golf bag was strapped onto the golf cart and my golf towel was attached to the bag by one of those latched metal rings. I pulled so hard that it broke the metal ring and sent me tumbling onto my backside. It’s a good thing my playing partners were in the clubhouse at the time..

The bristles are hard plastic so you don’t have to worry about your towel getting tangled and shredded by coming in contact with the Sumi-G towel brush.

The MSRP of the towel brush is $26.00.

Sumi-G was the recipient of five different “Best of 2009″ awards, so naturally I needed to visit the booth during the 2010 PGA Merchandise Show (Well that and my blogger buddy Tony Korologos was manning the booth ).

I met up with Tony and decided to interview him blogger ‘a blogger and get the low down on Sumi-G

OGB: So, Tony, tell me about Sumi-G.
Sumi-G: My first exposure to Sumi-G was at the 2009 Pga Merchandise Show when I met the owner of the company, Marius Kvinge. He’s a Norwegian guy with a very dry sense of humor.

I had had an appointment with these guys last year to talk to them and I blew them off to play golf.  So on the way out of the show, I saw the booth and thought  “oh man, I’ve gotta go see these guys.” So, I stopped by and started talking to them and it turns out they had launched the entire product line at the show. The company didn’t exist six months prior.

During the conversation, I asked Marius where he was from and he said “Salt Lake City.” To which I said “I’m from Salt Lake City.”  I mentioned that he and I should play golf together sometime and asked him where he played and he said “I play Bonneville every Thursday.” To which I responded “I play Bonneville every Thursday, when is your tee time?” He said “8:30am.” Well, I play 9:16am and I was shocked that we’ve been playing the same course on the same day only 46 minutes apart and we’ve never met each other.

So he got me some products and I blogged about it and I became a big supporter of their product line because it’s so cool. Over the last year, the owner and I became golf buddies and eventually he said why don’t you just join the company… so I did!

OGB:Where did the idea from the headcovers come from?
Sumi-G: The headcovers came as a result of the frustration of dealing with crappy head covers. You have the sock kind and the big fat 460cc driver and you try to get the sock over it and you cant, you put the driver between your legs and try to pull it over and it doesn’t work. Then you have the pom pom ones that go through and come out the other side leaving a big hole and there’s a lot of klunky, bulky, ugly headcover designs, so these came as a result of wanting to have a better, easier to use headcover.

Neat thing about this is that it’s a one handed operation, you scoop it up and put it on with one hand and you don’t have to go through the hassle that you do with other headcovers.

OGB: Are there different models of headcovers?
Sumi-G: No, not exactly, there are headcovers for drivers, fairway woods and hybrids, this year we’re introducing a white version of the headcover whereas last year we only offered the black.

OGB: I noticed there’s different logos on the headcovers, what’s the story with that?
Sumi-G: One of our big initiatives for 2010 is custom logoing on our head covers for higher end golf courses, country clubs and other green grass establishments. Minimum order will be 30.

OGB: What other Sumi-G products are there?
Sumi-G: There’s our fine leather scorecard wallet with the custom logoing, there’s our forged stainless steel divot tool with a magnetic ball marker that’s interchangeable with the belts. Back to the custom logoing, you can get your logo put on the ball marker and since it’s interchangeable, all of the sudden you have a logo belt and divot tool. There’s also the Sumi-G money clip with custom logoing.

We have a line of Sumi-G shoe, shag and hold-all bags. There’s also a Sumi-G club brush that’s similar to a nautical choke cleat that you can affix to your towel when you’re not using it and the Sumi-G logo hat.

OGB: Anything big happening this year regarding new products coming out?
Sumi-G: Well, when we got here and started setting up, Wednesday night at about 5pm, we drove to the airport to pick up a shipment of the new belts, all of these belts are new as of two days ago. None of them have ever been offered before, they’re all brand new.

OGB: Could I purchase one of the belts now?
Sumi-G: We’re taking orders now and shipping in about six weeks, some of these are still prototypes and we’re in the process of tweaking a few of the designs.

OGB: Lastly, what does Sumi-G stand for?
Sumi-G: Well, Sumi-E is Japanese Romanji for for East Asian Ink and Wash Painting. Sumi-E is associated with Zen practice and is considered some of the highest quality art where the goal is to capture the essence or soul of the object. We dropped the E and replaced it with G. The name is meant to convey the quality of our products.

Tony Korologos writes HookedOnGolfBlog and was a participant in the 2010 Battle of the Golf Blogs