Portions of this article appeared in our “coolest stuff we saw at the 2025 PGA Merchandise Show” article, which you can check out right here.
The PGA Show every year is the time when golf nerds get to take a glimpse of the game from the forefront. What are the trends? What does the future hold? You can often tell both of those things by looking at the latest innovations from the floor of the PGA Merchandise Show, so let’s dive in…
1. SensorEdge
There are certain things in the golf swing that are hard to measure, but a steady drip of innovative companies is slowly fixing that, one by one, bringing good information to the masses.
Add SensorEdge to the list. SensorEdge showcased a series of products at the 2025 PGA Merchandise Show, including a grip that measures exactly how your hands act in the golf swing: How hard you’re squeezing with each hand, where on the grip you’re squeezing, how that changes as you swing, and which direction you’re applying the force.
It’s nerdy stuff, but don’t be surprised to see it pop up in your golf lesson sooner rather than later. Our grip is the only connection we have to the golf club. It can be a major power leak in our swings and send the ball sideways in a hurry. The quicker a coach can understand what’s going on with your grip, the faster they can fix it.
It doesn’t matter how far you hit your 7-iron, but it does matter that you know how far you hit your 7-iron. That’s what Foresight Golf wants to help you with.
At the show, the company, which is among the best ball-tracking hardware around, demoed its new software. A new feature in its redesigned app allows golfers to hit a few balls with as many clubs as they want. From there, the app displays how far you hit the club (yes, it allows you to throw out outliers), your left-right margin of error, and the distance gap between each club. Then, you can link the results with your rangefinder, which will suggest which club to hit when you zap the pin.
It’s a convenient way to get dialed in and makes simple improvements that will help a lot of golfers.
3. Golf Live
Golf Live is an instruction app with some big names behind it, including Xander Schauffele’s coach Chris Como. The app is designed so coaches can give live lessons—and even clinics—seamlessly. They could be halfway across the world, but they can annotate in real-time and have an hours-long digital lesson carved up into helpful highlights that the students can refer to later.
The Stack System rose to prominence as a tech-infused distance-booster. The app uses an advanced algorithm to tailor a speed training program exactly to what golfers need. It’s since expanded into putting, and at this year’s PGA Show, previewed its forthcoming wedge program. It’s a kind of game golfers can play using the same speed radar that golfers use for the Stack. The app spits out a number, and your job is to try to hit that number. The Stack measures the ball speed to find out if you did.
You don’t need a whole setup. Just a place to hit balls, be it into a net or on the range, and the reasonably-priced radar.
Sound ⬆️
Come by booth #1588, give our wedge contest a go! A little snippet of the contest 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/hPJjK87l0w
— TheStack (@TheStackSystem) January 23, 2025
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5. Sportsbox AI
The golf industry is increasingly flush with instruction AI platforms, and Sportsbox AI is a popular one among teachers. At the PGA Show, the company announced that it would be unveiling the feature Bryson DeChambeau used during his 2024 U.S. Open victory: a detailed report card of sorts, which coaches can use to compare how different golfers’ swings change—like how many inches their hips move, for instance—from shot to shot. It’s nerdy stuff, but again, the kind of stuff coaches love. They want to know exactly what is going on in your golf swing, quickly, so they can waste no time fixing it.
The latest innovation from the popular company Hyperice involves a collaboration with Nike. The boots feel like ski boots to wear and operate off a charge. They use a combination of heat, cold, and compression to stimulate blood flow up and down your feet. It promotes more mobility in your ankles and faster recovery. Pros take this stuff really seriously and count Rory McIlroy as an investor. I guarantee you’ll start seeing pros wear them soon.
7. True Linkswear
Buried in the sole of True Linkswear’s new shoe is what it calls a “ground force reaction plate.” The plate is a suspended piece of carbon fiber that first made its way into running shoes. Runners loved it because of its rebound potential—meaning the more the runner pushed their foot into it, the more the material would push them up, like a trampoline. It’s something golfers need, too. We push into the ground when we swing, then jump up off it on the way through. That helps us release the club. PGA Tour player Ryan Moore, who founded True Linkswear, understood the need and wanted a shoe that helped golfers do it.
8. Platform Golf
Simulator golf keeps getting more popular, and the experience keeps getting better because of it. Platform Golf is upgrading it once again. The rebranded company shifts the surface of the simulator you’re playing in, for both full shots and on the greens. Want to practice a ball-above-your-feet shot? Or a downhill lie? Or a tricky left-to-right breaking putt? You can do that, without even going outside.
9. Bal.on
If you’ve taken a golf lesson in the past year or so, there’s a good chance you’ve been on a force plate: a square or rectangular-shaped platform on which you stand when you swing, which measures how you’re using the ground as you swing. Up until this point, the only place golfers could use these force plates was in hitting bays, but Bal.On is delivering similar technology through the use of soles that you put into your shoes. It lets you measure how you’re using the ground on the golf course or from different lies—a clever way of bringing your range swing to the course.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com