John Ambrose and his father, John, could never figure out why golfers putt standing sideways. The other clubs in your golf bag must be hit from the side to generate torque and power, but putting, a skill that requires more touch than sheer force, is done best while facing the hole.
“If I hand you a ball and tell you to roll it toward the hole, you’re going to bend at the knees, face the hole and roll it underhand,” the younger Ambrose says. “So why would you putt standing sideways?”
Well, because golf’s rules say that both feet must be on the same side of the ball while putting. So the Ambroses spent three years and more than $50,000 working on a solution that the USGA would approve. Their answer is the Lateral Line L2 putter, which allows golfers to legally stand beside their ball, face the hole and use an underhand swing similar to rolling a bowling ball.
Now the Ambroses must make the L2 stand out from all of the new golf products that hit the market every year. So the father-son team is taking a unique marketing approach: selling the putter only through PGA pros who have been shown the proper mechanics of putting with the L2.
“We felt the best way to get the pros on our side was to integrate them into our systems,” Ambrose says. “If you don’t have the pros on your side, it comes off more like a gimmick. I don’t want someone to buy it, not know what to do with it, and it ends up collecting dust.”
To tee up their new putter, the entrepreneurs attended January’s annual PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Fla., where more than 160 new products debuted. With booth space running $5,000 and up, the Lateral Line team worked the show floor instead, trying to demonstrate the putter to PGA pros from across the country. “Once you get it into [the pro’s] hands, the response is really positive,” Ambrose says.
The L2, which retails for $150, was unveiled locally at the Greater Cleveland Golf Show in February and should start showing up in pro shops this spring.
“It’s taking that leap of faith and doing something different,” Ambrose says. “There’s no debating it makes sense. It’s just trying to break a habit of 30 years.”