Precepts new ball, "Dude, Looks like the Lady"

Well, it seems that the people at Precept may have heard about the huge crossover success of their ball, the Precept MC Lady. They have officially unveiled their new ball and have wisely dubbed it the "Precept Laddie", a blatant reference to their hugely successful ball "The Lady". This is an obvious attempt to bring in those male players who may have been on the bubble during last year’s Lady Craze. Those players, you know who you are, were a little insecure about playing a round with a 'women’s' ball and for that reason alone these golfers would either refuse to play with the Lady or try to hide the fact that they were playing with the Lady by concealing the "Lady" label on the ball.

At first glance, this looks like the approach that Precept took to lure in that huge fringe market. By changing the "Lady" inscription to "Laddie", they seem to fall into that long list of gender-neutral products including the following: the kilt (aka skirt), the briefcase (aka handbag), the bro (aka bra), and the infamous bikini briefs (aka panties).

According to Precept, the Laddie/Lady isn’t some gender-neutral, unisex, transvestite, she-male, hermaphrodite golf ball. The Laddie is a completely different ball; well, maybe it’s not completely different, it may be just slightly different, but it’s definitely not identical to the Lady. While the Lady is a soft two-piece ball and is designed for low-to-moderate club head speeds, the Laddie is a soft two-piece ball and is designed for low-to-moderate club head speeds with a 20% softer core than the Lady. See, I told you they were different.

The director of marketing for Precept, Stephen Graham, has said this about the new wonder ball, "The Laddie is really a culmination of everything we learned from the performance of the MC Lady." And what did Precept learn from the MC Lady? If they learned anything it would have to be this; It doesn’t matter what you call it, what color you paint it, or who it’s intended for, if a ball travels farther with less effort, golfers of all shapes, sizes and sexes will use it. Call it Laddie, Lady, or Loser; it doesn’t matter. People will still buy it.

The good news in all this is that the male golfers now can use the ball they want for roughly the same price, $20.00 to $22.00 street price, without the ridicule that could come with playing a women’s ball. Well, I shouldn’t say they can play without any ridicule, most of us really know what this new ball is. I mean let’s call a spade a spade here. It may say Laddie on side of the ball, but we all know that it’s really a Lady trapped in Laddie’s body.