Grant Horvat picked a tough week to promote a $199 starter Club Kit for toddlers. The former Good Good star announced the Lil’ Legends Starter Set on Thursday with Performance Golf. Within hours, replies to NUCLR GOLF’s X post focused more on the price than the product. That timing became the main story, and Horvat’s team should have expected the reaction.

The math the critics are using isn’t unreasonable either. Here is what you can buy for $199: a very capable laser rangefinder, a quality putter from Cleveland, a lightweight golf bag, a Garmin GPS watch, and, in case you are wondering, an entry-level launch monitor. And if you want to tee off somewhere, Bethpage Black, one of the best public courses in the USA, will welcome you for $160, as noted by BroBible.

Instead, Grant Horvat offered a set of kids’ clubs. A fan wrote, “For all the dads out there, Amazon sells metal clubs for toddlers… only $99, perfect for little ones trying to figure things out. This is extortion.” The criticism did not stay contained to X.

OutKick noted that the set appears to use plastic clubs, while the product page never actually says what they’re made of. That gave critics a second target beyond price: a premium product that won’t confirm its own materials.

Now, Horvat added some palliative measures. Namely, a golf mat for indoor practice. Foam balls and tees. Seven-day free trial of PG1 App (the AI tool from Performance Golf that analyzes your swing and gives real-time feedback). The clubs were also designed by ex-Titleist executive Chris McGinley.

Interestingly, the brand’s FAQ even anticipates the comparison fans kept making, addressing head-on why it costs $199 when plastic alternatives run $25, which suggests the backlash wasn’t a surprise so much as a risk the team knew they were taking. So what was their defense for the $199 price tag?

None.

The FAQ section claimed that the plastic clubs you see on the market break quickly. They are more like toys that do not offer proper contact to help develop your kid’s game. The FAQ section also claimed these clubs wouldn’t break and they are engineered with a teaching system inside.

However, it didn’t specify which material the club uses to separate itself from plastic clubs. Nor was it revealed what technology has been used to make them more like real clubs. Quite naturally, it didn’t convince the golf community.

One fan said a child’s first clubs should come from a garage sale, not be a designer set. Even some of the more supportive replies showed the same concern. One dad said he would rather buy the $25 Fisher-Price version for his five-month-old. Another simply called the pricing a “HUGE Miss.”

This isn’t Horvat’s first public misstep this year either.

In July, he apologized to Michael Block after a Your Golf Tour video drew backlash for showing Block’s frustrated reaction to an early exit, with the team admitting they’d made the wrong call. Two incidents in as many months, layered on top of the Good Good/Callaway fallout in the same week, are what turn a pricing complaint into something people are watching for a pattern.

That reaction shows a real change for Grant Horvat. Horvat has built a strong reputation as a player and business owner. He has equity in Takomo and Primo, and fans have generally supported those brands. When he announced that he had part-ownership of Takomo Golf, fans on golf forums praised him. They called his business sense “astonishing” and praised him for building equity instead of only earning money from sponsorships.

At the time, nobody was focused on the $489 price of his iron sets. The story was Horvat’s hard work and business skills, not the price. This time, things are different.

It is also the first Horvat launch in recent memory where the loudest replies are not fans defending the price. Instead, fans are comparing his price to everyone else’s.

That is what makes this launch feel strange. A golfer known for making golf gear more affordable has now put his name on one of the most expensive options in a category where $25 to $99 alternatives, including established brands like Snag Golf, are already available.

Asking parents to pay $199 for a toddler’s plastic club set, especially in the same week the internet is criticizing his former Good Good teammates over a controversial ad, looks like more than bad timing. It suggests the marketing team may not have paid enough attention to what was happening around them. 

Golf’s YouTube community is still dealing with the fallout from a Good Good and Callaway driver ad that showed co-founder Garrett Clark pushing golfer Alexis Miestowski to the ground. PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp called the ad “concerning” and said it did not match the Tour’s values. Callaway’s CEO also publicly apologized. So, when another former Good Good star launched a high-priced product in the same week, fans did not judge it on its own. They looked at it in the context of a brand that was already facing a lot of criticism.

Golf’s influencer world has spent years presenting itself as an affordable and kid-friendly alternative to the old country-club culture. A $199 starter set does not hurt that image by itself, but launching it during this particular week certainly does.