59 Belts Review – Professional Custom Golf Belts

The golf belt is an accessory that has traditionally been largely overlooked. However, in what has become a large scale revolution in golf fashion, stylish, flashy, and custom golf belts are becoming increasingly popular both on an amateur and professional level.

Pay close attention to some of your favorite PGA TOUR players and you’ll soon notice more and more of them completing their outfits with custom belts and belt buckles. Guys like Rickie Fowler and Keegan Bradley in particular constantly don eye-catching belt buckles from week to week.

Just like the pros, sporting a custom belt buckle is a great way to round out your unique style, and if you’re in the market for one, look no further than 59 Belts.

The Company

We recently caught up 59 Belts President, Trevor Derrheim, for a quick quick Q & A session. It’s always a treat to get a chance to speak directly with the owner of a company who is truly passionate about his product.

Golficity:  When did 59 Belts officially launch?

Trevor:  The first buckles went straight into play at the Canadian Women’s Open in the summer of 2007. Lorena Ochoa wore a stainless maple leaf buckle that week and won the event.

Golficity:  Where are you located?

Trevor:   ’59’ is a Las Vegas based company, but our buckles are individually machine milled and handcrafted in Southern California.

Golficity:  Roughly how many pros in competition wear the belts?

Trevor:  We have had wonderful player support over the years although we have lost most to paid contracts. A belt contract was something that didn’t exist until the mega companies began to see our belts becoming more popular in 2008. In 2009 we had twenty-one PGA Tour players in ’59,’ notably Keegan Bradley, up until the week before he won the PGA Championship. We currently have over fifty Touring Professionals representing ’59’ worldwide on various Tours and we have yet to pay a single player even a dollar to be part of our ‘#59Crew.’

Notable players include Paula Creamer, Jason Gore, Daniel Chopra, Annika Sorenstam, Yani Tseng, Na Yeon Choi, Kris Blanks, Emiliano Grillo in Europe.

Fun fact – Mike Weir is one of our best customers of all-time. In 2009, he purchased a good amount of custom BYU stainless steel buckles for his alma matter team and select boosters, coaching staff, etc..  

Golficity: Roughly how many college programs wear the belts?

Trevor:  Currently around a dozen and growing – ASU, Florida Gators, BYU, Pepperdine, Denver U, Wilmington U, Redlands U, U of Colorado, Washington State U, just to name a few. College is tough as a lot of the bigger schools are sponsored by the mega corporations such as Nike, Oakley, and Under Armour.

It continues to get increasingly difficult to be a small independent company these days. The money these billion dollar shoe companies spend to take up space in the market keeps you out of a lot of the places that can give you better brand awareness. Never mind the fact that they are giving away belts to their teams, where as we have to ‘sell’ belts to programs. 

Design and Customization

All 59 belts come with a strap and a separate buckle that clips into place for support.  We ordered a basic, “off the shelf” buckle (not customized), to put the product through a few of our tests. We we’re instantly blown away by the amazing design and creation of the buckle.

Most “cheap” buckles you buy in your local golf store tend to feel a bit filmy and seem like they’ll have a short-lived life span. 59 buckles are different. Holding one in your hands gives a true feel of sturdiness. There’s no doubt these little guys can last a lifetime.

When ordering, you can opt for the indestructible and stylish stainless steel model or the just as fashionable, and even lighter aluminum, which we still found to be very durable.

Keep in mind that you’re going to have to pay for all this durable, stylish, and handcrafted goodness. The “Grinder Series Stainless” buckles can run you as much as $220 for a customized buckle and the leather strap is roughly another $40-$55 depending on the size. However, we love the fact that you can swap out the straps for different colors and therefore maintain the same fresh looking buckle to wear with different color shirts and pants, thus improving your investment’s versatility.

The “Players Series Aluminum” belts look just as cool and fall in a more reasonable range of rough $60 – $85, depending on the customization.

With both style buckles you can easily grab a favorite sports team or company logo and get it custom made to make a great gift for any golfer, client, or for yourself.

If you’re really feeling it, opt for one of the exotic straps which can range from $125-$459 and come in hard to find luxurious materials like shark skin, cobra, python, stingray, ostrich, and crocodile.

Ordering

The customization process is not difficult whatsoever. By simply utilizing their buckle builder template you can select the size and look of your buckle and have your design created perfectly to your liking.

Team 59 assured us that they are currently working to simplify their website ordering process but that’s not to say that the current method is not relatively easy and fairly intuitive.

59 Belts will accept your photo/logo uploads via email to [email protected] after which you’ll receive a quote where you can even view what the final buckle layout before ordering.

Durability

These belt buckles and straps are without a doubt the most durable that we’ve seen on the market. The sturdy buckles are extremely difficult to break, scratch, or bend and the straps won’t fray, tear or puncture very easily (this can vary based on material, especially if you select one of the exotic straps).

The 59 Belt we ordered has been through over 50 rounds of golf and we even put it through a wash cycle as a test, after all, who hasn’t done that by mistake before!  Obviously we don’t recommend doing this with your own belt, but we wanted to test its limits.

Cost

If you’re happy with sticking to the mundane you can easily grab a basic name brand belt buckle for $40-$60 at your local golf shop. But if you want to take your golf style game up a notch we suggest investing in one of these beauties from 59 Belts. The buckle we’ve been testing for this review has gotten a lot of attention with plenty of playing partners asking “where do we get one?”

Although the cost is high for a custom stainless belt, give them a try for at least an aluminum buckle and basic strap and we’re confident you’ll be back for more buckles and straps to switch up your style (warning: it can get a bit addictive).

Note: Golficity Premium Members can now receive 15% off all 59 Belt Products.

Where to Get’em

You need to visit www.59belts.com to select, customize, and order your belt. Feel free to browse the galleries to see the custom buckles they’ve designed for top pros like Keegan Bradley, Rory McIlroy, and Anika Sorenstam.  You can also see some of 59 Belt’s new products pop-up from time to time on their Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter streams.

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