Today, we are making our second stop on our Toulon Golf Coastal California Series putters tour in the dreamy little town of Paso Robles. 

To refresh your memory, since yesterday was a long time ago, Toulon Golf is releasing four limited-edition putters this week named after coastal California towns.

I’m going to call Paso Robles quasi-coastal but I have a bias towards this town. I’ll return to that shortly.

We hit the road in Leucadia yesterday and now we are about 300 miles north in Paso Robles. I was lobbying to stop in Santa Barbara (Go Gauchos!) or even Pismo Beach but Sean Toulon, tour guide extraordinaire, didn’t let us off the bus until Paso.

So let’s take a brief look at the city of Paso Robles and its namesake putter.

Paso Robles: Not much ocean but lots of good wine

Paso Robles is a relatively small town of 31,100. It’s on Highway 101 but on the stretch of highway where the pavement heads inland for a while.

Notable things about Paso Robles. First, Thanos and his father live there. If Josh and James Brolin are there, that probably means that a Barbara Streisand sighting is not out of the question. How fun would that be?

The ever-growing Firestone Walker Brewing Company is headquartered in Paso Robles. If you visit, you can take a tour of the brewery before settling into the tap room and restaurant. I suggest you order a pint of Wookie Jack. Thank me later.

However, beer is not really the Paso Robles thing. There are more than 200 wineries in the immediate area. That’s a lot of possible tasting rooms to choose from. I like JUSTIN Vineyards. The wine is good and the grounds are lovely.

So you won’t be surfing waves in Paso Robles. You’ll be swirling whites and reds.

The Toulon Golf Coastal California Series Paso Robles putter

No, I didn’t forget we had a putter to talk about. The Toulon Golf Coastal California Series Paso Robles putter is a classic round mallet. Just like the Leucadia, the Paso Robles is finished in a Golden Sand PVD with Ocean Blue paint fill and the face is milled with highway sign cutouts.

This 360-gram mallet has a double-bend hosel that delivers a whopping zero degrees of toe hang. This is a mallet that plays like a mallet, likely fitting players with minimal swing arc.

The Paso Robles has a bright blue sole plate. This three-piece sole plate is amazing looking and has an interesting backstory.

The machining pattern on the sole plate is similar to what you would find on a classic car dash. A fancy classic car that is, like a vintage Bentley.

Toulon wanted to get this design on the putter but the machines that make the design can do so only on flat pieces of metal.

Unfortunately, the bottom of a putter is rarely flat.

To get around this, the pattern was etched into a very thin and flat piece of metal. This plate was then molded with the other two layers to create the correct shape for the putter. 

I’m betting this took a couple of tries but the end result is quite handsome.

I bring this up because that is what limited-edition putters are all about. Toulon Golf got a little experimental with the sole plate. They eventually got the build to work for this putter but the process could end up being too cost-prohibitive to incorporate into a stock putter line.

What that means is that if you dig the look of the sole plate, you may want to pick up this putter. It’s possible the Toulon Golf Coastal California Series Paso Robles putter will be the only one to ever have one like it.

We could perhaps see it in another Coastal California Series model. Who knows?

My Paso Robles bias story

I mentioned yesterday that I had a novel experience in Paso Robles that involved the California Highway Patrol. Back in September of 1987, my roommate and I were driving on our way from Sacramento to the dorms at UC Santa Barbara.

We had all of our essentials packed into a Chevy LUV (Light Utility Vehicle) long-bed truck. It was my roommate’s truck, but we took turns driving the 400 miles to college.

I was driving when we hit Paso Robles. Paso Robles sits at the exit point for a stretch of highway affectionately called “Blood Alley”. It was at the junction of Highway 41 and Highway 46 along Blood Alley where James Dean totaled his Porsche and died.

Needless to say, the handling of the full-capicity Chevy LUV was not well suited for this stretch of road.

So we pulled off the highway into Paso Robles to get gas and to swap drivers. I pulled into a convenience store and was immediately asked to stop by a highway patrolman who was wiping gravy off his tie having just exited a restaurant.

(Yes, I’m just being petty with the gravy comment. His tie and the rest of his uniform was nice and clean.)

Long story short: he wrote me up for driving the left side of a raised barrier. I guess I went a short distance on the wrong side of the road as I entered the gas station. Having never been there before, I thought I was just pulling in to get gas.

Alas, he wasn’t as cool as Ponch or John and he wrote me a $300 ticket. Remember, that’s the 1987 version of $300. That equates to roughly 60 hours of my summer lifeguarding earnings.

I never stopped in Paso Robles again.

But you should enjoy Paso Robles, both the city and the putter

Don’t let my Paso Robles experience deter you from visiting there. Quite a few of my friends have wine memberships in Paso and it is a great mid-state destination for NorCal and SoCal folk to get together.

Plus, I bet that cop has long retired.

Grab a nice cabernet and roll some balls with the Toulon Paso Robles. This putter is a great interpretation on the classic face-balanced round mallet design. It looks good on the nose and has enough body to deliver your putts to the hole.

Enjoy your time in Paso Robles. I’m staying by the In-N-Out Burger north of Atascadero but I’ll catch up with you tomorrow before we head for the next stop in Bixby.

The Toulon Golf Coastal California Series Paso Robles is available today at ToulonGolf.com.