What made you focus on designing clubs at the short end of the bag?
It was really nothing more than a commercial decision that I made when I started my own business. When you are a small company without a lot of spare capital, you can’t take too many risks – you need to go where the business is. In golf that means drivers, putters and wedges. They are the clubs that have the highest turnover and quickest replacement, so I concentrated on those three sectors of the market. I actually started out making drivers. Once I found that I could compete favourably in that market, I looked at wedges next and then, finally, putters.
What special skills do you need to become a good clubmaker and designer?
Well, for a start, you need to be a very visual person. I see things like shapes and balance. To me, the subtle differences between good and bad golf clubs are as clear as night and day. You also need an eye for art, symmetry and design. But, like any other skill, it is not acquired overnight. In fact, I’m still learning and will always be, I hope.
What are the key differences in golf club design today
to when you first started in the industry?
Modern materials, technology and manufacturing methods have transformed the industry virtually beyond recognition during the past 10 years. However, the design principles that applied in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s are still relevant today. The biggest difference, however, is speed. We build clubs so much quicker these days. When I first started out, designing and producing a golf club was about a seven month process. It would take you three months to get a decent prototype. Then you had to build a master, make a mold and then physically produce the club in the foundry, all of which added up to about another three or four months’ work. With the modern technology that we have available to us here at Callaway Golf today, you could design a clubhead on a computer,shoot a wax and, if everything in the production process goes smoothly, you could be hitting that club in three weeks.
What is the function of the grooves on a golf club?
The ideal finish and conditions for maximum backspin are a sand-blasted clubface with no grooves off a tight, dry fairway. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world like that. Some of the top tour pros do, but the rest of us need help. Grooves help you develop more control over the ball from the rough and from wet or imperfect lies. They channel water, grass and debris away from the ball at impact to improve the friction, and therefore spin,
and thus control.
Do you miss the days of the persimmon woods?
Many younger golfers will have never even seen a persimmon driver, let alone hit one or have any idea how difficult it is to actually make one. In total, there are between 60 and 70 steps involved in the process and if you make an error with any single one of them, you’ve no longer got a golf club. I obviously look fondly back on the persimmon era because that’s where I learned all about shape and balance and where I developed skills like grinding, sanding and polishing. I still get to indulge my passion, though, as I have a collection of classic clubs that dates back to the 1850s.
What would happen if we put one of your finest persimmon woods on the launch monitor at the RCH Test Center and compared its performance against the ERC Fusion Driver?
It would be brutal! The thing about persimmon is that you can never be 100 percent certain of where the center of gravity is actually located because wood is obviously a solid material and you can’t look inside to check its structure. You are also extremely limited in the size of the head. The ERC Fusion Driver can be maximized for head size (460cc) and contains the very latest weighting technology. We know exactly where that center of gravity is located. Not only that, we can move it around to produce different types of performance for individual needs.
Tell us about some of the tour pros that you have worked with.
I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve always worked with a great tour staff. The tour was my test center and it still is today to a certain extent. I would spend a lot of time on the practice0 range at tournaments getting feedback from the players. My first staff pro was Bruce Fleisher, who as you may know, is one of our great Callaway Golf staff players. Ben Crenshaw and Tom Lehman were also great fun to work with. Byron Nelson once asked me to make him a set of irons with his name on them. At the time, I was known more for my woods, so I told him that woods would be the best place to start, but he insisted and so we made him a set of irons. Six months later, he called and said, “OK, now you can make me those woods!” It was a wonderful program that was started and the beginning of a cherished relationship that still exists today.
