The Masters Helped Turn Ely Callaway Into a Golf Club Maker

Ely Callaway, founder of the homonymous golf company, did something that few golf enthusiasts could imagine doing. He rejected an invitation from Bobby Jones to Jina The Augusta National Golf Club in 1957.

Jones, a venerated fans golfer who won the Grand Slam in 1930 and was co -founder of Augusta National with Clifford Roberts, was the distant cousin and hero of Callaway. On the family shelf, long before the Masters achieved the main status it has today, hung a lithography of Jones winning the fans championship, also known as the British fan, and completing the Grand Slam. On the other side there was a personal registration written by Jones to Callaway and his first wife, Jeanne.

Nicholas Callaway said his father had practical reasons to reject Jones.

“Ely’s justification later in life, when he became the Callaway of Callaway Golf was that, since Augusta was only open for a part of the year, most of the year he spent calls from friends of fishing to invite to play,” he said. His father’s posthumous memories, “The Iconquebable Game: My Life in Golf & Business,” will be released this month.

It worked well for him. “In the 1990s, they attended the masters for many years and would be invited to play offers in the days after the tournament,” said his son.

The decision had to make an effort for the legs. Something that appears in Callaway’s memoirs was Jones’ impact on him.

“I know that Bobby was the most important force in Ely’s life, both for his great human qualities and his place in the sport pantheon,” Nicholas said.

However, when his father received that invitation, it was the Callaway whose name adorns one of the world’s largest golf team manufacturers, one whose clubs will be played in the Masters tournament this week.

In 1957, Callaway was a senior executive at Burlington Industries, a large textile company, and lived in Darien, with., With Jeanne, his wife at that time. Hey He played at a high level for a suburban club golfer. In other words, he was a typical titan candidate of the industry for Augusta in the 1950s.

But at that time Callaway wanted to direct Burlington Industries, said his son, and the executive director frowned with golf, preferring tennis.

Callaway left Burlington Industries in 1973. Out of work, he had to start. He focused not on golf, but on the construction of his Vineyard of California.

“Without that professional jump, there would be no vineyards and Bodegas de Callaway, or Golf Callaway,” Nicholas said. “It is very difficult to give up everything. It was the era of the company’s man, but he was a rebel within the company.”

The vineyard did well: Queen Elizabeth II drinks two Calllaway wine glasses at a 1976 lunch in New York, and in 1981, she sold it for $ 14 million.

“I never saw him happier,” Nicholas said. “To come in his. To start from scratch. To create a great product he loved. He delighted so much for being a winemaker, but also in creating a brand. He made how incredible it was difficult for him to have bone.”

Callaway had always been a solid amateur player, having tasks in the game when he was 11 years old in Lagrange, Georgia, after listening to his cousin Jones to win the Grand Slam. After selling the vineyard, at 62, he played retirement golf in Indian Wells, California.

The way he entered the golf business was more weekend hacker than Golf Club Visionary. While his son tells, Callaway picked up a wedge in a professional store and began to balance her. He liked and went to the founders of Hickory Stick, the company that did it, to talk about why they had put a steel rod through a walnut axis, which combines ancient and new technology. Reason does not matter as much as the founders were running out of money.

He bought Hickory Stick and from there he added a golf property. I wanted to replace the instructional films of Bobby Jones of the 1930s. Then he had the idea of ​​licensing the name of the Jones putter, called Calamity Jane. Bobby Jones’ clothes arrived later.

“Without Bobby Jones, Ely would not have golf tasks,” Nicholas said. “He learned from Bobby Jones’ movies about how to swing. He talked about Bobby through my life. I knew it was the most important figure for him, his northern star.”

How Callaway went from a traditional golf vision to an innovative product, Bertha’s great driver, who started the current era or large and very indulgent clubs, was based on something more democratic, said his son. “Throughout his life, Ely wanted to take excellent products and take them to the largest possible audience,” said Nicholas. “He was an anti-Elitista. He had a referred business: the bigger his audience is, the greater his business will be.”

Big Bertha, released in 1991, was a great bet at that time. Persimmon Woods was still played on the PGA tour, and metal woods were approximately the same size. Big Bertha had a larger head, which helped golfers reach much longer units, forced courses such as Augusta National to increase the duration of their holes year after year.

“When I went to California in 1990, I had a tour bag with a throat on it,” said Nicholas. “It was the cat who ate the Canary when he had something new. He told me that he had invented a club that was going to change the golf game.”

Arnold Palmer, the four -time Masters champion, said at the time of Callaway’s death that the driver was “one of the most important things that has happened in the game.” He added that Callaway’s “idea was to give them [average golfers] An opportunity to enjoy the game a little more. “

Callaway ordered 60,000 Big Berthas, who was a great at that time. They sold out when the club was sacrificed for the first time.

“The first 10 years of Golf Golf were very, very doubtful: it was month by month and shipping to shipping,” said Nicholas. “Ely described the great Bertha as betting on the farm. But he did a lot.”