|
ALSO SEE
North: Innovative Callaway changed golf
Callaway remembered as friend, innovator
ERC controversy won't end with Callaway's death
Murray: This guy helped your drive
|
|
Friday, July 6, 2001
Callaway brought forgiving clubs to masses
Associated Press
Ely Callaway, who turned Callaway Golf Co. into the biggest clubmaker in the world with his "Big Bertha" drivers and a passion to make golf enjoyable for the masses, died early Thursday of pancreatic cancer. He was 82.
Callaway died at 2:30 a.m. PT at his home in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., spokesman Larry Dorman said.
|  | | Ely Callaway brought the Big Bertha driver to the market in 1991. |
"He went peacefully, with his family around him," Dorman said. "There will be a huge void felt in the world of golf."
Doctors discovered a tumor on Callaway's pancreas two months ago during surgery to remove his gall bladder. He resigned as president and chief executive officer May 15, and was succeeded by Ron
Drapeau.
"We will all continue to honor his memory by doing our very best on behalf of the company that he created," Drapeau said.
Arnold Palmer, who signed a 12-year endorsement deal with Callaway and backed the controversial ERC driver, said the oversized drivers that Callaway pioneered were "one of the most important things that ever happened in the game."
"The fact is, 90 percent of all golfers are struggling to play the game," Palmer said from his office in Latrobe, Pa. "His whole idea was to give them an opportunity to enjoy the game a little more. That was the thing that hit me the hardest about Ely."
Annika Sorenstam, who has been on Callaway's professional staff throughout her career, cried when a company official called her Thursday morning at the Jamie Farr Kroger Classic in Ohio.
"I felt like he was my grandfather," Sorenstam said. "That's the kind of relationship we had. He was there from the beginning of my career."
After spending nearly 30 years in the textile industry, Callaway paid $400,000 in 1982 for a small golf company called Hickory Stick, which made specialty clubs with hickory wrapped around steel shafts.
Callaway turned it into so much more.
From the oversized Big Bertha to the controversial ERC driver, he was at the forefront of some of the biggest technological advancements in equipment over the past decade. Sales that were a modest $5 million in 1988 soared to $800 million 10 years later.
"You can't fool the public," Callaway said in a 1998 interview with The Associated Press. "If they are going to buy your product it has to be better. It has to be right. It has to be truly more satisfying than the existing product."
The Big Bertha, named after a World War I cannon, paved the way for drivers that had a bigger sweet spot and were easier to hit. The ERC, which violated United States Golf Association standards for how
quickly a ball could spring from the face of the club, led to a debate whether recreational players should fall under the same standards as pros.
In the middle of it all was Callaway, a visionary with a high-pitched twang who could be charming and combative.
"His energy level was very high, and his intensity in making things happen was unprecedented," Palmer said. "Certainly, the golf industry knows that."
Callaway never boasted that his clubs caused the ball to go farther or straighter, only that they were more forgiving and made the game more enjoyable for the average player.
"We've sold $5 billion in golf clubs since Callaway started from nothing, which is far more than anybody in the world has ever done," he said in January. "And we want to keep on making clubs that are going to make people happier."
Callaway could be feisty and accommodating, a small man with big designs who had a devilish grin and a twinkle in his blue eyes that belied his willingness to take on any battle, even as an octogenarian.
Callaway introduced the ERC driver -- the initials stand for Ely Reeves Callaway -- in 1999, at first selling it only in Asia and Europe. The Royal & Ancient Golf Club, which governs the game everywhere but the United States and Mexico, did not declare it nonconforming.
It was a mystery club in America, and sold for as much as $1,000.
A year later, Callaway thumbed his nose at the USGA by introducing the ERC II and selling it in America. He further shocked the establishment by introducing Palmer, the most endearing figure in golf, as his primary pitchman for the club.
"Obviously, we had a difference of opinion on spring-like effect," said USGA spokesman Marty Parkes. "But a lot of people here had a lot of respect for him and what he did for the game. Go out today on any golf course and look in peoples' bag. His equipment is used by an awful lot of people."
Callaway lobbied for different rules for competitive and recreational golf, and was delighted when the R&A said last year it found nothing wrong with the ERC and that extra distance alone was not a threat to the game.
Because of the rift, players can use the ERC driver in the British Open or the Ryder Cup, but not at any tournament played in the United States.
Callaway was born June 3, 1919, in LaGrange, Ga., the son of a textile executive and a distant cousin of Bobby Jones.
He graduated from Emory University in 1940 and enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving until the conclusion of World War II. Callaway became one of the Army's top procurement officers, which led to a successful career in the textile industry, first with Milliken Textiles and later as president of Burlington.
He left Burlington in 1973 after a dispute over who should be chairman, and turned his attention to a small vineyard he had planted in southern California. Just like everything else in his career, it proved highly profitable.
Callaway developed his own label and sold it in 1981 for $14 million, then turned his attention to golf clubs.
"There was no grand vision of three careers and big fortunes," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1995. "I just started out one little step at a time and hoped it worked. Luck was a big piece of it -- not so much good luck, but the absence of bad luck."
The biggest break was playing golf after selling his vineyard and stumbling across a wedge made by Hickory Stick.
Callaway bought the company because he felt it made a superior product, the creed for his reign in the golf equipment business.
Big Bertha was launched in 1991, and net sales increased by at least $100 million each year from 1992 until a downturn in the equipment industry in 1998.
"I knew the first time I ever played with the refined prototype of the first Big Bertha driver that it would be a huge seller, and would continue to be until somebody came along and made a better one," he once said.
Callaway introduced oversized irons in 1994, added Odyssey putters to its stable and invested $170 million in a golf ball plant last year.
The name of the company's ball is "Rule 35," a play on the USGA's 34 rules of golf. The additional rule: Have fun.
"In a business based on pleasure, we have developed a product which changed the game for the good," he once said.
Callaway is survived by his wife, Lucinda Villa; a sister, Lula Callaway Albright; three children, Reeves, Lisa and Nicholas; and four grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements were not immediately available.
 Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
|
