Ely Callaway, founding father of the namesake golf membership firm, did one thing few golf fans may think about doing. He declined an invite from Bobby Jones to hitch the Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership in 1957.
Jones, a revered newbie golfer who gained the Grand Slam in 1930 and was a co-founder of Augusta Nationwide with Clifford Roberts, was Callaway’s distant cousin and hero. Over the household’s mantel, lengthy earlier than the Masters achieved the main standing it has immediately, hung a lithograph of Jones profitable the Beginner Championship, often known as the British Beginner, and finishing the Grand Slam. Throughout it was a private handwritten inscription from Jones to Callaway and his first spouse, Jeanne.
Nicholas Callaway stated his father had sensible causes to show down Jones.
“Ely’s rationale later in life when he grew to become the Callaway of Callaway Golf was that since Augusta was solely open for a portion of the 12 months, many of the 12 months he would spend fielding calls from buddies angling to get an invite to play,” he stated. His father’s posthumous memoir, “The Unconquerable Recreation: My Life in Golf & Enterprise,” is being launched this month.
It labored out high-quality for him. “Within the Nineteen Nineties, he attended the Masters for a few years and would get invited to play typically within the days following the match,” his son stated.
The choice needed to have been troublesome. One thing that comes throughout in Callaway’s memoir was the affect Jones had on him.
“I do know that Bobby was the one most vital drive in Ely’s life — as a lot for his nice human qualities as his place within the pantheon of the game,” Nicholas stated.
But when his father obtained that invitation, he wasn’t the Callaway whose title adorns one of many largest golf tools producers on this planet, one whose golf equipment shall be performed at this week’s Masters match.
In 1957, Callaway was a senior government at Burlington Industries, a big textile firm, and he lived in Darien, Conn., with Jeanne, his spouse on the time. He performed at a excessive stage for a suburban membership golfer. In different phrases, he was a typical titan-of-industry candidate for Augusta within the Fifties.
However on the time Callaway needed to run Burlington Industries, his son stated, and the chief government frowned on golf, preferring tennis as a substitute.
Callaway left Burlington Industries in 1973. Out of labor, he needed to begin over. He targeted not on golf, however on constructing his California winery.
“With out that skilled leap, there can be no Callaway Vineyards and Vineyard, no Callaway Golf,” Nicholas stated. “It’s so onerous to surrender all the things. It was the period of the corporate man, however he was a maverick throughout the firm.”
The winery did properly — Queen Elizabeth II drank two glasses of Callaway wine at a 1976 lunch in New York — and in 1981, he bought it for $14 million.
“I by no means noticed him happier,” Nicholas stated. “To return into his personal. To start out from the bottom up. To create an ideal product that he beloved. He took such enjoyment of being a viniculturist, but additionally in making a model. He didn’t share how extremely troublesome it had been.”
Callaway had at all times been a stable newbie participant, having taken up the sport when he was 11 years previous in LaGrange, Ga., after listening to his cousin Jones win the Grand Slam. After promoting the winery, at 62, he performed retirement golf in Indian Wells, Calif.
How he obtained into the golf enterprise was extra weekend hacker than golf membership visionary. As his son recounts, Callaway picked up a wedge in a professional store and began swinging it. He appreciated it and went to the founders of Hickory Stick, the corporate that made it, to speak about why that they had put a metal rod via a hickory shaft, primarily mixing previous and new expertise. The rationale doesn’t matter a lot as that the founders have been working out of cash.
He purchased Hickory Stick and from there added golf properties. He needed to rerelease the Bobby Jones educational movies from the Thirties. Then he obtained the concept of licensing the title of Jones’ putter, known as Calamity Jane. Bobby Jones attire got here subsequent.
“With out Bobby Jones, Ely wouldn’t have taken up golf,” Nicholas stated. “He discovered from Bobby Jones’ movies on tips on how to swing. He talked about Bobby all through my life. I knew he was crucial determine to him, his North Star.”
How Callaway went from a standard imaginative and prescient of golf to a breakthrough product, the Huge Bertha driver, which began the present period of oversize and really forgiving golf equipment, was rooted in one thing extra democratic, his son stated. “All through his complete life, Ely needed to take nice merchandise and produce them to the most important attainable viewers,” Nicholas stated. “He was an anti-elitist. He had a enterprise cause: The bigger your viewers, the bigger your small business can be.”
The Huge Bertha, launched in 1991, was a giant wager on the time. Persimmon woods have been nonetheless performed on the PGA Tour, and metallic woods have been roughly the identical dimension. The Huge Bertha had a bigger head, which helped golfers hit for much longer drives, forcing programs like Augusta Nationwide to extend the size of their holes 12 months after 12 months.
“After I went out to California in 1990, he had a tour bag with a towel over it,” Nicholas stated. “He was the cat that ate the canary when he had one thing new. He instructed me he had invented a membership that was going to vary the sport of golf.”
Arnold Palmer, the four-time Masters champion, stated on the time of Callaway’s loss of life that the driving force was “one of the vital issues that ever occurred within the recreation.” He added that Callaway’s “entire concept was to offer them [average golfers] a chance to benefit from the recreation somewhat extra.”
Callaway ordered 60,000 Huge Berthas, which was an enormous wager on the time. They bought out when the membership was first provided.
“The primary 10 years of Callaway Golf have been very, very iffy — it was month to month and cargo to cargo,” Nicholas stated. “Ely described the Huge Bertha as betting the farm. However he did that rather a lot.”