Introduction
|
What follows is a tale that feels like a long, disorienting—at times exhilarating journey through the inner workings of professional golf and the golf industry. Whatever the sum of these adventures, it came to a recognizable end for me with the passing of Ben Hogan in 1997. This moment marked what seemed to be the changing of the guard.
During this journey, the play of golf changed from a game of shotmaking and skill, requiring what Ben Hogan described as “course management,” into clearly what has become a power game. Advances in golf equipment technology enable the pros to hit the golf ball farther and straighter. |
The bottom line is that the golf equipment and the Augusta National course Jack Nicklaus played to win the 1986 Masters are very different from the golf equipment and course Tiger Woods played to win the 1997 Masters. In fact, many of golf ’s historic and classic venues had to be “Tiger proofed” in order to preserve par as the standard of excellence.
It all changed before our eyes, but we never saw it coming.
Through my dissertation research at Clemson University, I saw a paradigm shift in the nature and type of golf courses built or renovated during the 1990s which, along with the downturn in the real estate market in 2006 and the recession in 2008, led to a decline in golf participation and a threat to the sustainability of the golf industry.
Most of the incidents described in this book are firsthand accounts from my time as an executive bouncing around the golf world. I was an insider in the business game, so what you’ll find here is reliable stuff. I managed to work in almost every facet of the golf industry. I got to meet, know, and work with the most influential and memorable people of the era
.
This book tells what the leading players in the game and the golf business were really like. The central characters in this book are Ben Hogan, one of the five best players of all time and a highly successful golf-equipment executive; Deane Beman, a star amateur and successful professional golfer and the inventor of the modern-day PGA Tour; and Minoru Isutani, a wealthy Japanese entrepreneur, who is probably best known for having lost $350 million on the purchase and sale of Pebble Beach. Some of the other costars include Jack Nicklaus, Karsten Solheim, Greg Norman, and Ely Callaway—all names you’ve seen etched on a wood, an iron, or a putter, among other places.
As an executive with the PGA Tour during the formative Beman years, I was there at the birth of its burgeoning business development and played a role in building that enterprise. My good fortune continued when I was appointed president and CEO of the National Golf Foundation (NGF), but my timing was bad. The NGF was teetering on bankruptcy, and the golf industry was struggling. The game and business were heading in the wrong direction. Undaunted, we transformed the NGF into a research resource and made it a uniting force for the industry with the hosting of something new to the golf industry—the Golf Summits.
McKinsey & Company were engaged to help develop a strategic plan for the golf industry. That plan was widely embraced and successfully implemented, leading to an unprecedented level of investment that spurred golf ’s growth well into the 1990s.
Then, with the recommendation of Beman I moved to Cosmo World, the new Japanese owner of the Ben Hogan Company. I was recruited to become the president and CEO of the Ben Hogan Company and later Ben Hogan Properties Company (which acquired the Pebble Beach Company).
This job was the opportunity of a lifetime. I got to work with and become a close acquaintance of Ben Hogan. Our offices were next to each other, and we had coffee together at least two or three times a week. I was very lucky to be with Hogan at a time in his life when he was willing to reminisce and share some of the wisdom he had acquired. The reality is that Hogan was part of an industry, a period of time, and an ethic that was dedicated to making a hard game more satisfying for people who were willing to work at it diligently. That’s hugely different from wanting to turn a game that seems hard (unforgiving clubs like the Hogan Apex blade-shaped irons might be part of the reason) into a game that seems approachable and pleasurable, even if we’re not all hitting the ball prodigious distances and shooting low scores.
I had no such ethic in me which resisted innovation. I thought golf should grow and expand—so that more people would be able to play and enjoy the game without slaving away on the practice range. In a way, I was right in my analysis that making the game easier to play for the average golfer would make it a more appealing recreational activity; however, I was wrong in my assessment that all of the technological advancements in golf would be good for the game.
My perspective was non-Hogan: you could buy a better game with better golf equipment, and I saw that as a good thing. It came from a point of view that all growth was good—something he would never understand. But, as I would someday learn, the real joy and satisfaction in golf comes from inside, and you have to “dig it out of the dirt,” as Hogan always insisted.
What Hogan never knew about me was that, like him, I was (and still am) an inveterate golf-club designer. He was no more enthusiastic a tinkerer and doodler of new designs than I. Both of us started young at this hobby, and both of us made it into a vocation. Unlike the classic Hogan club designs, my designs are modern and loaded with features intended to make golf easier to play, such as square-shaped drivers, metal woods, and hybrid woods, along with a slew of patented products including golf shafts that increase clubhead speed, and golf clubs, putters, and balls with optical-alignment features. I may have more patents than Hogan had, but my name on a golf club has no value (and thus was never used on one), whereas his name was and is the most beautiful, enviable brand in the history of the business. Ironically, I was president of the Ben Hogan Company when it sold the Hogan Edge, the most successful game-improvement club in its history. This club reflected how the game and the golf equipment business were changing, even for a traditional clubmaker like the Hogan Company.
Our differing points of view placed Hogan and me in different philosophical wings of the golfing world. All the same, it did not make him any less a hero to me, and as it turned out, he was right, and I was wrong. This was just one of the many lessons learned in my Forrest-Gump-like odyssey in the wonderful world of golf. If I could have that office next to his and still be working with him now, I’d sign on for that in a Fort Worth minute.
I have many Hogan stories to tell that have never been told before. We were close enough that his wife Valerie asked me to be an honorary pallbearer at his funeral in August of 1997. I was the only former Hogan Company president afforded that privilege. Quite frankly, I don’t know why I have been so amazingly fortunate to have had the opportunity to cross paths and work with so many of the greats in the game and business. Clearly, it is the journey, not the destination that makes it all so worthwhile.
I am now at the point where I have spent time reflecting on what I have learned and am looking for ways to share that knowledge. It is why I went back to school in 2008. In August of 2012, I earned my PhD at Clemson University, where I lectured in the business school and researched sustainable golf development and management.
These pages are the sum of all the important things that happened to me from youth through middle age in the game and business of golf—mostly the business. Fortunately, I came out of it still standing, with many great stories to tell and many lessons learned about golf and life. I am honored to share them
with you.
It all changed before our eyes, but we never saw it coming.
Through my dissertation research at Clemson University, I saw a paradigm shift in the nature and type of golf courses built or renovated during the 1990s which, along with the downturn in the real estate market in 2006 and the recession in 2008, led to a decline in golf participation and a threat to the sustainability of the golf industry.
Most of the incidents described in this book are firsthand accounts from my time as an executive bouncing around the golf world. I was an insider in the business game, so what you’ll find here is reliable stuff. I managed to work in almost every facet of the golf industry. I got to meet, know, and work with the most influential and memorable people of the era
.
This book tells what the leading players in the game and the golf business were really like. The central characters in this book are Ben Hogan, one of the five best players of all time and a highly successful golf-equipment executive; Deane Beman, a star amateur and successful professional golfer and the inventor of the modern-day PGA Tour; and Minoru Isutani, a wealthy Japanese entrepreneur, who is probably best known for having lost $350 million on the purchase and sale of Pebble Beach. Some of the other costars include Jack Nicklaus, Karsten Solheim, Greg Norman, and Ely Callaway—all names you’ve seen etched on a wood, an iron, or a putter, among other places.
As an executive with the PGA Tour during the formative Beman years, I was there at the birth of its burgeoning business development and played a role in building that enterprise. My good fortune continued when I was appointed president and CEO of the National Golf Foundation (NGF), but my timing was bad. The NGF was teetering on bankruptcy, and the golf industry was struggling. The game and business were heading in the wrong direction. Undaunted, we transformed the NGF into a research resource and made it a uniting force for the industry with the hosting of something new to the golf industry—the Golf Summits.
McKinsey & Company were engaged to help develop a strategic plan for the golf industry. That plan was widely embraced and successfully implemented, leading to an unprecedented level of investment that spurred golf ’s growth well into the 1990s.
Then, with the recommendation of Beman I moved to Cosmo World, the new Japanese owner of the Ben Hogan Company. I was recruited to become the president and CEO of the Ben Hogan Company and later Ben Hogan Properties Company (which acquired the Pebble Beach Company).
This job was the opportunity of a lifetime. I got to work with and become a close acquaintance of Ben Hogan. Our offices were next to each other, and we had coffee together at least two or three times a week. I was very lucky to be with Hogan at a time in his life when he was willing to reminisce and share some of the wisdom he had acquired. The reality is that Hogan was part of an industry, a period of time, and an ethic that was dedicated to making a hard game more satisfying for people who were willing to work at it diligently. That’s hugely different from wanting to turn a game that seems hard (unforgiving clubs like the Hogan Apex blade-shaped irons might be part of the reason) into a game that seems approachable and pleasurable, even if we’re not all hitting the ball prodigious distances and shooting low scores.
I had no such ethic in me which resisted innovation. I thought golf should grow and expand—so that more people would be able to play and enjoy the game without slaving away on the practice range. In a way, I was right in my analysis that making the game easier to play for the average golfer would make it a more appealing recreational activity; however, I was wrong in my assessment that all of the technological advancements in golf would be good for the game.
My perspective was non-Hogan: you could buy a better game with better golf equipment, and I saw that as a good thing. It came from a point of view that all growth was good—something he would never understand. But, as I would someday learn, the real joy and satisfaction in golf comes from inside, and you have to “dig it out of the dirt,” as Hogan always insisted.
What Hogan never knew about me was that, like him, I was (and still am) an inveterate golf-club designer. He was no more enthusiastic a tinkerer and doodler of new designs than I. Both of us started young at this hobby, and both of us made it into a vocation. Unlike the classic Hogan club designs, my designs are modern and loaded with features intended to make golf easier to play, such as square-shaped drivers, metal woods, and hybrid woods, along with a slew of patented products including golf shafts that increase clubhead speed, and golf clubs, putters, and balls with optical-alignment features. I may have more patents than Hogan had, but my name on a golf club has no value (and thus was never used on one), whereas his name was and is the most beautiful, enviable brand in the history of the business. Ironically, I was president of the Ben Hogan Company when it sold the Hogan Edge, the most successful game-improvement club in its history. This club reflected how the game and the golf equipment business were changing, even for a traditional clubmaker like the Hogan Company.
Our differing points of view placed Hogan and me in different philosophical wings of the golfing world. All the same, it did not make him any less a hero to me, and as it turned out, he was right, and I was wrong. This was just one of the many lessons learned in my Forrest-Gump-like odyssey in the wonderful world of golf. If I could have that office next to his and still be working with him now, I’d sign on for that in a Fort Worth minute.
I have many Hogan stories to tell that have never been told before. We were close enough that his wife Valerie asked me to be an honorary pallbearer at his funeral in August of 1997. I was the only former Hogan Company president afforded that privilege. Quite frankly, I don’t know why I have been so amazingly fortunate to have had the opportunity to cross paths and work with so many of the greats in the game and business. Clearly, it is the journey, not the destination that makes it all so worthwhile.
I am now at the point where I have spent time reflecting on what I have learned and am looking for ways to share that knowledge. It is why I went back to school in 2008. In August of 2012, I earned my PhD at Clemson University, where I lectured in the business school and researched sustainable golf development and management.
These pages are the sum of all the important things that happened to me from youth through middle age in the game and business of golf—mostly the business. Fortunately, I came out of it still standing, with many great stories to tell and many lessons learned about golf and life. I am honored to share them
with you.
|
David Hueber, Ph.D
|
P.S. Ben Hogan’s Secret is revealed.
