Puttering with Pittsburgh Persimmon

You may, or may not, remember American country and western singer Glenn Campbell; the man whose biggest hit was a song entitled “Rhinestone Cowboy.”

I certainly do. I have a picture of myself strolling along the sixth fairway at Sun City with aforementioned Campbell. It was in 1981; the week before the first Million Dollar challenge. We’re clearly in deep discussion and a couple of things catch the eye.

1) The perfectly hideous pair of golf shoes I am wearing; white with two shades of brown patent leather. In those days I thought they were gorgeous.

2) I have a mop of luxuriant curly hair.

3) Campbell is not wearing a shirt. I kid you not. He had removed it so that he could catch a tan.

4) I am holding a club that, for the two of us, is clearly the centre attention.

The reason is that the club is a metal wood; the first one I had ever seen.

Campbell had got it from a friend of his and in the course of the round he allowed my colleague Adrian Frederick and I to have a few hits with it. In fact, he promised he would send us each one of these “Taylor Mades”; saying that he had invested in the company that was making them.

Well, the club never turned up and now I’m wondering whether this was the big chance I missed in my life. Perhaps I should have got back to Campbell, made contact with the manufacturer and acquired an agency for the metal woods; then thought to be no more than a passing fad.

I got to thinking along these lines when a copy of American GolfWorld magazine arrived, a few weeks out of date by US periodical postage, in which that original Taylor Made was described as “the club that changed golf forever.”

In an article sub-title “how golf became a different game, thanks to a salesman, a driver named Leroi and a tee shot at Pebble Beach,” writer John Strege traced the amazing phenomenon known as “Pittsburgh Persimmon.”

Staggeringly the man who set it in motion the steel revolution was not a golfer and came from a country without a golfing tradition. John Zebelean, a nuclear physicist, escaped from communist Yugoslavia and when he finally landed in America he stumbled into golf by changing channels on television.

Hearing mention of wood his interest was sufficiently piqued for him to visit a driving range and was dumbfounded by what he saw. As he is quoted in GolfWorld: “I could not understand why wood was used. Wood absorbs kinetic energy, whereas metal will deliver a higher rate or a lesser loss of kinetic energy. It would shoot the ball a little further.”

He also surmised that a hollow metal head, by pushing weight to the perimeter, would work more efficiently than a mass of hardwood to create a more forgiving club.

Metal was also more durable than wood and less susceptible to contraction and expansion in cold, heat and wet weather.

And so Zebelean went to work designing and forging a “wood” made from metal.

Although a metal-headed driver was recorded in Scotland in the late 1800s it just did not catch on; with laminated blocks of wood the only real advance on the solid chunks of persimmon from which the best woods were shaped.

Although Zebelean’s early efforts were somewhat crude and the clubs made a loud clanging sound – my memory of the one Glenn Campbell had at Sun City – his invention caught the attention of an ambitious young golf equipment salesman called Gary Adams.

Adams’ father was a golf pro and thanks to Adams senior’s positive testimonial after he had tested the club the son started a metal-wood company he would call Taylor Made.

Energetic and believing in his product Adams convinced a pro called Ron Streck to become the first to put a metal wood into competition. That was in 1978.

The big breakthrough came in 1982 when Jim Simons used his Taylor Made twice on the 18th at Pebble Beach to set up victory in the Crosby tournament.

And the rest, as they say, is history. In no time at all wooden clubs became obsolete because metal implements, capable of being manufactured to strict tolerances, simply provided too many advantages; particularly to those earning their living from the game.

With the advent of Titanium, making possible lighter, bigger and even more forgiving clubs, the dominance of steel was complete with real golfers (like me!) clinging to a little piece of history by insisting on wooden pegs.

I still have the beautiful Citation driver – pitch black with the red face insert held in by four brass screws – which is also in that picture with Glenn Campbell as a reminder of many good times but reality is the Ping Tec driver in my bag.

Twenty-one years on and now into the backnine of life I am distinctly longer off the tee than I was then. If only I could have seen it coming!