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A Look Back: Oct. 18 1913: Gladys Ravenscroft wins the U.S. Women's Amateur, defeating Marion Hollins 2-up at Wilmington (Del.) Country Club. 1930: Glenna Collett wins her third straight U.S. Women's Amateur title, defeating Virginia Van Wie 6 and 5 at the Los Angeles Country Club in Beverly Hills, Calif. 1959: Jay Hebert wins the Orange County Open. 1981: Jerry Pate wins the Pensacola Open by three strokes over Steve Melnyk. 1992: John Huston shoots a final-round 62 en route to winning the Walt Disney Golf Classic by three strokes over Mark O'Meara. |
Tournaments
In recognition for their ongoing support and efforts, all police, fire,
and active- and reserve-duty U.S. military personnel qualify for free
admission to the 2001 Tyco/ADT Championship, the LPGA Tour's season-ending
event, Nov. 15-18, 2001, at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm
Beach. The Tyco/ADT Championship features the top 30 players on the LPGA
Tour money list and usually determines the Tour's three top season-ending
races for Rolex Player of the Year, Vare Trophy (lowest scoring average)
and leading season money winner.
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A field of 144 players
will compete in the National Car Rental Golf Classic at Walt Disney
World Resort this year, including defending champion Duffy Waldorf,
Tiger Woods and sponsor's exemptions Matt Kuchar and Charles Howell III.
The tournament, which starts Oct. 18, has its highest purse ever -- $3.4
million.
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People
Scott Ferrell joins the Gary Player Group of Companies as president
of Gary Player Design. Ferrell previously worked as the PGA Tour's TPC
marketing and sales director.
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Courses
The Lion Golf Club, an 18-hole, par-72 track envisioned by late
architect Arthur Davis, opens at the end of this month near Atlanta. The
course, which plans to charge greens fees of $39/weekdays and $48/weekends
and holidays, offers E-Z-GO carts equipped with ProLink's GPS system,
a large practice facility with driving range and practice green, a pro
shop and full-service snack bar.
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Equipment
Golfland Training Center agrees to use a SofTrak Putting Green
as the host of the Kansas Golf Skills Championship and particularly the
$25,000 Putting Challenge. A 2,400-square-foot SofTrak green at Golfland
was specifically designed for the Skills Championship, with multiple sites
from which to launch the 50-foot putts that comprise part of the Putting
Challenge.
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Events
Organizers announce the dates for the Florida First Coast Golf Show,
to be held April 20-21 at the Central Florida Fair and Exposition Park
in Orlando. The fourth annual staging of the popular consumer show will
be produced by Innovative Expositions.
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Juniors
Starting next spring, the St. Andrews Links Trust and Scottish Junior
Golf Partnership launch a program for providing juniors with professional
coaching. Known as the St. Andrews Links Junior Golf Association,
it will provide spring and fall blocks of instruction for golfers from
age 5 to 18, with equipment being supplied by the Ben Hogan Company.
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Architecture
Golf course architect Mark Mungeam completes work on a centennial
re-design of The Country Club of New Bedford in Massachusetts. Mungeam,
of Cornish, Silva and Mungeam, worked with ASL Golf Course Construction,
using photos taken in 1938 and 1942 to renovate the 16th green and all
the tees on the course. Nine of the course's holes were originally designed
by Willie Park Jr., and Donald Ross added a second nine in 1923.
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Accessories
Jack Nicklaus Apparel International, a joint venture between Hartmarx
Corporation and the Nicklaus companies, signs a licensing agreement with
Randall International to launch a line of sun care products under
the Nicklaus name. The Nicklaus and Lady Nicklaus lines will feature two
patented formulas that both smooth to a skin-conditioning powder so there
is no residue, oiliness or stickiness to inhibit grip.
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Retail
To encourage Christmas sales, retailer Golf USA rolls out an ad
campaign that focuses on a layaway program where customers can put down
a small sum and make no-interest payments for purchases. Vice President
of Sales and Marketing Bill Overstreet says the layaway program will appeal
to consumers who don't want to accumulate high-interest debt on credit
cards in an uncertain economy.
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Five Questions
Jon Hyman, CEO
of Softspikes
Jon Hyman, 43, is Chief Executive Officer of Softspikes, Inc. In 1999, Softspikes launched its Black Widow plastic cleat at the PGA Merchandise Show and it has since emerged as the No. 1 plastic cleat on the PGA Tour according to the independent Darrell Survey.
Q: When plastic cleats first came out, there was a lot of skepticism about their viability. Golfers who wore them said they didn't get enough traction. When did you realize there was a real need for the product?
A: Bill Ward, who founded the company, recognized the need from the very beginning. The need came from the fact that greens were under stress and metal spikes were doing damage to the greens, and created agronomic conditions that were not beneficial to the course.
Now, can you make a product commercially viable? The tack we took after analyzing our marketing program was to go after the grass roots. We wanted to really make it a grass roots campaign versus what had been done historically in the golf industry, which had been to tie your cart to a professional and then advertise the fact that he used your product. We went the first way and allied ourselves with key influencers of the business, who were the superintendents, people who had a problem with the course conditions, and got them to assist us pushing the product into the grass roots.
The first product came out in 1992 in response to a query by a general manager of a club where they played golf almost year-round. He came to one of the local inventors and said, "We have a non-metal spike policy in the winter months when the grass goes dormant and our golfers wear their golf shoes (without spikes). The golf shoe receptacles fill up with grass, dirt or whatever. Can you come up with something that is a plug?"
He said, "Certainly I can do that, plus give you some traction," and that's how the original Softspikes was born.
Courses across the country are in better shape than they have ever been. And the superintendents will tell you so and that's because of the advent of the plastic cleats. It's been revolutionary from an agronomic standpoint.
Q: Was the partnership with FootJoy, to put Softspike brand cleats on the bottom of their shoes, the turning point of success for the company? How did that relationship come about?
A: It absolutely was. FootJoy being the leader in the business, and being able to be a part of their equipment was very, very important to us. That was one of the key points in the company's history.
We originally provided products for them in '95 and '96. At that time it was a product they used only for recleating. So when a course called and said "I will not accept metal spikes from what shoes you will sell into the club, please recleat them," FootJoy took our brand and recleated, and then shipped the product to the club.
Early in 1996, we parted ways. FootJoy were not convinced that the industry was headed to plastic cleats at that time, and they wanted to see where the market was going.
Well, we were dedicated to making sure the market converted because we felt it was better for the game. In '97 (when we had developed the XP Extra Performance cleat), we started having conversations again about having our product on the bottom of their shoes as original equipment and we inked another deal with them.
Q: The Black Widow has emerged as one of the leading plastic spikes on the market. Talk about the product.
A: When we had the XP Extra Performance, which at the time was the leading performance cleat, we had most of the women converted to it, had almost all of the seniors converted to it, and about 30 to 35 percent of the regular tour. And the regular tour guys said, "You know what? There is just not quite enough traction in this for us."
And we knew that would be the case if we stayed with a static design where the arms don't move. The only way to improve the traction was to extend each one of those little arms. In doing that you risk doing green damage. But we've always tried to balance green damage with performance.
So Faris McMullin, who has developed all of our products in the past, set about developing a product that enhances performance without increasing greens damage. And he came up what we call Dynamic Cleat Technology, which really allows each arm of the Black Widow to articulate -- to adjust for the ground conditions, hill conditions, grass conditions. Essentially, by articulating, it traps the grass between the sole of shoe and the arm, providing tremendous traction.
For our industry, albeit a very small part of the golf market, it was a leap ahead in technology. It allowed us to improve performance and it's a more durable product. After we launched it, our numbers on the regular tour sky-rocketed. We now have well over 50 percent of the tour each week wearing the product. And the issue was traction.
Q: The industry as a whole has been affected by the recent soft economy, but, specifically, how has Softspikes been affected?
A: The biggest criteria we look at is rounds played, and when rounds played are down that means the less our product is being used. So our sales suffer. We are pretty close to our plan for the year, but sales have been down. Resorts use a lot of our products and people aren't traveling to resorts -- that has a negative impact on us. People aren't playing as much golf, for whatever reason, and that has a negative impact on us.
Q: Cleats, like grips, are not something golfers tend to think about purchasing as much as, say, clubs or balls. How do you go about getting golfers to think about changing their cleats more often?
A: Most of the people don't change their grips often enough, just like they don't change their spikes. And those are things we're trying to figure out right now, how to develop a program to get people to change their cleats more often. Kind of like Jiffy Lube, which has done a very good job of thinking we need to change our oil every 2,500 miles.
The thing now is to educate the consumer. Spikes will wear down and in order to maintain the performance in your game, you need to change them regularly. After every 10 rounds, you should look at them and determine if you need to change them. You may only need to change one or two. This is something we're really trying to push the market on, to understand that there is a need to change the cleat in order to maximize performance.