The putter also featured a low center of gravity with a cavity-back. How popular was the Anser? It became arguably the most popular putter in golf history.
This was due to bend in the design of the shaft which the governing body of golf decided gave players and edge while putting. Two years later, George Archer user the Anser to win the Masters, which was the first major championship won using the putter.
Using the same concept of perimeter weighting at the Anser, PING produced a successful set of irons in In fact, PING because the first club manufacturer to use investment casting, which lowered costs and allowed for better quality control. The key feature was an eye-shaped cavity that enhanced feel and improved the aesthetics of the club. In , the PING Eye 2 irons were introduced designed with square grooves that produced more spin on the ball.
The clubs vaulted to the top of iron sales. Because the privately owned company manufactures only when an order has been placed, it carries no inventory and is able to roll out new models with a minimum of lead time. Founded by engineer Karsten Solheim, the company has been at the forefront of golf innovation since the development of the Ping putter in the late s. Despite its reputation for unsurpassed quality and technical expertise, the company has been eclipsed in recent years by more marketing-savvy competitors.
Forced to adapt to changing conditions, a second generation of the Solheim family has taken control of the business, instituting a number of changes to forge a strong comeback.
In addition to the design and manufacture of golf clubs, Karsten produces accessories, such as bags and apparel, and owns and operates Moon Valley Country Club in Phoenix. Karsten also owns several subsidiaries involved in the manufacturing process of its golf clubs. Because of their technical expertise these businesses have other commercial applications. Dolphin Inc. Karsten Solheim was born in Bergen, Norway, in and two years later immigrated to America with his family, which settled in Seattle, Washington.
He learned the shoemaking trade from his father but was devoted to the dream of one day becoming a mechanical aeronautical engineer. He enrolled at the University of Washington but after a single year, with the country in the midst of the Depression, he was forced to drop out, unable to pay the tuition. He fell back on the craft his father taught him and for several years ran a shoe repair shop in Seattle.
He soon learned a business principle that he would embrace for the rest of his life. When another cobbler opened a shop across the street and undercut the price to repair heels, Solheim followed suit but was surprised by the reaction of his old customers, who wanted to know if the quality of his work would remain the same.
He concluded that quality, not price, was the key consideration. As a result he doubled his price, offered higher-quality leather, and ultimately drove away his cut-rate competition. Solheim continued his engineering studies through college extension courses, but it was not until the advent of World War II and the defense industry's desperate need for engineers that he was able to give up the shoe repair business. He needed only five weeks to complete a ten-week crash course in engineering at the University of California in Berkeley, then moved to San Diego to work at Ryan Aeronautical Corporation, becoming a flight research engineer and working on the Fireball jet fighter plane.
He stayed with Ryan until when he took a job at Convair, serving as a project engineer on the first ground guidance system for the Atlas missile.
Two years later he went to work as a mechanical design engineer for General Electric GE at its Ithaca, New York plant, becoming involved in radar and guidance systems. In he was transferred to the GE Electronic Park in Syracuse to work on the development of the company's first portable television and while there invented the rabbit-ears antenna.
A Chicago firm manufactured it, after GE proved uninterested in the item, selling millions. Solheim vowed that he would manufacture his next invention himself. That Solheim's next invention might involve the game of golf was highly improbable.
A tennis player, he never even tried golf until moving to Ithaca, when in at the age of 42 he played a round with coworkers and became enamoured with the game. Putting was particularly troubling to Solheim, who soon concluded that a large part of his difficulties could be attributed to design flaws in his putter, which no matter how consistently he stroked it would twist just enough to send the ball off course. Knowing that a tennis racket employed perimeter weighting, in which the weight was distributed to the rim to allow the strings to provide greater power, Solheim decided to apply the same principle to the putter.
By putting most of the weight at the heel and toe of the putter's blade he would be able to create a forgiving "sweet spot" in the center, allowing the player a much better chance to hit the ball straight. Solheim tested his idea by having a neighbor weld some metal to the back of the heel and toe of a putter, changes that helped the club head to complete a stroke. He then worked out the design of a new putter by gluing two popsicle sticks to the sides of a pair of sugar cubes with a shaft rising from the center.
By the time he had constructed a prototype of his new putter, the 1A design, he had been transferred by GE to Palo Alto, California, where he worked with a team that produced the first banking computer system. Years later he recalled trying out the putter for the first time in in his kitchen in Redwood City, California: "I heard this noise, it startled me so much I dropped the putter on the floor.
Over time, the PING 1A putters and their heel-toe weighting gained popularity, to the point in which Solheim decided to quit his job at G.
After his resignation, he decided to move the business to a Phoenix-based factory and name his company Karsten Manufacturing Corporation. PING has carried on its successful legacy as an innovator in the equipment space while staying true to its roots as a family-owned and run business.
The new approaches adopted by Solheim — a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame — not only put PING on the map as an innovator in the industry but opened the door for other manufacturers and ushered out the era of persimmon drivers. Login Username. Remember Me. Forgot your password? Business Title.
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