Editor’s note: In observance of Thanksgiving, GGP/Biz will take a short break and publish next on Wednesday, Nov. 30. Please enjoy the holiday.
Growing up in Southern California, the youngest of three children and the only boy, Scotty Cameron fell hard for golf when he was in grade school. He enjoyed playing the sport, almost as much as he did baseball and football. Golf also provided him a way to spend time with his father, an insurance investigator and single-digit handicapper who liked repairing and refinishing persimmon woods in a small workshop in his garage. It did not take Scotty long to discover there was something else he loved about being in that place. And that was the chance to channel the interest and energy he was developing for tinkering with clubs himself. Only the objects of his affection were putters.
“One time, my dad bought me a secondhand Zebra putter, and it had interchangeable weights and a head cover that matched the grip,” Cameron remembered. “I thought it was so cool, and from that point on, when my dad went to the shop to work on his woods, I did the same with my putters.”
In addition to nurturing an interest in club design and the ways those implements functioned, Don Thomas Cameron also schooled his son on the importance of craftsmanship and doing the job properly.
“He always said, ‘Do it right, or don’t do it at all,’” said Cameron, who was named after his dad at birth but later nicknamed Scotty by his mother. “And if I did not do it right, my dad would make me leave until I was ready to come back and do it over.”
Cameron and his father often teed it up together, and in many ways, the youngster could not have been happier with the times they spent together in and out of the shop. “But then he died,” Scotty said. “He was only 46 years old, and I was 13. It was a tough loss, and I will never forget that one of the last things he ever said to me was, ‘Stick with the game of golf. I think you have a future in it.’”
That was sage advice, and it led Cameron to pursue a career in the design, development and manufacture of putters that eventually put him at the very pinnacle of his profession.
Consider that on any given week on the PGA Tour, nearly 50 of the golfers in a full-field event have one of his flat sticks in their bags. And his putters have “won” 44 professional majors over the decades, from the 1993 Masters when he was just 30 years old (Bernhard Langer) to last year’s Masters, PGA Championship and Open Championship (Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas and Cameron Smith, respectively).
That number, by the way, includes all 15 of Tiger Woods’ majors – from his maiden Masters victory in 1997 to his Hogan-esque triumph at Augusta in 2019. And it further speaks to just how well Cameron’s putters have performed for so long.
His creations are also considered works of art, which has led to the establishment of a Scotty Cameron Golf Gallery in the Southern California surf town of Encinitas and a museum and gallery containing his work in Shizuoka, Japan. In addition to serving as places where some of his rarest and most unique works are displayed and offered for sale, these outlets act as putter-fitting facilities for people who want to receive the same special treatment tour players get in Cameron’s uber-private putting studio in San Marcos, California.
“I like that people like the way my putters look,” said Cameron, a strong enough player to have won multiple club championships at one of his California clubs (The Bridges at Rancho Santa Fe). “Many times, their first reaction to them is that they are too expensive. But almost immediately after they tell me that, they ask if they can buy two for themselves, and not just one.”
While the putters he makes under his arrangement with Titleist generally retail for $350, his custom creations, in which he utilizes exotic materials and really pushes the design envelope, can sell for tens of thousands of dollars.
Cameron deserves credit for building a business that has been every bit as successful as the putters he makes and sells. And a few days after the blue-eyed, bespectacled and still boyish-looking father of two celebrated his 60th birthday with a fete on the island of Maui in Hawaii, he spoke to GGP/Biz managing editor John Steinbreder about his work; his desire to keep creating “cool things”; his fascination with flea markets; and his belief in the Japanese concept of kanreki, which sees a person returning to his birth year when he turns 60 and beginning a new cycle of life. Those comments make up the latest installment of the 19th Hole:
My goal more than anything else is to design cool shit. Putters, first and foremost, and ones that help both tour professionals and recreational players be the best they can be. But I like to create things like head covers and carry golf bags. T-shirts and divot tools, too. I get crazy ideas in my head all the time. I go to flea markets for inspiration and bring things back to my putter studio for us to consider when we are trying to come up with new designs for our putters, and new accessories. Hood ornaments from classic cars, for example. Or maybe an old weathervane.
My father liked cool things, and I guess I inherited that from him. I loved Schwinn bicycles as a kid, and still do. Cool cars, and cool golf clubs, like those persimmon woods my father used to work on. Fine watches and fine wine. And Louis Vuitton luggage, which I like to use as tables.
All of this leads me to create things that are cool, as well, and make me and other people excited. I like to learn from them about the things they like and let that inform my work. Sometimes, I’ll ask the tour players who come to the studio to empty their pockets and show me their coins and wallets. They look at me kind of funny when I do that the first time. But seeing what they have and like leads me to create things like my own ball markers and billfolds.
Then, I met Bernhard Langer and revamped a putter he was using by adding loft and then extending the grip. He ended up winning the Masters with that club a few weeks later, and that really put me on the map.
Years ago, I sent the players who used my putters and came to my studio a care package that included a Scotty Cameron T-shirt. I did that in the fall, because it would be some time before I would see them again, during the West Coast swing in the winter. And I did not want them to forget about us. Well, they loved the T-shirts, in large part because golfers were starting to work out more often and no one in the game was making shirts like that. Some of the players then started asking me for T-shirts for their friends and families. I could not just give those away, so I started selling them on my website, and telling the professionals that they’d need to go on the site to get extra ones.
You cannot believe how many of those T-shirts we sold after I did that.
Of course, putters are and have always been the most important part of my business.
I kept making them after my father died, through high school and for the couple of years that I was in college. I’d give putters to friends to try out and ask them for feedback afterwards. I worked in a golf shop for a while, and then in 1986, I joined the Ray Cook company, which made and sold putters. I spent the next several years working for Cook and other golf companies designing putters and learning as much as I could about the business. Then in 1991, I went out on my own.
I quickly learned an important lesson, about pricing and quality. Initially, I was trying to sell putters for $350 retail, which was a lot considering that most were going for $75 in those days. And people said I was crazy for doing that. I had a distributor in Hawaii who was representing me there and also in Japan. I was making anywhere from six to 18 putters a month, and I found that the Japanese liked the craftsmanship so much that were not afraid of the price.
It was around that time that I met David Frost, the South African golfer. Turns out he liked cool things, too, so I started making his putters. And he won on the PGA Tour with one of mine not long after I had gone out on my own.
Then, I met Bernhard Langer and revamped a putter he was using by adding loft and then extending the grip. He ended up winning the Masters with that club a few weeks later, and that really put me on the map.
So did signing a deal with Titleist the following year to make putters for them. As much as anything else, that gave me the financial resources to purchase the high-speed video cameras, screens and lasers that helped me analyze and understand every aspect of the putting stroke. Previously, when tour professionals asked me why their putts reacted in a certain way, I did not always know the answers. Now, I had the means to really understand the putting stroke and how the player affects the putter and the ways the putter affects the ball.
Another great thing about teaming up with Titleist was that it allowed me to operate as independently and as entrepreneurially as I had before.
Doing something right has always been important to me, and that goes back to working with my father as a kid. Quality will suffer if you try to rush something, so I made sure never to do that. That approach also has an effect on supply by keeping it lower, and lower supply helps to maintain higher demand for what we produce. That enables us to keep pricing high. And it reinforces our view that price really is not an issue if the quality is there.
I have always wanted to be that kind of craftsman, to be regarded as a Tiffany or a Rolex in the putter world, and have the sort of household name that represents quality.
Of course, running the business is very different from the creative part of designing and making putters. … I also have Titleist and cannot say enough about what that relationship has meant to me or my business.
I travel a lot, but when I am home, I walk my dogs at 7:30 a.m. and try to get to the studio at 8:30. I do not have an office. I consider the entire studio my office, and I go where I am needed.
All told, I have about 50 employees, and that includes those who work in the studio as well as tour reps in the U.S., Japan and the U.K. We have some 30 people assembling putters at Titleist facilities and 10 people working in the galleries in Japan and Encinitas. In addition, there are two milling operations about two miles away from the studio that have anywhere from 150 to 180 workers.
Those facilities are going 24 hours a day six days a week. But they are closed on Sundays, and we do that as a sort of homage to Karsten Solheim. He gave his people Sundays off, and so do we.
Of course, running the business is very different from the creative part of designing and making putters. But I have long known that I needed help in that area and been lucky enough to surround myself with great people who keep me organized and doing what I do best. I also have Titleist and cannot say enough about what that relationship has meant to me or my business.
I have had lots of good mentors through the years. Roger Cleveland told me to keep creating and designing and not let the business itself eat up my time. Then, there was Wally Uihlein, who was CEO of Acushnet when I signed my deal with Titleist. And what I learned from him is almost immeasurable. He led me through the years as he also let me decide what to do and when. He also trusted me as a young man, and from that day forward, I was never going to let Wally Uihlein down.
I have known my wife, Kathy, since we were teenagers, and we have two daughters – Summer, who is now 27, and Sandy, who is 19. Kathy and I had a tough time having a child the first time around. I was traveling a lot. She was holding down the fort at home and at work, and we only had a couple of employees. So things for her were very stressful. Back then, I had made a handful of Scotty Cameron Classic 1 Mini putters as a gift to friends having a first-born child. And one night when I came home, I found one of those Minis tucked under the pillow. That is how I found out that Summer was on the way.
Now that I am 60, people ask me on occasion if I am slowing down. My answer is that I am embracing kanreki, and the concept of rebirth at 60. And as long as I continue to be creative and feel creative, I will keep doing what I am doing.
And I still feel very creative.